Weekly thoughts from the Rector of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, where these words remind us that Jesus’ peace goes with us into the world.
A couple of years ago, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams wrote a review for The New Statesman magazine of several books about violence, including Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Here’s part of that review, which I found to be profoundly thought-provoking as I consider my own place in this broken world and my relationship to others in that world as a follower of Jesus:
Again and again in Genesis, younger brothers overturn the legitimate expectations of older ones, and varying degrees of conflict result. At first sight, this reads as a catalogue of simple displacement, yet it becomes more interesting when we look at the verbal detail. Younger brothers discover that their privilege is to secure the future of older ones; or they discover that the blessing transferred to them from an older sibling is balanced by an unexpected blessing for the latter which benefits both. The trickster Jacob, when he next encounters Esau, the brother he has defrauded, says that to see his face is like seeing the face of God. In other words, the stories are not about favouritism and rejection, whatever the appearances: they are about the blessing of difference — the dignity of difference, to quote the title of one of Sacks’s best-known books. There is no firm ground for asserting that divine choice makes an enemy of those not chosen, because God’s choice is always purposeful, directed at a common good.
This reading is an ingenious and often moving turning upside down of a rhetoric of “chosenness” that has often blighted Christian as well as Jewish self-understanding, and has undoubtedly fuelled the anti-Semitism that Sacks rightly sees as resurgent in so many contexts today.
Weekly thoughts from the Rector of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, where these words remind us that Jesus’ peace goes with us into the world.
Paul Hooker is the Associate Dean for Ministerial Formation and Advanced Studies at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. He recently authored three hymn verses as he thought about the hurricanes in Texas and Florida that have “drenched and torn the lives of so many [he loves].” Perhaps his words will speak to you as they have spoken to me:
In the wind that howls, the deep’ning dark, when rains begin to fall
and the hopes we cherish most in life are shrouded in their pall,
then at last we lift our vision; then at last we strain our ear
for the word of sweet deliv’rance: our rescuer draws near.
Teach us, Lord, to rescue others, and to find as we are found,
until all your people reach the shore and stand on higher ground.
O that you, O God, would tear the skies and to the earth descend
‘mid the trembling mountain’s tumult, ‘mid fear that knows no end.
Though the stars may leave their places, constellations cease to be,
though the world we know and all we love lost to memory,
still we wait, Lord, rapt in wonder, ‘til morning’s sun shall rise,
‘til the clouds are rent asunder, and the tear of heartache dries.
‘Til that day, before the table spread, the font, the spoken word
we will gather as a people and let lament be heard
for your promised reign of glory, for tomorrow’s dawn of peace,
for the helpless and the hopeless, the prisoner’s release.
Quickly come, Lord, to your people! The night grows e’er so long!
We believe; help now our unbelief, ‘til all our hearts are strong.
Here’s what I said on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, which fell on a Sunday that year:
St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Edina, Minnesota
The Reverend Neil Alan Willard, M.Div.
Proper 19, September 11, 2011
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. (Romans 14:7-8)
For many of us, those words of Saint Paul in his letter to the Romans bring to mind the opening sentences of the burial liturgy. Perhaps you’ve been to a funeral in this church and heard them spoken by a priest as one of the saints who has died is accompanied on the last part of a pilgrimage — a lifelong journey toward God. Those words remind us that we are the Lord’s possession no matter what happens to us in life or in death. It seems appropriate, therefore, to contemplate that reality on this tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that forever changed us as Americans.
Do you remember what you were doing ten years ago? People stopped the ordinary activities of daily life to watch the news reports about those awful events. We watched them over and over again. Throughout the country, others were doing the same thing, experiencing the same emotions, and fearing for the safety of family and friends. For weeks churches overflowed with those who needed community and who had promised themselves that the most important things — their loved ones, their neighborhoods, and the grace that binds us together — would thereafter be the main focus of their attention.
As this solemn anniversary drew near, more than a few of us shared a very different kind of experience with friends and strangers. This one was a wonderful, almost magical event. It caught me off guard the way that grace-filled moments often do.
Mark Moller and Julia Gutz Moller are members of St. Stephen’s and have been waiting to adopt a child. Quite suddenly, that moment arrived and necessitated a road trip to Montana. Through the power of social media, a lot of us were able to follow this adventure online via Facebook as Mark posted status updates along the way. More and more people started making comments and offering prayers and describing their own tears of joy as all of this was actually happening. Several of the hotel’s staff members even remained in the lobby after the end of their shift on Friday night to witness these new parents welcome a tiny baby and name her Anna.
Both of these stories, one about death and the other about life, have a kind of power to concentrate the mind and cause most of us, as we think about our loved ones and about the dignity of every human being, to move in the direction of love. Both of them tell us that life is a precious gift that’s fragile. They make us want to focus on the most important things.
And yet the will to do so isn’t as strong as we often imagine it to be. Over time that resolve gradually fades away. Forgetfulness seems to be built into our DNA. So we need reminders of God’s grace in our day to day experiences.
That’s why baby Anna’s trip home to Minnesota won’t be her most important journey this year. She’ll soon undertake another one that begins at the baptismal font — the same font that confronted you as you entered the front doors of the church. That stone font hasn’t been used for years and years. Now it’s been moved to the center of things, where it belongs, and we’re going to use that font for the purpose for which it was created.
There baby Anna will be bathed in the waters of grace and marked as Christ’s own forever. There her parents and the rest of us will promise to remind her of the fact that she belongs to God and that the Holy Spirit is present in every act of love and every step of her pilgrimage home to God.
This is a photograph of Anna’s baptism on All Saints Sunday, November 6, 2011.
Earlier in his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul describes this relationship with Christ that we have together as a community of the baptized:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.[1]
As you leave today, take a closer look at the outer rim of our “new” old font. There are eight sides. It’s octagonal. That’s not a randomly chosen style. The symbolism of that shape goes back to early Christianity and hearkens back to the beginning, to Genesis. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The creation story then unfolds in the narrative over a period of six days. On the seventh day, God rested. On the eighth day, which is how early Christians described the resurrection of Jesus, God re-created the world. And it is through the waters of baptism that we enter into that new creation.
So, each time that you walk past that stone font, remember that you belong to God, too, and that the Holy Spirit is at work in your life and in our life together.
During my first summer at St. Stephen’s, my father-in-law and I attended, as we do most years, the Washington Island Forum in Wisconsin. The speaker was Tom Long, a seminary professor from Emory University. He reminded us that every Christian can share memories of God’s presence and that congregations need to hear these stories and celebrate them.
He told us about a young woman whose heartfelt words exemplified this. She was more graceful as a professional dancer than as a public speaker. But she shared one of these memories with a group from her church — her family in Christ:
She reminded [them] that she was raised in that particular church. She described the sanctuary, including the baptismal font, and she said that she was baptized as an infant right in that very font. She did not remember this, of course, but she told [them] that her father was very proud of that moment and that when she was a little girl, he would often tell her of the Sunday that she was baptized. He would describe the baptismal dress that she wore, he would remember what hymns were sung and what the minister had said in the sermon, and he always ended the story by clapping his hands together and exclaiming, “Oh, sweetheart, the Holy Spirit was in the church that day!”[2]
Her father would tell her that story over and over again. Yet something puzzled her about it. She wondered where the Holy Spirit really was in the church. Where could she find it? As a child, she thought it might be hiding in the building’s nooks and crannies. This is how Tom Long remembers the rest of her testimony of faith:
[S]he paused for a moment, and everybody in the room leaned forward to hear what she would say next. “As many of you know,” she continued, “I lost both of my parents to cancer in the same week, a terrible week, last winter. During that awful week, on a dark Wednesday afternoon, I was driving home from visiting my parents in the hospital, and I was passing by the church. I felt an intense need to pray, and so I came into the church and sat in one of the back pews and began to pray. The church was dark, and in the shadows, I prayed and poured out my grief to God, and cried from the bottom of my heart. A member of the church . . . was in the kitchen preparing a meal for a church meeting, and she saw me praying and knew what was happening in my life. She took off her apron, came and sat beside me in the pew, held my hand, and prayed with me. “It was then,” the young woman said, “that I knew where the Holy Spirit was in this church.”[3]
2 BACK TO POST Thomas G. Long, Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004) 127. This is the written version of the same story that he shared at the 2007 Washington Island Forum.
Weekly thoughts from the Rector of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, where these words remind us that Jesus’ peace goes with us into the world.
As I announced last Sunday and also explained in an email message to the congregation, Palmer hosted a free day camp this past week for children as a gift to the community in response to the fact that HISD schools delayed the beginning of the new academic year until tomorrow, September 11.
I want to thank Roger Hutchison, Director of Christian Formation and Parish Life, and a host of helpers from the church staff and church members who made this possible. There were more than a few tears shed by parents who were very grateful that we had created a safe place for their children to be.
Looking ahead, Palmer will be part of a coordinated relief system that has been created by the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. There are now eight hub churches in the network: Palmer Memorial Church, Christ Church Cathedral, St. Martin’s Church, St. Mark’s Church, The Church of St. John the Divine, Holy Spirit Church, St. Francis Church, and Trinity Church. Christy Orman, whom you are welcome to contact directly at corman@christchurchcathedral.org, is the Hurricane Relief Coordinator for this network.
Additionally, each hub church has a Parish Hurricane Relief Coordinator. Betty Key has graciously accepted the invitation to fill that role for our community of faith with the help of a support team. Betty and her team will be Palmer’s conduit with Christy as our church becomes a platform to help with the management of restoration projects in the City of Houston for the weeks and months to come. You can contact them via stormsupport@palmerchurch.org, which is the same email address we’ve been using to receive updates about assisting our own parishioners.
Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church, Houston, Texas
The Reverend Neil Alan Willard, M.Div.
Proper 17, September 3, 2017
Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. (Romans 12:9-13)
I love those beautiful words from the 12th chapter of Romans. And this community of faith has embodied them in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. You have embodied what it means to love one another, to contribute to the needs of the saints, and to extend hospitality to strangers. You have been patient in suffering. You have persevered in prayer. And as that passage goes on to say, you’ve shown what it is to “rejoice with those who rejoice” and to “weep with those who weep.”[1]
You’ve turned to God, although that surely hasn’t been easy for everyone. Even an elderly Christian who showed no fear as she was rescued from rising floodwaters inside a nursing home concluded her statement to The Washington Post by saying, somewhat ambiguously, “God promised he’d never do this again.”[2]
Certain things unfold in the history of the world or in our own personal experiences that cause doubts not only about God’s goodness but also about God’s very existence. And those who rush to God’s defense often make matters worse with hurtful words of false comfort. At times they dishonor God’s holy name more than ecclesiastical outlaws who raise their fists to heaven in moral outrage over innocent suffering.
That kind of rage is often felt in the aftermath of natural disasters, such as the human misery that we’ve seen in the wake of the storm here in Houston or recent news out of central Nigeria, where more than 100,000 people have been displaced because of flooding.[3] However, just like hurricanes and rains that seem like they will never come to an end, humanity itself belongs to the natural order. Our actions that allow others to suffer raise the same kinds of questions as natural disasters.[4] Why is this happening? How can this be? And, ultimately, where is God?
Lt. Jack Harvey of the Houston Police Department is also a member of Palmer
Memorial Episcopal Church and can be see in this video holding a small boy.
Whether looking in the face of nature’s violence, or sins of omission that make bad situations worse, or the flood of human evil that spreads inhumanity in every generation — in all these things people want to know where God is. And, in some cases, they want to know if God is.
But the truth is that it doesn’t take rising floodwaters to float such a question to the surface. Suffering that demands a response can be found all around us, all the time. Neglected children live unseen in many communities, including ours. Maybe friends we want to rescue have made decisions that place them beyond our reach. Battles with disease might be taking place within our own bodies. And all of us will face a time when someone we love becomes lost in the shadow of death.
These experiences compel us to wrestle with God like Jacob, who struggled until daybreak at the River Jabbok.[5] They force us to cry out and watch. And what we do next might make all the difference in the world for ourselves and for those whom God has entrusted to our care.
David Hart is an Eastern Orthodox theologian with some helpful thoughts about this. He’s the author of a book entitled The Doors of Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? Although written as a reflection on the tragic deaths of more than 225,000 people in Southeast Asia at the end of 2004, his reflections are just as important today in the midst of thinking about the disturbing headlines about Hurricane Harvey in the media, the destruction that we’ve seen with our own eyes, or whatever trials we might be facing ourselves. Surely he is right to suggest that we should all remain silent at first.
Acting in generosity as soon as possible is one thing. And without question we ought to stand close to those suffering the experience of Good Friday. Palmers have done both of those things in remarkable ways, for friends and strangers alike, over the last week. You’ve helped one another clean up flooded homes, brought food to those who’ve needed a good meal, and cried together. But it’s almost blasphemous to seek out a greater meaning for it all before weeping with those who mourn.[6]
The storm that killed those whose bodies have completely filled the city morgue, and whom we’ll remember in our prayers today, isn’t divine retribution. And it isn’t part of some divine plan, as a few streams of Christian theology might suggest, in which someone’s pain is required to show forth the glory of God. We aren’t better people because tragedy of one kind or another didn’t befall us. And we most certainly aren’t better Christians when we stand at a distance and affirm that “everything happens for a reason.”
Reflecting upon that kind of response in the face of a father who lost four of his five children in the tsunami, David Hart states the obvious:
Most of us would have the good sense to be ashamed to speak such words . . . And this should tell us something. For if we would think it shamefully foolish and cruel to say such things in the moment when another’s sorrow is most real and irresistibly painful, then we ought never to say them . . .[7]
At the center of our faith stands the cross. So it should come as no surprise that right in the middle of the Nicene Creed we declare that Jesus Christ “was crucified under Pontius Pilate . . . suffered death and was buried.”
This statement anchors our faith not only in the pages of history but also in every experience of God-forsakenness. It brings our faith into the suffering of the world, where God himself has led the way. Perhaps to the surprise of many, we stand beside those who raise their fists to heaven in moral outrage over innocent suffering. That’s because what they protest isn’t God but things that are the enemy of God.
In one of his less familiar stories, J.R.R. Tolkien retells the beginning of all things at Creation.[8] And he includes a helpful image, I think, about the relationship between divine providence and the chaos we encounter loose throughout the world, whether we’re driving down the street of a neighborhood that was flooded or just looking at the hidden messes in our own lives. It reminds me of the final words of our reading from Romans about “[overcoming] evil with good,” which we’ve witnessed countless times in response to the natural evil of Harvey’s wrath.[9]
In the literary imagination of Tolkien, God is represented by Eru, also known as Iluvatar. And Iluvatar first created the Ainur, the Holy Ones, who are like the host of heaven. Iluvatar taught them about music and was very pleased as they began to sing. The more they listened to each other, the more they began to understand one another and to sing in harmony. Iluvatar then spoke to them about a great theme that would bring forth Great Music. And so it did. This Great Music spilled out into the Void, making it no longer a void.
But one of the Ainur, who had spent too much time alone in the void places before the Great Music, wanted to increase the importance of his own part. And these thoughts became part of his music, disrupting the harmony that surrounded Iluvatar. As Tolkien describes it: “the melodies . . . foundered in a sea of turbulent sound . . . a raging storm as of dark waters that made war one upon another in an endless wrath that would not be assuaged.”
And this is where Tolkien provides a helpful way to think about God’s interaction with the world. Iluvatar arose, smiled, and lifted up his left hand. A new theme with its own beauty evolved in the midst of the storm, but the discord grew more violent than before. So Iluvatar arose with a stern countenance and lifted up his right hand. Yet another theme arose above the confusion. The music without harmony could not overtake the other. In fact, in the words of Tolkien, “its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern.”
But the strife continued and rippled out into the silences that had never been disturbed. For a third time, Iluvatar arose and “his face was terrible to behold.” Iluvatar raised up both hands. He brought forth a single chord “deeper than the Abyss” and “higher than the Firmament.” Suddenly . . . the Music came to an end.
Iluvatar explained that it was impossible to destroy the Music. Anyone who attempted to do so would become another instrument in creating things yet more wonderful. Finally, Iluvatar took the Ainur into the Void and said, “Behold your Music!” And before them appeared a new World.
For me, that’s a helpful way to think about not only the world as it is but also the new creation that awaits us. In Tolkien’s story, God isn’t the source of discord — the chaos in the world and within us. And God is not pleased with such freedom abused. Yet God is able to create anew, bringing good out of evil and the chaos to an end.
For those who prefer less indirect speech about such weighty matters, I turn again to the words of David Hart. His final thought leaves nothing more to be said:
God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable . . . he will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and . . . rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes — and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, “Behold, I make all things new.”[10]
8 BACK TO POST J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, second edition, edited by Christopher Tolkien (New York: Ballantine, 1999) 3-12. The quotes and the language that I adapted for the retelling of this story are taken from here.
Weekly thoughts from the Rector of Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas, where these words remind us that Jesus’ peace goes with us into the world.
Last Sunday was supposed to be Serve Sunday, when when we are sent out at the end of our liturgies as teams in the name of Christ to serve the community that surrounds us. Although we did not worship within these walls last weekend thanks to Hurricane Harvey, I have no doubt that we said our prayers together as the church dispersed throughout the various neighborhoods that we represent. And I know that members of this congregation have “been the church” outside these buildings since the floodwaters began to rise. We’ve been checking on other Palmers and our neighbors, bringing people into our homes, providing meals, helping with flood remediation work that has to happen quickly in the subtropical climate of Houston, and volunteering at the downtown convention center and other official shelters for those who have been forced from their homes.
On Wednesday it was a joy hear the church bells “Ringing Hope after Harvey” in thanksgiving that Palmer’s doors were open to serve the City of Houston for the first time since the weather cleared. Prayers were offered as they “[rang] out,” in the words of Tennyson, “the grief that saps the mind / for those that here we see more.” Now we shall embrace anew, as we do each Sunday, Palmer’s mission to know and share the love of Jesus Christ, reaching out to those who are suffering and rebuilding. Please contact us at stormsupport@palmerchurch.org to pass along what you know about your own situation or that of others or what resources or volunteer time you might be able to provide. I’ve heard story after story of Palmers helping other Palmers and strangers and friends. That’s a glimpse of God’s reign, pun intended, in the midst of the storm. Today I’m grateful that we’re here together to receive strength for the journey ahead of us.
Tumbleweed Almanac 