Meditation for Sunday, November 18, 2012: “The End of the World This Week?”

The readings from both the Epistle (Hebrews 10:11-25) and the Gospel (Mark 13:1-8) point to the end of the age, the Day of the Lord, with apocalyptic language — blood, war, earthquakes, and famine.  I must admit that the end times have never been of much interest to me, but then again, as a white male middle class economically secure American living in New England, why would it? Life is, for the most part, pretty good, and I’m in no hurry for it to end. Our earliest ancestors in faith lived lives of physical labor, were viewed with suspicion by their neighbors and were often persecuted. The end of time must have had some appeal, since suffering would be ended, the persecutors would have to answer God for their actions, and life would then be lived with Jesus. Who am to not give the topic at least some thought?

Sermon: B 24 Pentecost 27 Proper 11 November 2012

Ruth 3: 1-5, 4: 13-17; Ps 127; Heb 9: 24-28; MARK 12: 38-44

On this Remembrance Day, For those who were killed in battle,

For those who gave up their lives to save others

For those who fought because they were forced to,

For those who died standing up for a just cause

For those who said war was wrong,

For those who tried to make the peace

For those who prayed when others had no time to pray

For those creatures who needlessly die

For those trees that needlessly are slaughtered

For all of mankind Let us quietly pray:

May [your] God hold them in peace/ May Love flow over the Earth and cleanse us all/ This day and for always. AMEN.

This is Marianne Griffin’s poem for Remembrance Day. I’ve been in England around this time several times recently, and in buying and wearing a poppy, I’ve mused about Remembrance, Armistice, or Veterans’ Day, our anti-war climate, and our virtual ignoring the 11th, whatever it’s called. This year, its observance gives many people a welcome recovery from politics, however we as individuals, a state, or nation, felt about the results. In having tomorrow off, not as a day off for voting, but to observe this occasion we’d rather omit, we also see the darkening chilling of our days. We also hear about the widow’s mite, her giving two coins, all she had, and know too stewardship is in the wind.

Meditation for Sunday, November 11th

“Unless the LORD builds the hours, their labor is in vain who build it.”

Oh hear now how the proud claim, “I built that!” —

smug in abundance, demanding of praise,

no credit to the carpenter,

anonymous hands bought and bruised to raise

temples of conceit on the habitat

of the wild, the poor, the stranger.

“Unless the LORD builds the house,

their labor is in vain who build it.”

The tests and triumphs of mere mortal rule,

at best, may imitate a discerned

intent of our one Creator,

at worst, displace eternal gifts un-earned

with fleeting fragile robes consumed as fuel

to warm bare greed’s known successor.

Hurricane Sandy: A message to readers who need assistance

If you need help, contact DisasterAssistance.gov - Home. You can also apply via smartphone at http://m.fema.gov, or call (800) 621-3362 or TTY (800) 462-7585.

People will continue to need assistance for months. If you want to help, you can volunteer or donate cash to the Red Cross. You can also give to Doctors Without Borders, Occupy Sandy Relief, 350.org, or to The Episcopal Relief and Development's Hurricane Sandy Response Fund

Image by NOAA and the Naval Research Lab.

Prayer for the victims of Hurricane Sandy

Let us pray for the victims of Hurricane Sandy, as well as for those who have died in war, famine, and other disasters.

Let us also do God's work, not only in prayer, but in service by volunteering, as well as by donating to organizations, such as the Red Cross.

Song for Athene

Alleluia. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

Alleluia. Remember me, o Lord, when you come into your kingdom.

Alleluia. Give rest, o Lord, to your handmaid who has fallen asleep.

Alleluia. The Choir of Saints have found the well-spring of life and door of paradise.

Alleluia. Life : a shadow and a dream.

Alleluia. Weeping at the grave creates the song: Alleluia.

Alleluia. Come, enjoy the rewards and crowns I have prepared for you.

Sermon: B The Sunday after All Saints’ 4 November 2012

Wis 3:1-9; Ps 24; Rev 21: 1- 6a; JOHN 11:32-44

I sing a song of the saints of God, I mean, God helping, to be one too. AMEN

We celebrate All Saints’ Day today, even after All Saints’, and so we think about All Souls’ as well. All Hallows Eve was part of the observance of feast days, by starting the feast at sunset the previous Eve, as we do on Christmas Eve and Easter Eve, which we call a Vigil. Calling that lead-in service Eve, it’d be, Christme’en or would it be Christmaseen or Eastereen—nope, yet we do mark these three major church Holy Days the night before. All Saints in our world is far less observed than its Evening beginning, Hallowe’en, as Christmas is less celebrated liturgically than its Eve. All Souls for us is an extended prayer observance for people, unlike the ones remembered on All Saints, who according to Wikipedia “have attained the beatific vision in Heaven.” Since all Christians are understood to be saints of God, it’s odd that we almost divide people on these two days between famous and common. The church’s distinction is between those in Heaven and those not yet in, but since we don’t hold to a concept of Purgatory or other sort of holding cell or pit, that difference doesn’t make much theological sense.

As a Southwestern transplant, I’ve never liked the darkness of Boston winters. I’ve learned, however, that with the fading light comes a wonderful surprise. When it starts getting dark earlier, I look up at the evening sky. Instead of focusing on the encroaching darkness, I lose myself in the beautiful ombré of twilight. Where one week deep turquoise slides into teal then into pale blue, the next may bring navy fading into cobalt into peacock and finally into the yellow-white that marks where the sun slipped below the horizon. The Epistle says ‘I saw a new heaven.’  Raised in big sky country, the autumnal evening sky is a new heaven. Just as God makes all things new, so the evening light returns, first brightening the morning, then the evening again, in an endless cycle of beginnings and endings, of Alpha and Omega.