Evil has no ultimate power

In tomorrow's Gospel reading, we read Mark's very brief account of Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness after his baptism. Mark writes,

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news."

The Rev. Martin Warner wrote a reflection for the current issue of Church Times in which he saw this scripture through a Stanley Spencer painting reproduced here:

These references to beasts and angels hint at a tension implicit in the words Jesus speaks at the beginning of his ministry, after the 40 days in the wilderness: “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has come near,” he says. The tension is in that phrase “come near”. Jesus is announcing that the reality of the Kingdom is to be found in his own person, even though the Kingdom’s potential is not yet fully revealed.

Something of this anticipatory quality of now-but-not-yet is captured by the artist Stanley Spencer in his series of paintings entitled Christ in the Wilderness. Spencer originally intended to produce 40 paintings, but he never completed the whole series. The scenes he did paint relocate moments from the teaching ministry of Jesus back into the desert, as though they had all flowed out of that formative wilderness experience.

One painting in particular illustrates the symbolism of wild beasts, which represents a tension between blood lust and the harmony of paradise regained, and that tension Jesus alludes to as the struggle between the hiddenness of the Kingdom of God and the power and presence of its reality.

The painting is called The Scorpion. Jesus sits on the ground, holding in cupped hands an angry scorpion. He looks at this little creature with compassion and acceptance, knowing that its nature is to inflict deadly pain when it is threatened.

The scorpion is a sign of the destructive force of the natural world. But the holding of it by Jesus suggests something else. Divine love consumes this raging force and will bear its pain. Out of that bearing divine love will reveal the peace of the Kingdom of heaven that lies hidden within love’s mysterious ways.

As we begin this Lent, the tensions suggested by Mark’s account of the 40 days confront us all too vividly. The authority of virtue that infuses the Kingdom of God is obscure for many people today, no matter how transformative Christians believe it to be. The human race, scorpion-like, finds itself humbled not only by greed and self-obsession, but also by a virulent cycle of anger.

The journalist Jonathan Freedland has written recently about hate attacks on Jews in north London, in the wake of Israel’s offensive against Gaza. He set this in the context of the need to guard against Islamophobia in the wake of the 7/7 bombings in London.

The point is well made. It is precisely the point of Spencer’s painting, and the struggle of Jesus in the wilderness. Evil, if met with like, will only expand its destructive power. The wilderness experience of Jesus was an engagement with reckoning the cost of revealing the Kingdom of love, against which alone evil has no ultimate power.

Our wilderness, this Lent, might not be Gaza or London; it might simply be daily life, wherever that is. This is where love’s costly resistance to the cycle of greed, self-obsession and anger, on a domestic, local scale, could have significant consequences for enhancing the quality of our global life. Angels will wait upon you there; so will a hurting world.

George Herbert's Lent

The Rev. George Herbert (1593-1633) was a Welsh priest and poet. The Episcopal Church commemorates his life and ministry on February 27. The following is his poem "Lent," whose last few stanzas I find particularly appropriate as we enter this time of preparation for Easter.

Welcome dear feast of Lent: who loves not thee,
He loves not Temperance, or Authority,
But is compos'd of passion.
The Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says, now:
Give to thy Mother, what thou wouldst allow
To ev'ry Corporation.

The humble soul compos'd of love and fear
Begins at home, and lays the burden there,
When doctrines disagree,
He says, in things which use hath justly got,
I am a scandal to the Church, and not
The Church is so to me.

True Christians should be glad of an occasion
To use their temperance, seeking no evasion,
When good is seasonable;
Unless Authority, which should increase
The obligation in us, make it less,
And Power itself disable.

Besides the cleanness of sweet abstinence,
Quick thoughts and motions at a small expense,
A face not fearing light:
Whereas in fulness there are sluttish fumes,
Sour exhalations, and dishonest rheums,
Revenging the delight.

Then those same pendant profits, which the spring
And Easter intimate, enlarge the thing,
And goodness of the deed.
Neither ought other men's abuse of Lent
Spoil the good use; lest by that argument
We forfeit all our Creed.

It's true, we cannot reach Christ's forti'eth day;
Yet to go part of that religious way,
Is better than to rest:
We cannot reach our Saviour's purity;
Yet we are bid, 'Be holy ev'n as he, '
In both let's do our best.

Who goeth in the way which Christ hath gone,
Is much more sure to meet with him, than one
That travelleth by-ways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far before,
May turn and take me by the hand, and more:
May strengthen my decays.

Yet Lord instruct us to improve our fast
By starving sin and taking such repast,
As may our faults control:
That ev'ry man may revel at his door,
Not in his parlour; banqueting the poor,
And among those his soul.

Stations of the Cross
We begin our weekly Stations of the Cross service today. Each Friday in Lent at 5:30 p.m., we will walk the stations trail at the church following the Way of the Cross service as we remember Jesus' death. We will use several station service, starting today with written for King of Peace. It is online here: Stations of the Cross.

Working on our Building and Grounds

It wasn't a planned Work Day today as such, but the weather was pleasant, the sand gnats were out in full force and three projects took place on our building and grounds. Chuck and Ken worked on varnishing the wood around the exterior of our windows. Neil worked on spot sanding and treating the hand forgeed iron hinges on the church doors with linseed oil. Finally Al and Brandon were on hand for the pouring of the concrete for the foundation of the memorial garden wall. They worked the concrete into the forms Al built and smoothed the surface to prepare to lay the concrete blocks, for what we be a tabby wall with niches for the interment of ashes.

Where there is silence

Where shall the word be found,
where will the word resound?

Not here,
there is not enough silence.


—T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

Ash Wednesday Photos

Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent. The chairs for our worship are set up choir style as pictured above. The pulpit is at the door to the church, the baptismal font is at the middle and halfway between the font and the altar is a copper bowl for burning sins in our confession this evening (pictured below). We move down the aisle of the church from pulpit and hearing the Gospel, to the font of baptism, to the fire which will consume the sins we confess, to communion at the altar.

This shows visibly how we move from hearing God's Word proclaimed to our response in coming forward for baptism and then when we sin we return to God and ask for forgiveness, having done so we move back to the altar to experience God's presence once more in the Eucharist. Come experience this tonight at 7 p.m. in our Ash Wednesday liturgy where we will be marked with the sign of the cross and reminded to, "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return." It is a moving worship service and a fitting start to our season of Lent.

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

The Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper together with the Mardi Gras bingo was a big success. See y'all tomorrow at 7 p.m. for Ash Wednesday.

A Love Affair

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

—G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936)

Vulnerable Love

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
—C.S. Lewis

What I find most amazing about the Incarnation is that in becoming man in Jesus Christ, God became so vulnerable. Rejection was not only possible, but virtually assured. God could have come and lived and loved among us and the world could have never returned that love. Once God became man, Good Friday was a given. Yet God loved us enough to go through Good Friday to bring us all to the light of Easter.

This week, we begin the annual journey of Lent. We offer a brochure in PDF format: Keeping a Holy Lent. The booklet will give you some background on this season of preparation for Easter as well as giving you some ideas about how you might mark the season this year.

For those here at King of Peace, we will have a Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper tomorrow at 6 p.m. and the Ash Wednesday liturgy is the following day at 7 p.m. I'll see y'all there as we begin this journey together.

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

Made to Do

Set yourself earnestly to see what you are made to do,
and then set yourself earnestly to do it.

—The Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

Metamorphosis

In tomorrow's Gospel reading we read of The Transfiguration,

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah." He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, "This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!" Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

We call this story the Transfiguration, though in Mark's New Testament Greek, the word for transfiguration is "metamorphosis" as when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Kathy Coffey,who teaches English at the University of Colorado, Denver, and Regis College, has written this poem of the experience of the transfiguration:

Grinding up the steep incline,
our calves throbbing,
we talked of problems
and slapped at flies.
Then you touched my shoulder,
said, "turn around."

Behind us floated
surprise mountains
blue on lavender,
water-colored ranges:
a glimpse from God's eyes.

Descending, how could we chat
mundanely of the weather, like deejays?
We wondered if, returning,
James and John had squabbled:
whose turn to fetch the water,
after the waterfall of grace?

After he imagined the shining tents,
did Peter's walls seem narrow,
smell of rancid fish?
Did feet that poised on Tabor
cross the cluttered porch?
After the bleached light,
could eyes adjust to ebbing
grey and shifting shade?

Cradling the secret in their sleep
did they awaken cautiously,
wondering if the mountaintop
would gild again-bringing
that voice, that face?

The season of Epiphany marks a time of that Aha! awareness of God's presence and how those moments can change our lives. None of us spends our lives in constant Epiphany. The Rev. Geoffrey Hoare, Rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Atlanta wrote of this for Day 1 saying:

In any congregation of Christians there are some people who can say they have been blessed with an Epiphany, a powerful manifestation or experience of God. There are many more people who fervently wish that such a gift would be granted them and who imagine that if only they could have a conversion or they could have a 'mountain top' experience, then their faith would not be so difficult. They imagine that belief would be easier to come by if they could be as clear as they imagine those around them to be. And then there are yet others who have moved beyond any hope or expectation of such epiphanies in their lives rather in the spirit of what Jesus once said to Thomas: 'Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe' (John 20:29).

The full text of that essay is online here: Epiphanies.


Click on the cartoon to see it better

Faith Like a Child

Five year old Jackson Mayberry didn't get any toys for his birthday. But don't feel sad for him. The Nebraska boy wanted his presents to come as food for his church's food pantry so that folks in need wouldn't go hungry. Jackson said he had all the toys he wanted and he didn't want others to go without. Mayberry attends Kountze Memorial Lutheran Church in Omaha, whose food ministry serves 250 people per week.

Savannah's WSAV has a report online here: Little Boy Foregoes Birthday Gifts To Help Others In Need. It's a story of one boy's selfless love for those who don't have as much as he and his family enjoy.

Two Degrees of Separation
Today's religion column for the Tribune & Georgian started out here as a blog post here on the Six Degrees of Separation. The column is still about about six degrees. Now, a few days later, I wish I had called it Two Degrees of Separation and emphasized how we know Jesus and He knows everyone. Oh well. The full text of the column, which was added to with more research after the blog post, is online here: Six Degrees of Separation

peace,
Frank+
The Rev. Frank Logue, Pastor

Darwin at Downe

The naturalist Charles Darwin would have turned 200 last week. That occasion is being marked in various ways. A recent article in Episcopal Life Evolution and Faith in Dialogue presents ways in which people of faith struggle with the results of Darwin's life work. That article considers how "an acceptance of evolution is entirely compatible with an authentic and living Christian faith."

Another angle on the naturalist is found here Darwin at Downe, a web page covering Darwin's ongoing involvement in his parish church of St. Marys in the village of Downe in Kent, where he lived for the last 40 years of his life. Darwin was heavily involved with local community organisations, such as the Coal and Clothing Fund, and was the co-founder of a Friendly Club to which local people subscribed for assurance of assistance in times of financial hardship. He served as its treasurer for over 30 years.

His parish priest described him saying,

He is a man of the most perfect moral character, and his scrupulous regard for the strictest truth is above that of almost all men I know. I am quite persuaded that if on any morning he met with a fact which would clearly contradict one of his cherished theories he would not let the sun set before he made it known. I never saw a word in his writings which was an attack on Religion.

There is no doubt that Darwin's observation have presented challenges to the faith of many. And we know from Darwin himself that his work moved him toward disbelief. As Darwin wrote himself,

In my Journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of a Brazilian forest: ‘It is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, admiration, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.’ I well remember my conviction that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind.”

He seems like a man who wanted to continue to believe in the Christianity of his youth, but his scientific work barred the way. And yet he continued to be actively involved in his parish church and the good he saw it could do. Too bad, that Darwin, could not, as so many other scientists have done, found a way to reconcile his faith and his scientific worldview. The two need not have been incompatible. This is covered in an article by the Rev, Malcolm Brown, Good religion needs good science at the same Church of England website as the one making the Darwin at Downe connection.

The Olive Branch

The latest issue of King of Peace's newsletter is now online here: The Olive Branch

Silence No Option

The Rev. Anne Weatherholt is on a campaign to help churches "Always assume there are people in the pews that have experienced or are now experiencing abuse." She tells of meeting up with a bride she had married soon after she was ordained. When they met up again in the grocery store, it was a year after the wedding.

The shock came one year later when she met the bride in a grocery store and learned that the couple already had divorced. The young woman described how she had been beaten after the marriage, and said that her ex-husband often hit his dog before their marriage.

"It was a real turning point for me," said Weatherholt. "I had come out of seminary with a high belief in the sacraments; I had come from a good family background in which my parents loved one another and I hardly knew of any bad relationships.

"I thought, 'People will be truthful when we talk to them,'" she said, describing the pre-marital counseling sessions clergy conduct. "It was a sobering moment in a lot of ways when you learn that couples may not necessarily be truthful because they want you to be convinced of their desire to be married."

She goes on to explain,

Many violent relationships begin with quick, intense, seductive courtships, explained Weatherholt. "But once set in motion, abuse, which begins with intimidation, threats and attempts to control, will occur more frequently as the abuser becomes more demanding." Abusers will continue to intimidate the victim, and in violent relationships communication breaks down, tensions erupt and battering often occurs, she said.

"When they try to exit, victims are often beaten down, images are destroyed, and abusers are taught to blame themselves," she said. "Many times I see them like people coming out of a war, shell-shocked."

Weatherholdt advocates for the church being the one to bring up this issue, to talk about it with youth groups and help break the cycle of violence which grips generations of families.

How might we bring this up with children, particularly teens, as they begin dating? Abusive relationships are not God's will, and yet we remain silent. How can we be a voice for breaking the cycle of violence?

Enough to make us love

By this everyone will know
that you are my disciples,
if you have love one for another.
—Jesus (John 13:35)

We have just enough religion to make us hate,
but not enough to make us love one another.
—Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

You can safely assume that
you've created God in your own image
when it turns out that God hates
all the same people you do.
—Anne Lamott (1954- )

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians.
Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869-1948)

Beloved, let us love one another,
because love is from God;
everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
Whoever does not love does not know God
for God is love.
—The Apostle John (I John 4:7)

Being the Body of Christ

In the 10 a.m. worship service yesterday, Mike Helton and Avery mooney were initiated into Christ's Body, the Church through baptism. It was especially meaningful for me as the priest having walked this road toward baptism with Mike for 8 years. The sermon is online here: Lather, Rinse, Repeat.





Avery's baptism, though she is new to King of Peace, was no less special. I was particularly taken by this moment I missed, but Kenn captured in a picture as Avery's dad kisses his newly baptized daughter.


Lauren puts out the Christ candle as the worship service ended, but there was more to the day yet.


Last evening at 6 p.m., we got a chance to be the Body of Christ. The King of Peace Ensemble helped lead worship for the congregation of Friendship Baptist Church. At left, Debbie answers the question as to what Episcopalians believe with a moving recitation of the Nicene Creed which git an amen or two. Friendship Baptist had choir robes they were not using, which they donated to the King of Peace Ensemble to use. The group offered their singing to God in thanks for that congregation's gift. On the night before he died, Jesus prayed that those who came later would be one as He and the Father are one that the world may see and believe. In small ways like the Ensemble who earlier sang at the Roman Catholic Church, singing at Friendship Baptist, we show in deed what we believe in our hearts, the Church imperfect as it is, is one.

peace,
Frank+
The rev. Frank Logue, Pastor



PS: We now have more photos from Jay's ordination uploaded. They are all online here: Jay's ordination.