Dear Calvary-St. George’s,

I want to encourage you all to attend or tune into church this Sunday as I will be sharing with the congregation three things I learned in Mexico, and how I think it applies to our ministry at Cal-St. G’s. Mexico is a nation with a rich religious tradition that permeates many facets of social and political life. The most prominent is the Virgin of Guadalupe and her image can be found throughout Mexico. Prior to Covid-19, millions of pilgrims would annually visit her shrine at the great basilica in Mexico City. The first time I visited the site, I was a rising senior (for the second time) at the University of Arizona, and observed the profound piety as people climbed the steps on their knees to offer a simple prayer of supplication.

The legend of the Virgin of Guadalupe tells of the Virgin Mary appearing to an Aztec man named Juan Diego who had converted to Christianity in 1531. She called him to build a church on that particular spot in honor of her son. When Juan Diego told his local bishop about it, the bishop demanded proof. In his discouragement, the Virgin appeared to Juan Diego again and gave him the sign he needed: roses blooming out of season.

She instructed Juan Diego to return to the bishop, with his cloak full of flowers as the sign. However, when Juan Diego revealed the flowers all he pulled from his cloak were stems. The bishop and his entourage laughed until it was revealed that the petals had become an apparition of the Virgin inside Juan Diego’s cloak. In the belief that this was a miraculous occurrence, a shrine was built in the northern part of Mexico City.

There are all sorts of superstitions that began to revolve around the story. I find it interesting that the place where the initial church was built, where the Virgin first appeared, is the same location where Aztecs for centuries before worshipped the goddess Tonatzin. However, the Virgin of Guadalupe powerfully embodies the good that can occur when the church begins to baptize a culture. One positive aspect is The Virgin of Guadalupe, contrary to many images of the Virgin, looks like an indigenous woman.

The early missionaries incorporated the Virgin into their evangelism in order to relate to various native tribes throughout Northern and Central America. In a positive sense, she became an illustration of the versatility of the Christian faith. That Christianity was not simply a “European” religion. Rather, at its best, there is a versatility to Christianity, which makes the Gospel translatable into every culture. As it was said by many early Mexican converts, “the mother of our Lord looks like me.” The Virgin of Guadalupe, as a symbol, reminds us of the positive impact Christianity has when it baptizes a culture.

I have so much more to say, but I look forward to seeing you all this Sunday for worship and afterwards for the forum.

Pax,

The Reverend Jacob A. Smith

“O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty; who with you, O Father, and you, O Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Collect for the Feast of the Transfiguration

How do you commemorate life’s most important experiences? Many of us throw parties on our birthdays, fancy dinners on our wedding anniversaries, and receptions after funerals. We find it important to take time to mark and remember these significant events.

Nations do the same. Americans commemorate the history of the United States in a number of ways. We set aside special days and seasons to remember and reflect on our history: Independence Day on July 4th, Black History Month in February, Thanksgiving on November 25th. We also install monuments and commemorative plaques to symbolize and learn from our past. In the Northeast you’ll find placards everywhere signifying the great events in the life of the country that occurred there. Signposts that the Continental Congress convened in these halls, that Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton dueled in this neighborhood, that George Washington slept under this roof.

During the time of Jesus, the nation of Israel would often commemorate the mighty acts of God in its history. One of these remembrances was the Feast of Tabernacles. On these festival days, Jews would erect tents and sleep under them to recall the forty year wilderness wanderings of their ancestors. Their forebears were pilgrims on the run, and their contemporaries needed physical reminders that God was with them there.

“On the holy mount” where Jesus was “wonderfully transfigured,” the apostle Peter offered to build tabernacles to commemorate the occasion. Something important had happened here. Moses, the leader of the wilderness wanderings, was somehow in their midst. Peter’s master “in raiment white and glistening” was declared God’s “well-beloved son.” It’s here that Jesus is shown as God himself who “became flesh, and tabernacled among us.” How could Peter not erect a marker?

But Jesus would not let him commemorate the Transfiguration that day. He wouldn’t allow it, because he knew the apostle would think that God came to tabernacle with humanity in its glory. Whereas the message of the gospel is that the Incarnation is about God pitching his tent in our ruined habitation so that he might redeem and heal human nature.

This means that God has tabernacled with you in your history, which includes the worst parts of your story. In those places where you feel most abandoned, embarrassed, and ashamed God had pitched his tent there. In those spaces where you don’t have it together and don’t measure up there’s a placard that reads, “Jesus slept here.” And what this means is that it’s those areas of your life that are now sacred. These are places where God can meet you.

On this Transfiguration Day, we can do what Peter couldn’t. We can celebrate that the God of the universe tabernacled among us “in his beauty,” so that he might glorify our fractured human nature from the inside out. This is something to commemorate: God slept here!

In this coming Sunday’s gospel, the disciples are caught in a storm on the Sea of Galilee.  Suddenly, they see Jesus walking toward them on the water.  They’re terrified, both by the storm and by this water walker.  But Jesus says,  

“It is I.  Do not be afraid.”  

On one level, that’s not a very helpful word from Jesus, because what the disciples need is for the rough seas to calm down and the gale-force winds to die down.  But at a deeper level, it’s the most important thing we need to hear.  And a little girl named Saleena tells us how.  

Saleena was a cocaine baby.  Her birth mother overdosed while she was pregnant.  And when Saleena was born, she was unable to hear, see, speak, or move.  The plan was to just keep Selena comfortable in the hospital until she died.

But then, along came a husband and wife named Alan and Penny McIlroy.  Alan and Penny adopted Saleena when she was seven weeks old.  The doctor gave her a year to live.  Now, listen to how a writer named Philip Yancey puts it when he visited the McIlroys when Saleena was six years old.  He writes,

As Penny introduced me to Saleena, she ruffled her hair and squeezed her cheeks, but Saleena didn’t respond.  She never does.

Penny will never hear Saleena’s voice.  Alan will never know Saleena’s kiss.  They’ll never hear their daughter sing in the choir, never see her walk across the stage.  They’ll bathe her, change her, adjust her feeding tube, and rub her limp limbs.  But barring God’s intervention, this mom and dad will never hear more than we heard that afternoon – gurgled breathing.

Yancey concludes with the core of the Good News.

And I wondered: what kind of love is this?  What kind of love adopts disaster?  What kind of love looks into the face of this child, knowing full well the weight of her calamity, and says, “I’ll take her”?

It’s the love of the one who looks at us in the very midst of our own struggles and says, “It is I.  Do not be afraid.  I’ll take you.”

See you on Sunday!

Blessings,

Jim

PS - To prepare for the sermon, google “Helmuth James von Moltke.”

A friend of mine is a hospital chaplain.  One day she met a patient with special needs and was unable to fully meet those needs.  In the hospital corridor, she overheard a relative of the patient say to a nurse, “I thought the chaplain was a good person.  But now, I just don’t think much of her anymore.” My friend told me that over the years, she’s never forgotten those words.  She told me that on her deathbed, she’ll still be hearing that voice saying, “I just don’t think much of her anymore.”

That chaplain was written off by another person.  And the experience, although not very dramatic in worldly terms, has crippled her, as those words still ring in her ears.  To be written off by another person is not just a bad thing.  It’s a terrible thing.

In this coming Sunday’s gospel, Jesus and the disciples are sailing across the Sea of Galilee.  When the boat nears the shore, the disciples see five thousand people waiting for them on the beach.  You can almost hear their voices – “Wait a minute!  What’s going on here?  We need a break.  We can’t handle this crowd.  Let’s turn around.”

Then comes the writing off.  It’s getting late, people are getting hungry, and the disciples say to Jesus, “This is a lonely place.  It’s getting late.  Send these people away.  Let them go into the local towns and buy themselves some food.”  Send them away.  The disciples did it, and it happens today.  If you’ve ever been written off, you know how much it can hurt.

One more thing.  We’re asked to identify not only with the five thousand, but also with the disciples.  They’re exhausted, they don’t have any money, it’s late, and there’s no way for them to buy food for five thousand people.  You can almost hear James and John shouting, “Listen up, people – God helps those who help themselves.” And, of course, that’s a lie.  The reason why the disciples write off the crowd, and why you and I write off others, is that we’re threatened.  We write people off when who they are or what they have hits too close to home.  We write them off because, as Carly Simon puts it, “I haven’t got time for the pain.”

And what does the risen Jesus Christ say?  “I help those who cannot help themselves.”  The good news is that God has all the time in the world for the pain of those who are discounted - and for the discounters. The message of the cross is that Christ takes us at face value, as we are, flaws and all, hurts and all, hates and all, vulnerabilities and all, insecurities and all – and loves us as he finds us.

Five small loaves of bread and a couple of tiny fish.  And what happens?  Jesus touches the loaves and fish.  That’s all.  And the text says, “All five thousand ate, and they were filled.”

Come to church this Sunday.  Bring your pain over being written off by others - and your guilt over writing others off.  See what happens.

Can’t wait!

Jim

The German poet Heinrich Heine was once standing in front of the great cathedral in Amiens.  A friend asked him, “Why can’t people build like this anymore?”  He answered, “My dear friend, in those days people had convictions.  We moderns have opinions, and it takes more than an opinion to build a cathedral.”

I yearn to have strong convictions about God.  I yearn to be able to say with conviction the title of an amazing book by David C.K. Watson, My God Is Real.  I have a friend named Richard who was given a conviction about God by reading that book.  He went on to be God’s instrument for literally thousands of young people entering into a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Upon occasion, I do have strong convictions.  But sometimes, my convictions falter.  Sometimes, if I’m devalued by the world, my conviction about God’s faithfulness gets a little shaky.  Sometimes, if I pray and nothing happens, my conviction that my God is real starts to feel like just an opinion.  Sometimes, in the face of big disappointments, my conviction that “my redeemer liveth,”  to quote the burial office in the Book of Common Prayer, gets called into question.

In those moments, I turn to the thief who was crucified with Jesus.  He’s the answer.

He’s the answer because I can’t think of anyone else in the Bible who has less value.  If ever anyone was worthless, it’s him.  If ever anyone deserved to die, it’s him.  If ever anyone was a loser, he’s at the top of the list.

That’s why Jesus picked him - because God wanted Jim Munroe, two thousand years later, to know how much God values a human being.

It makes me tremble.  I know I don’t deserve love by my performance and appearance any more than that thief - because I have a backstage view of myself.  I have earned my way into heaven by my performance and appearance about as well as that thief, if the truth be known.

It makes me tremble - because I begin to see that as Jesus loved that thief, so does he love me.  

The only thing that thief had to offer was a prayer.  And in the end, that’s all it took for him to be able to say with conviction, “My God is real.”

This coming Sunday, we’ll look at a character in the Bible named Jairus, another guy who had nothing to offer but a prayer, plus a friend of mine named Jimmy, who also had nothing to offer but a prayer.  Jairus and Jimmy, who ended up saying, “My God is real.”

So bring your faltering convictions with you on Sunday, to be met by such Love that we too will be able to say, “I know that my redeemer liveth.”

I can’t wait! 

- Jim