Summer seeking…

Tags

God, labyrinth, seeking, spiritual journey, walk

Last week, I spent time at the Trappist monastery, Mepkin Abbey, in South Carolina.  There were many highlights, which I imagine I will write about in the coming weeks and months.  But what has been lingering in my mind is my experience with their labyrinth.  I have now walked several labyrinths, but my experience with Mepkin’s labyrinth was a bit unique.  When you first approach the labyrinth, it looks like a field of weeds and tall grasses.  A casual passerby would miss it (or at least wonder why the monks were slacking on their grounds keeping).

The first time I walked the labyrinth, it was relatively early in the morning.  I must have been the first one out there, because there were cobwebs all along my walk in.  I found myself constantly clearing the way, recognizing how appropriate a metaphor the cobwebs were for the clearing of my mind I was trying to do.  Several of the tall grasses were also bent over into the path, meaning I had to push my way through.  Again, I found myself wondering what tall grasses have been blocking my own spiritual journey lately.  The final challenge of the walk was the buzzing bugs who seemed to know right where my head was.  I suppose I was waking them up or disturbing them, but all I could think about was the buzz of voices who have been frustrating my walk with God lately.

But like any labyrinth walk, once I calmed my mind, and especially after standing in the warm sun in the center of the labyrinth, I began to reinterpret my own metaphors.  The buzzing of the bugs were not some outside set of voices agitating me, but instead my own busy mind, distracting me from hearing God.  The cobwebs became the habits that have grown in me and my parish that clog up the way to change.  Those habits and practices tend to cling to us, but when cleared can make way for a powerful new experience.  And those pesky tall grasses became not annoying barriers, but reminders that the journey with God will always have road blocks.  One can either turn around the way one came, stand facing the barrier paralyzed, or find a way around the road block to continue the journey with God.

Each time I walked the labyrinth, a new truth was revealed to me, and God spoke to me differently.  On my last walk, I had come to a place of real peace during my retreat.  That labyrinth walk was almost buoyant, full of joy and praise.  What the daily walks reminded me of is that we all need spiritual practices that can help us access new revelations from God.  Despite the tendency of churches to dramatically slow down in the summer, I have begun to think about this summer as a summer of seeking at St. Margaret’s.  Once again, we are offering yoga on our lawn for parishioners and our neighbors.  Parishioners who traditionally participate in weekly Bible study are instead using the summer to participate in spiritual “field trips,” to places like the Shrine of Our Lady of the Island and Little Portion Friary.  We still have our mid-week Eucharist on Thursdays and our beautiful cemetery grounds, which are great for quiet meditation.  We will also be using this summer for planning more spiritual and formation opportunities at St. Margaret’s for the program year.  Our summer of seeking is giving us the space we need to hear how God is calling us into deeper seeking, serving, and sharing Christ in the months to come.

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Sermon – I Kings 19.1-15a, P7, YC, June 23, 2013

Tags

coach, Elijah, go, God, question, retreat, Sermon, spiritual

This past week, I went down to a monastery in South Carolina for my annual spiritual retreat.  An annual spiritual retreat is one of the stipulations from my letter of agreement here at St. Margaret’s, so one could assume that we all know what going on a spiritual retreat means.  But I cannot tell you the number of people – parishioners, friends, family members, and fellow travelers – who have asked me the same question:  so what do you do on a spiritual retreat?  Some follow up with other questions about whether I have a schedule of meetings or classes or whether I really have to be silent the whole time.  But most people do not know what a spiritual retreat really looks like.

So imagine my surprise this week, when I opened the text for today, only to hear God twice asking Elijah, “What are you doing here?”  Having been asked that question by countless others over the last few weeks, I got a little defensive about God’s question for Elijah.  Thinking that I somehow needed to answer this question too, my first response was a response not unlike Elijah – who twice explains to God, in the exact same words, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.  I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”  As if God did not know that already.  God’s double question, and Elijah’s double response give a little clue about what is happening here.  God is not really asking what Elijah is doing there – at least not in the sense of, “What led you to come here?”  God is asking a much deeper question.  God’s question is the deeper question, “What does your being here say about me, about you, and about our relationship?  Given what you know, what are you doing here, Elijah?”

So instead of answering the question in the standard way – telling others about the silence of the day, the times of worship, the periods, places, and practices of prayer, or even about the monks themselves, instead I let God’s deeper question sit with me this week as well.  What are you doing here?  I found that each time I tried to answer the question the response was not as deep as God’s question.  So if I said I came to rest and refresh for my ministry, God’s response was, “What are you doing here?”  If I said I wanted help discerning answers to some heavy questions, God’s response was, “What are you doing here?”  If I said I just wanted clarity, God’s response was, “What are you doing here?”

This is the hard question from the text for all of us today.  God is asking this question of you this week too.  When you came in those doors and sat in that pew, God asked you, “What are you doing here?”  When you listened to scripture and when you pray, God is asking you, “What are you doing here?”  When you come to the Eucharistic table and consume Christ’s body and blood, God is still asking you, “What are you doing here?”  Today is one of those tricky days in Church.  There is no coasting through this service, just hoping to feel some sense of peace.  God is actively in our faces, asking us the tough question.

The truth is most of us feel like Elijah a good portion of the time.  We hear Elijah’s whiny response throughout this story.  When Elijah flees from Jezebel’s death threat, Elijah sits down under a tree and asks God to just let him die.  He even flops down under the tree hoping for death.  Of course, God does not allow that.  Twice angels wake him to give him food for the journey.  Even after this sustenance, Elijah finds another place to hide – a cave hidden away.  But God does not allow hiding there either.  We know Elijah’s pain.  We just want to come to church, hear some good music, hear a decent sermon, get that sustaining meal, and go back to the daily grind.  We do not want to hear what God says in the sheer silence.  In the sheer silence, God says, “Go.”  God tells Elijah to get back out there and do God’s work.  God does not coddle Elijah or comfort him in his fear.  Instead God tells Elijah to go.

At the end of the day, God’s words for Elijah were the same words for me during my retreat.  I may have lamented to God.  I may have worried to God.  I may have given some lengthy explanation to God about why I was there.  But before I could go any further, God stopped me.  “What are you doing here?  Go.”

When I was in college, the first year I danced with a team, we went to a training camp.  The coach realized pretty quickly those of us who were lacking in certain areas.  My challenge was that I could not yet do a toe-touch.  When we started doing them in training, the coach had us stand in line and one-by-one we had to do a toe-touch in front of him.  When he saw mine, he laid into me.  I basically remember him screaming something to the effect of, “I don’t care if you have to do sit-ups non-stop, or if you need to lift weights, or you just need to stand there and do toe-touches all day until you can’t move, I better see you up in the air before the season starts.”  At least, that is the clean version of what he yelled.  Never having played sports, I had never had anyone yell at me like that, and he put the proverbial “fear of God” in me.  And figuring he was serious, I started working out more and practicing more just to get to where he wanted me to be.

I hear God as being like that coach for us today.  God is kind of like a coach, getting up in our faces today, demanding to know, “What are you doing here?”  And before we can stumble through some Elijah-like complain fest, God says, “Go.”  God says that the dismissal we hear every week is not some cute phrase we say to conclude the service.  That dismissal is our “Go.”  “Let us go forth in the name of Christ.”  “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”  “Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.”  The answer to what we are doing here is to be empowered to go.  We can be fed by the word, by song, and by the meal, but the reason we do those things is so that we can go.  God’s question today is deep, hard, but simple:  What are you doing here?  And in case we are wondering what the answer is, God tells us:  Go.  Amen.

Homily – John 1.43-51, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, June 13, 2013

Tags

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, God, homily, humility, Jesus, mystery, Nathanael, skepticism

Today we get the wonderful story of Philip and Nathanael’s calling.  I love Nathanael, partially because he is such a natural skeptic.  That may sound strange to say – who would want to idealize someone skeptical of our Lord and Savior?  I am not saying we should try to be more like Nathanael – I am saying we already are like Nathanael.  Somewhere deep inside of us, in places we don’t like to talk about, all of us have a little dose of skepticism about our faith.  Just think about the last time someone really tried to challenge you on your faith – the truth is, our story, the story of our faith is pretty fantastic and hard for our 21st-century minds to believe.  Nathanael’s skeptical and ultimately sarcastic tone can be found in all of us.

That is why we celebrate Gilbert Keith Chesterton.  Born in 1874, Chesterton was one of the intellectual giants of his day.  He was a writer of different genres, but he eventually focused on the defense of “orthodoxy” – the acknowledgement of the mystery and paradox of Christian faith in an age of increasing skepticism.  His writings utilized both his wit and religious fervor, and he often satirized those who saw faith as irrational and unnecessary.  Chesterton influenced many of the greats, like C.S. Lewis and Ernest Hemingway.

What both Chesterton and Jesus do today is a little light ribbing.  They tease those around them, who presume to know something about a God who, at the end of the day, is quite mysterious.  They remind others of their finitude and their limited knowledge, reminding them not to get too “puffed up” with their own assumptions.

I don’t think Chesterton or Jesus Christ are sending us a message to tear us down – quite the opposite, actually.  God endowed us with great minds that God expects us to use – much like Chesterton did.  But God also wants us to held in tension with our gifts a sense of humility and wonder.  Only when we hold our power and our humility in tension can we begin to fully engage the mystery of God and then share that mystery with others.  Amen.

Light at the end of the tunnel…

Tags

gift, God, joy, stress

I am traveling this weekend for a friend’s consecration as Suffragan Bishop and for a week of spiritual retreat.  Because my daughter is traveling with me and spending the week with her grandfather, the logistics planning has been a bit of a nightmare.  At points over the last two weeks, I have been longing to just get there and be done with all this chaos.  The trip itself is sort of the light at the end of a dark tunnel of details.

courtesy of http://www.dudelol.com/light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel

How often we do this with any sort of getaway.  We spend so much energy getting ready for the trip – settling details at work and at home, packing, and securing plans for the trip – that our time in the present is a bit of a blur.  That has been my reality lately.  In the midst of my tunnel of details, some pretty incredible things have been happening.  In the last week alone, I met with a group of aspirants, considering a calling to ordained ministry, I watched my daughter perform in the end-of-year concert at school, I went to my daughter’s first musical, I celebrated a fantastic year of service from our devoted Altar Guild, we recognized our choir for all their hard work this year, I finally met the first rector of my parish who has shaped the lives of so many of my parishioners, and I spent some time with a couple preparing for marriage.  Add to that a date night – the first one my husband and I have had in about six months – and it has been a pretty fantastic week.

I wonder how often we do this in life.  We get so caught up in the routine, or our full schedules, or our worries of the day, that we forget to see God at work in our lives, blessing us abundantly.  That tunnel of darkness can create tunnel vision.  Our eyes become so focused forward that we miss everything around us.  But God is in the midst of everything around us, beckoning us into a life of joy and celebration – a presence of mind that can recognize God’s presence.  Though I am very much looking forward to this coming week, I am especially grateful just for today.  I am grateful to God for the abundant blessings in my life and grateful for the God who has enough patience and grace for a busybody like me.

If you have spent much time with me, you may have noticed that I begin most of my prayers with these words, “Gracious God, thank you for the gift of this day…”  Today, I am trying to live into that prayer, being grateful for each and every day God gives me.

Sermon – I Kings 17.8-24, P5, YC, June 9, 2013

Tags

Elijah, God, healing, honest, human, intimate, prayer, relationship, Sermon

Last week I lost my watch.  When I say that I lost my watch, I do not mean I misplaced my watch.  I went for a walk, took the watch off while I was walking, and about an hour after my walk realized the watch was gone.  I searched the path of my walk, I looked all over the church and our house, but the watch is gone.  Now, truthfully, a watch is certainly replaceable, but this watch was sentimental – a gift from a special occasion that meant a lot to me.  So, of course, ever since I lost my watch, I have been praying to St. Anthony.  St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things.  The prayer I learned, and have been praying for over a week is, “St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come around, something is lost that cannot be found.”  Though I know the watch is most likely gone, I keep occasionally offering up the prayer with some desperate sense of hope.

We do funny things in our prayer lives, especially when things are not going our way.  We have been known to bargain with God.  “God, if you please just grant this one thing, I promise I will never blank again.”  We have been known to try to negotiate with God.  “I know that I am not perfect, God, but let me tell you about all the good I have done.  Surely you can grant this one thing to your faithful servant.”  And we have been known to rail at God.  “How can you do this to me God?  Haven’t I been through enough?!?”  Sure, we know the Lord’s Prayer, and we may pray the daily office at home, and we may even pray with scripture, especially our favorite psalms.  But when we are at our lowest, when we feel like we have tried everything we are supposed to say or do with God, sometimes our prayers simply reveal our broken, frustrated, desperate spirits.

This is the prayer that Elijah offers today.  Elijah has already created quite the imposition on a poor widow.  Elijah goes to the widow, a woman who is about to die of starvation, and asks her to feed and house him.  Now, God takes care of the widow’s lack of food, but while Elijah is still there, the woman’s son almost dies of illness.  The woman blames Elijah, and Elijah at first seems fairly composed as he asks for the boy.  But when he retires to another room with boy, Elijah lets God have it.  Elijah cries out to God in anger, rage, and despair.[i]  “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?”  Elijah does not come to God with a polite request that God heal the son.  Elijah does not offer some traditional prayer of healing.  Elijah simply cries out to God.  He cries out to God for the injustice done to this poor widow – who is already clearly impoverished by having no husband.  The death of an only son would mean certain death for her as well.  Her son was her only hope for survival in this world.[ii]  Elijah boldly accuses God of an injustice – in fact accuses God of killing this boy and all that he represents to the widow.

Some may hear in Elijah’s prayer a sense of self-interest.  If he is proclaiming to be a man of God, and God then kills this woman’s only sense of hope, then the death makes Elijah look bad.  Who wants to follow a prophet of a God who kills the downtrodden?  Or, we might hear Elijah’s prayer as petulant.  Perhaps he sounds like a man whining about fairness – something childish and narrow-minded.  But I hear Elijah’s prayer as both fully human and as an honest portrayal of someone with an intimate relationship with God.  In any intimate relationship, the overly polite ways of being with one another end eventually.  In time, the only thing that works in that intimate relationship is being brutally and fully honest, holding one another to account and being totally open about the good and the bad of the relationship.  This is what Elijah is doing here.  Elijah, who knows God intimately, holds God to account.  “Really, God?  This is how you are going to treat people?  You claim to care about the poor and oppressed, and you have forced me to impose on this poor widow, and now you are going to let her only son, her only source of potential security die??”  Elijah does not ask this of God for himself or out of a sense of injustice.  Elijah asks this of a God whom he knows to be better than this – a God who loves and cares for the poor and oppressed.  And he also knows that God can do the impossible.  Elijah knows that God can bring this child from death to life.

What I love about this passage is twofold.  First, I love the very human, intimate depiction of prayer.  As Episcopalians, with our reliance on our Prayer Book and our desire for beauty and intelligence when we talk to God, we can become so formal with God that we forget that we have a real relationship with God who can handle our real words.  We can be brutally honest with God or even angry with God, and God will still love us.  We can be vulnerable and frustrated and desperate with God.  We can even come to God when we do not have words – when our emotions are so overwhelming that we no longer have anything left to say.  Elijah gives us permission today to be fully ourselves with the God who loves us no matter what.

I also love that we get this passage today because today is our monthly healing service.  Since I have been at St. Margaret’s, I have been regularly asked questions about our healing services.  Our tradition of monthly healing services that began well before my time here still has many of us questioning.  I have had adults ask me who they are allowed to ask prayers for – whether they can only ask for healing prayers for themselves or whether they can ask for healing for others as well.  I have had some of our teens ask me what we are actually doing when we lay hands on people.  Even my own daughter asked me why I made the sign of the cross on her forehead when she came forward once.  Elijah points the way to answers for those questions today.  By praying our litany of healing and by coming forward for ourselves and others, we proclaim several things.  We proclaim that intimate relationship with God means that we can be fully honest about all that is ailing us, our neighbors, and the oppressed.  We proclaim that God can do the impossible through prayer and we offer up our hopes that the impossible is possible for us too.  And we proclaim that although we may not understand God in the midst of suffering, we still come to God, hoping for healing, hoping for clarity, hoping for peace.  Whether you come forward today for healing is actually not that important.  What is most important is that you know that you can, that you know that your God is a God who can do the impossible but who also cares for you so deeply that God can handle all the parts of you – the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Amen.

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[i] Carolyn J. Sharp, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 100.

[ii] Glaucia Vasconcelos Wilkey, “Pastoral Perspective, Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 102.

Homily – Zechariah 1.7-11, Ini Kopuria, June 6, 2013

Tags

call, discernment, gifts, God, homily, Ini Kopuria

Today we celebrate the life of Ini Kopuria.  Born in the Solomans in the early 20th century, Ini studied as a young man at an Anglican school, meant to train young men to teach their own people.  Though many sensed his calling early on, Ini first became a police officer.  He gained respect there for his dedication and witness.  Later Ini left the police force and was the first Elder of the Melanesian Brotherhood, an Anglican order devoted to spreading the Gospel among non-Christian areas in Melanesia.  The order focused on simplicity and peacekeeping.

I just met with a Diocesan discernment committee for people discerning a call to ordained ministry.  What I have seen over the years is that discerning God’s will in our lives is never easy.  Often our paths go all over the place, taking unexpected turns, especially when we are avoiding God’s call on our lives.  Like Ini, we sometimes boldly choose paths that we later find do not feed us, or at least do not use all the gifts God has given us.  Discerning God’s call is hard, and takes much work.

What I like about Ini’s story is that he reminds us that even if we are not currently where we are called to be or have made missteps in our discernment, God uses all of our journey to feed us and others.  Though he served as a cop and later became an elder in the Brotherhood, the two vocations informed one another.  After keeping the secular peace, he later fought for sacred peace – a peace motivated by the God of Peace.  That last line in Zechariah reminds me of Ini’s life: the passage describes a vision of horses who proclaim, “We have patrolled the earth, and lo, the whole earth remains at peace.”  Ini’s whole life was about peace, even if it took different forms and shapes.

Though God uses us differently at different stages of our life, that does not mean we are not wholly ourselves.  The common thread of our identity remains true.  No matter what our vocation, God can use our specific gifts.  Our invitation is to be in discernment about how God can use us in this moment, in this place, with our specific gifts.  God can always use us for good, no matter what our current situation.  Amen.

The good use of leisure…

Tags

God, Holy Spirit, leisure, rebuild, renew, rest, summer

This past Sunday was our Annual Parish Picnic and Mass on the Grass.  We take this time after Memorial Day weekend to celebrate a wonderful program year and to transition into our summer service schedule, when we merge our two worship services into one at 9:30 am.  Sunday was fantastic!  The sun was shining, there was a light breeze, and the excitement of summer was in the air.  We celebrated the completion of another year of Sunday School, recognizing both our teachers and children for all their hard work.  We shared Holy Communion surrounded by God’s creation.  And then we enjoyed the gift our property as we ate, laughed, played, and relaxed.

The Book of Common Prayer has a collect about these sorts of times:  O God, in the course of this busy life, give us times of refreshment and peace; and grant that we may so use our leisure to rebuild our bodies and renew our minds, that our spirits may be opened to the goodness of your creation; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.  (BCP, 825)  This past Sunday was a time of refreshment and peace for me.  My husband and I were able to relax as our daughter ran and played with the other kids.  I was able to catch up with people and hear about their summer plans – those other times of refreshment that are planned.  And I was even able to get some exercise when the kids took a break from the bounce house.

But like any good collect, there is always a “so that.”  Collects are prayers written with a specific formula – an address to God, a request from God, a hoped for outcome from the request, and a conclusion.  The “so that” in this prayer is that we might rebuild our bodies, renew our minds, and that our spirits may be opened to the goodness of God’s creation.  In many ways that is the “so that” for our summer season.  We slow down a bit and we ease off some of our programming.  We take that rest so that our minds can be renewed and our strength rebuilt – so that we are able to be reenergized for God’s work in a few months.

So this summer, although we slow down, we also use this time in meetings for strategy and planning.  We pause to reflect on what has worked and what we can do better.  We take a deep breath and listen for the Holy Spirit – something we often do not do in the chaos of our busy lives.  Perhaps we even pick up a book that feeds us spiritually (to read along with whatever trashy novel or self-indulgent magazine we picked up for the beach!), that might inform our future work.  I am excited for what this summer holds for St. Margaret’s, and am looking forward to the ways that God will be refreshing all of us.

Homily – I Kings 18.20-39, P4, YC, June 2, 2013

Tags

boldness, Elijah, God, homily, trust

Having gotten through Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, we now enter the season the church calls “ordinary time.”  But there is nothing ordinary about the lessons we get during this time.  This Sunday’s Old Testament lesson is a classic example.  King Ahab is one of the worst kings the Israelites have had.  He encourages worship of Baal, the god who is supposed to bring water to fertilize the soil, in addition to the God of Israel.  But there has been a three-year drought in the land, and Elijah is going to use this opportunity to prove the Israelites wrong about Baal.  So he challenges the prophets of Baal to a duel.  Whoever can get their god to rain fire upon the bull sacrifice will be the true God.  So the Baal prophets spend all day praying to Baal, dancing around the altar, going to extremes such as cutting themselves to get Baal to perform.  The whole time Elijah mocks them.  Then Elijah dramatically gets his sacrifice ready, and even has the Israelites pour water all over the wood, just to prove how awesome Yahweh is when Yahweh rains a fire down that consumes the whole thing.  One could argue that Elijah is being a bit rude, if not pompous, in this story.  But what Elijah is actually revealing is an intense, deep trust in God – a trust that is so profound that he is willing to make bold statements without hesitation about God in front of everyone.

One of the things Elijah accuses the people of is limping along with two different opinions – not entirely sure that God will care for them, so investing devotion to Baal just in case.  Too often we are like the Israelites.  We too can be found only sort of trusting God, and putting our trust in other things – just in case.  We lack Elijah’s boldness because we are just not as sure as he is.  I have seen that lack of total trust just in these last several months.  Since I came here about a year and a half ago, we have been working hard, making lots of changes.  But I see the hard work is taking a toll.  We are getting tired and I am not sure we are convinced all our work will pay off.  And so we are beginning to hold back.  I noticed the reaction first in myself.  The questions started bubbling up:  Can we make this work?  Will we have the money?  Will we have the energy?  Do we have the same chutzpah that Elijah has?  I have noticed us starting to eye one another, as we peer over what feels like a cliff.  There is this sort of stand-off:  If you jump, I’ll jump.  We are like the Israelites.  Elijah says to them, “How long will you go limping with two different opinions?  If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him.”  The text says that the Israelites do not answer him a word.

In contrast to all of this is Elijah.  He has a brazen trust in God.  He is so bold that he mocks others; he has water poured on the wood, not just once, but three times; only then does he call down the fire from God.  Even after three years of draught, Elijah does not doubt that God will give a sign to the people – he trusts that God does not abandon God’s people.

In the midst of our silent stand-off, I see a glimpse of Elijah in all of us too.  Just watching us at the Parade last week gave me hope.  Over twenty of us gathered to walk – even those of us who have told me that they do not feel comfortable with evangelism at all.  And when we gathered, I watched us talking to friends and strangers, having meaningful conversations, handing out our business cards, smiling, and waving.  These are actions that show a bold trust in God.  Our invitation is to hold on to that trust, to stop limping along with two opinions, and to just jump off that cliff with each other.  I am willing to make that jump, and I know that God will enable us to jump together.  And when we do, we will say those same words that the Israelites proclaim when they witness God’s power:  The LORD indeed is God; the LORD indeed is God.  Amen.

Homily – Luke 1.39-57, Romans 12.9-16b, Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, May 30, 2013

Tags

Holy Spirit, homily, Mary, unexpected, Vistation

Today we celebrate the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  This is the story where Mary goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist.  I have always loved this story in Scripture.  There is something so intimate, sacred, and profound about this moment.  In the womb, babies are declaring the messiahship of Jesus; Elizabeth utters words that will be recited over and over again in the “Hail Mary”; Mary sings a song that will be sung in thousands of ways by thousands of churches over thousands of years.  But all of this happens in the most unlikely place – between two women, who we know had little power; by one woman who is pregnant and unwed; and by another who is too old to be having children.  In these unlikely characters, who have little to no power in their world, something revolutionary is taking place – something society would deem only worthy of kings and the powerful.

I have often wondered how much we miss about God because we look in the wrong places.  When we are seeking truth and intimacy with God, we are more likely to consult scholars or religious leaders.  We are so accustomed to experiencing God in particular ways and places that we can miss God speaking to us, or the Holy Spirit circling around us.  We are quick to label a kicking child in the womb as just a kicking child – not the Spirit speaking truth.

To encourage us to live in ways that access God in unexpected ways, we get Paul’s words to the Romans: outdo one another in showing honor, serve the Lord, contribute to the needs of the saints, extend hospitality to strangers, bless those who persecute you, associate with the lowly.  Paul knows that we experience God most in encounters with others, especially those not valued by society or even us.

Knowing what we know about how God works – revealing truth in unexpected ways and through unexpected persons – our invitation today is to be a people actively seeking God in those places.  We will have to risk scary encounters, we will have to step out of comfort zones, and we will have to always be attentive.  Because when we do, the promise of God’s revelation is an awesome ride.  Amen.