Sermon

Ghosts of Saints Past

Father Pete invited me here to talk about my own journey into the Episcopal church. I am currently at St. Mark’s in Montesano and am entering discernment for ordination. I grew up in various churches and it has been a long journey for me to get where I am today. One of my reasons for becoming an Episcopalian is so that I can stand here as a woman—not something that would have been allowed in the churches I grew up in.

But there are other, deeper reasons. Today is All Saint’s Day. It’s a day that we talk about death and remember loved ones we have lost. This morning, my church had an altar set up with votive candles to memorialize those we have lost. I left my mementoes there with the rest and prayed “In communion with all the saints, I remember….”

What do we mean “communion of the saints”? Some of us have probably stood, like Jesus in the gospel reading, at the grave of someone we love. We have grieved there, just as Jesus wept. It always reminds me of the scene in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, when he finally finds his parents’ graves in the dark graveyard of Godric’s Hallows. Harry and Hermione are wandering in the dark, going from gravestone to gravestone, Hermione nervous all the way. Harry is plagued by doubts about his mission and really just ready to give up. He has lost so many people that he loved and is just tired of it all. He seems so lost and alone in that scene, wondering how to go forward. Finally, Hermione calls him; “Its here.” And he sees it—the gravestones with their names; James and Lily Potter, buried within sight of where they died. He is startled to find a line inscribed on their grave; “The last enemy to be conquered is death.” He wonders if this is some mockery, some plot by Death Eaters. As usual, Hermione has an answer. She explains that it is not part of some wild quest for immortality, the quest of Voldemort, but it speaks of a hope that death is not the end. “It means…you know… living beyond death.”

That is what the passage in Revelation is talking about. Here’s John, the aged apostle, probably a prisoner on a remote island in the Mediterranean. Tired, he’s seen his share of suffering; his share of death; his share of grief. Yet, here he is, having a vision of a new city, a new world, a new world that is beginning right now. Later in the passage he describes the splendor and magnificence of this new world, but what he is really caught up in is the fact that death has been conquered here. There is a new order of things. There is hope that death is not the end.
There are many ways that death is conquered. One way brings us to this day. We remember all those who have gone before us—all those who have died and affirm our communion with them. We state our belief that all of the centuries of dead are not gone forever; that they are still with us now. One of the hymns we sing goes like this;

We on earth have union
With God the Three in One
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won.

In other words, those whom we have lost are part of this mystical city John was so enraptured with and so are we. Even though death seems so final, we are invited on days like this to see ourselves as part of a bigger picture—one that includes those who have died and those who are living. It invites us to imagine and experience heaven. We celebrate our faith with those who have gone before us.

This summer, I visited England’s Ely Cathedral. The building itself is nearly a thousand years old and a church has been on that site since the seventh century. When you walk into a place like that, there is a strange feeling that you are keeping company with people long dead. After all, the pews I sat in had been sat in my people for hundreds of generations and thousands of people for thousands of years had come to the Cathedral on pilgrimage.

So, in the company of all these “ghosts of pilgrims past,” I wandered around the chapels and walkways. It was this enormous place. I actually stayed there all day—especially through the thunderstorm. And in one of the center chapels was a shrine to Etheldreda, the foundress of the original church in the 670s. As I sat in the chapel and read her story, I felt this connection to her. She was a young woman intent on ministry in a time when it was not always easy for a woman to be involved in the church. Forced into a political marriage by her father, King Anna, she waited many years to do what she felt God had called her to do. Finally, she ran away from her husband and started a double monastery. In the early years of the Celtic church, double monasteries housing both men and women were common. I felt this immediate kindred spirit with the woman who lived nearly 1400 years ago and who was probably buried in some lost grave underneath the cathedral. I too had always felt called by God. I also had many obstacles to overcome. Somehow, I felt, even across so many centuries, that we understood each other. I swear I saw her wink when I got up to leave.

This is part of overcoming death. Harry may have stood at the graves of his parents and felt the finality of death, but later in the book, when he walks out to what he believes to be his own death, it is his parents and those he loves who keep him company on the way. They are not really gone—they are still with him, in memory. His godfather, Sirius, tells him; “We are a part of you…”

When I finally started attending the little Episcopal parish in the town I was living in, I was at the end of my rope. I was desperate to find God. Most of all, I was desperate for community, desperate to find a place where I was loved and accepted for who I was. And that is what I have found, but I found something more than what I was looking for— I found not only community with people in the present. I have found a community of saints that spans generations. I found a church that reverences and remembers and holds communion with the saints of the past as well… people past and present who will guide us into the future. I especially feel that on days like this, when we focus on those who have gone before us. We don’t treat them like they are gone forever, but realize that they are a part of us.

A picture of Etheldreda now sits on a table in my room, and though our lives are separated by 1400 years, our stories connect, because the God that led her to found that monastery is the same God that is leading me. She, and the thousands of others who have gone before, are a part of me, keeping me company as I go forward in life. Amen

Come Away

Autumn has come
A stillness and sleep
Settles over the groung
The trees drop their leaves
The wind grows sharp and cold.

I hear a voice on the wind
Calling over the horizon
"Come away with me!"

A restlessness to follow
Grows within my heart
Until, one day, I spread my winds
And hurtle myself toward the horizon
With beating wings and pumping heart
The harsh air in my face
And the sharpness of cold
I fly toward the future
Leaving home-- returning home
Seeking my destiny.

Sarah Monroe

The Journey

This poem captures how I feel in so many ways.

The Journey

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,
though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug at your ankles.
"Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,
though their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little, as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do,
determined to save the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver

We Only Know our Own Story

"Child," said the Voice, "I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own."

This quote by Aslan in one of the Narnia classics has come to symbolize, for me, how I have begun to look at the world. I have made several life decisions lately that have driven people around me to various states of disapproval. I have recieved loads of advice and my share of scoldings. Yet, in the quiet of my own heart, I know that this is where God is leading me, as we create my life story together.

I have learned to be less concerned with what others think, yes. I have seen how scripture can be used to manipulate others and how doctrinal certainty can blind people to the humanity of the other. And I have learned to look at the lives of others with sympathy, recognizing that only they know their story and it is not my place to criticize it.

I only know my own story. And I am happy with that simple theology.

The Canterbury Trail

I've been asked by several people what is drawing me to Anglicanism. Recently, I picked up a book called Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, which largely mirrors my own experience. Robert Webber (author of numerous books on post-modern Christianity) talks about his own pilgrimage from a Baptist to an Anglican. I too was raised in Baptist or non-denominational churches (most of them fundamentalist). I was taught who was in and who was out and all about the rules I had to follow. From there, after I married a Presbyterian, I migrated to Reformed churches, where I found an intellectualism that appealed to me, while still leaving me feeling lost. Recently, I've found myself in the unlikely place of attending an Episcopal church. I was raised to believe that this church was "apostate" and outside the realm of Christian orthodoxy. What I found was quite different than what I ever expected.

I found, first, a place of worship. I've always been drawn to and longed for a sense of the transendent-- the presense that overwhelms me in my private prayers and outdoor ramblings, when I know that God is there. For the first time, I found that within a church building. Here I could worship a Triune God will all my senses-- with candles and incense and icons and prayers and readings. Instead of devoid of Scripture, I heard more of the Bible read in the Episcopal church than I ever had in an evangelical one. Most importantly, I found the sacraments. I had always felt that communion was just an appendage in most churches, and I was always so worried that I might not be worthy that I rarely had time to simply meet Christ. Here, the Eucharist took center stage as the priest intoned; "The body of Christ, the bread of life" and "The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation." I met Jesus at the altar in the bread and the wine.

With this, I found a sacramental view of life. I could pray for the preservation of the environment in church. I was encouraged to see the face of Christ in my fellow human beings. "Worldly" elements of fire, water, palm branches, candles, etc; all pointed to a heavenly reality, sanctifying all of life.

I also found a "safe place," a place of hospitality and welcome. I never felt that I could ask questions in evangelical churches, especially if they questioned favorite doctrines. I reached a point in my life that I could suppress the questions no longer. Interestingly, I expected a formal hierachacal church, and found just the opposite. Yes, the Anglican tradition loves its structure, but there is none of the imposition of ideas and authority that I found in conservative Presbyterianism. It has been a place where I could struggle and still be welcome, doubt and still be embraced. It was also a place where I could celebrate my womanhood and be encouraged to find my full potential in the body of Christ, without rules regarding my gender.

Finally, I found a place both ancient and global. Anglicanism is a tradition that stands squarely in the historical Christian faith. Its history does not begin at the Reformation, rather it is both Catholic and Protestant, embracing the wisdom of the ancient church. It is also a global communion, varying widely in ideology, in race, in place of origin, in doctrine, but united by a common faith in a common Savior.

Productive Silence

I have only a few more days before school is out. While I love my studies, the break will be exceptionally nice. Its been awhile since I've had one. One thing I've learned this quarter, though, is the value of solitude and silence. Even if I only have a few minutes, taking the time to notice my flowers blooming or the hummingbird outside my window and marvel is rest for the soul. Or perhaps a silent prayer or a chapter from a Henri Nouwen book. Or a time of praying through the trinity icon sitting on my desk. Each of these things allows me to feel the presence of God in the midst of a busy day. I think, perhaps, we value accomplishment too much in our culture and only feel productive if we are "doing something." I think these quiet moments are equally valuable.

I think they are just as much preparation for my future as my frantic writing and endless studying. Or the tests and the grad school research and the language study. It gives me the opportunity to listen-- to find God and to find myself.

At this point in my life, I have many decisions to make. I will finish my undergrad studies in a year, during which time I will be pursuing studies in theology and social justice. I need to apply to grad school, where I plan to study theology. And then there is the question of where I will go from there. Full time ministry? Professorship? Sometimes the enormity of my decisions weighs on me. It is now, more than ever, that I feel the need to listen to the silence. In England, I will be taking a retreat to Lindisfarne, the Holy Island in Northern England where St. Aidan established an early Christian monastary. There, I hope to enjoy the solitude of a pilgrimage, seeking God's leading for my life. Perhaps the holy island is a thin place, where heaven meets earth. Or perhaps all places are just that.

Nature Reserves and Sacred Space

Ansel Adams talks about how natural preservation invites a spiritual experience. I was thinking about this as my sisters and I hiked in the Hoh Rain Forest, a national forest, this weekend. There are many good reasons to set up nature reserves and national parks and forests. We often think of it as a way to protect what would otherwise be lost. We live in a fast-paced world, full of traffic, machines, noise, and high rises. Not many of us are in the constant contact with nature as our great-grandparents may have been. Urbanization and industrialization have left their mark, for good or ill. Yet there does seem to be a longing in all of us for contact with the natural world. For a previous generation, their lives were regulated by the seasons, the cycles of sun and moon and harvest. They were intimately aware of the plant and animal life around them, if only to survive. Our society has largely seen natural resources only in terms of how they can be exploited and our individual contact is more minimal.

Perhaps this is the whole point of national parks; the creation not only of a refuge for nature but for ourselves. It seems to be a kind of "sacred space;" a place to leave behind the bustle of everyday life and reconnect with the water, trees, and sky. To find ourselves. Even, to find God.

For myself, no church building rivals the old cedar groves and rushing river banks of the Olympic Peninsula. God as trinity, as creator, sustainer, redeemer, makes himself known in the "book of nature."

Lost Hopes

I have bones, dry and mourned
Strewn across my heart
The shadows of dreams, long dead.

Hope is there
So is childhood
Butchered with impunity.
Friendships, trampled, broken
Hope, shattered, dead...

My blood rushes over bones
Glides over bones
My heart dies choked with bones.

Brokenness and its benefits

My priest gave a beautiful sermon today that really touched me. The lesson was on Psalm 22 and he spoke about how we often feel abandoned by God. The psalm is often on my mind, especially in difficult circumstances. Sometimes God seems very far away and just as often I feel doubt as to his call on my life. The way forward seems murky. However, the sermon pointed out that, like Mother Theresa, many find that it is in this place that God uses them most-- out of our broken lives and questioning hearts God brings us to place to minister to others. Perhaps it is because we feel ourselves on the margins at those times and get a glimpse of human suffering and pain that gives us the ability to relate to others.

It is interesting; the past year has been one of intense doubts and questions and times when I've wondered if God is even there. Yet I have also come to understand human need so much more, learning to see the face of Christ in the poor and lonely. And I am ok with the questions, the doubts. The "dark night of the soul" can be a rich, though painful, place of learning.

Pilgrimage

After school is out, I have the opportunity to go to the British Isles to visit. My sister is living there for the next few years and that provides me a cheap place to stay!!! For me, this is a dream come true. As I've starting planning the trip, I've began to view it less as a tourist venture than a pilgrimage. Its a place to find my family roots in a way, since most of my ancestors came from the Isles and that gives it a unique draw. I've always felt it was a distant home. A little river in Ireland gave me my family name, and on its banks still grow some of the oldest forests in the country. There are other reasons too. As I have wandered looking for a church, I've found myself drawn to the Canterbury Trail attending a local Episcopal church. The liturgy, the sense of mystery, the welcome of all people, all have considerable draw on me. As I contemplate this, I long to walk the actual Canterbury road, searching for answers to my questions. The Irish site of Kildare, home of St. Brigit is a place I know I have to go as well. Her story has captured my imagination, as a female leader of the Celtic church. As I pray about ministry ahead, I'd like to meet up with Brigit. I've found Kurt Nielson's book Urban Iona: Celtic Hospitality in the City a great inspiration, as he chronicles his own pilgrimage to Ireland.

Its interesting to note the difference between being a tourist and a pilgrim. I wonder if we really can divide the two neatly, but perhaps tourism is drawn to escape into the novel and pilgrimage is drawn to finding oneself on the road with other people in search of the transendent. I'm not sure, though I hope to find out. I'm beginning to find that all places are places where God can be found, if we are only listening.

I'm looking forward to finding out more about myself and about God on this journey.

Two Worlds

I think my own identity crisis led to my study of migration. Growing up like I did in a semi-Amish rural home, insulated from the rest of the world, I have never felt completely at home in dominant American culture. When I first moved from home, it was quite a culture shock. Fashion, lifestyle, shopping malls, entertainment; it was all very foreign. I was constantly embarrassed to find out how few cultural references I knew and I felt that everyone was speaking a different language. Being lost in a world where I didn't know the rules was a lonely experience. Even now, I still feel like a foreigner in many ways, trapped between two worlds.

The migrant experience is often described in similar ways. Having left a home culture, they enter a new one, but feel like they never fully belong to either. For me, this is my point of reference to try, as a white middle-class woman whose family has been in the U.S. for longer than corporate memory, to understand just a little of what leaving one's homeland is like and the crisis of identity that it engenders.

What is the place of the church?

A fundamental shift in my thinking has occurred around the issues surrounding church and society. Growing up in fundamentalism, the church was seen as a retreat from culture, in perpetual conflict with "the world." The battle cry was to uphold moral values against a godless society and "swim against the tide." By the time I left home, I was rather tired of the warfare stance that considered everyone else enemies and drew a clear line between "them" and "us." So I explored different options. A view that is popular in some circles (and advocated by authors like Darryl Hart and Michael Horton) is a theory of "two kingdoms." In this view, a very clear line is drawn between the church as spiritual and culture as secular. It affirms that culture was good (though this is almost invariably used to mean "Western culture") and that Christians should constructively engage it. It insists that the church disengage from politics and society, allowing its members to pursue their lives separately in two places, the church and the world.

About the same time I was studying this theory, I was studying cultural history in college. I read the history of the conquest of the Americas from new eyes. I knew that my faith had been used to not only justify but endorse the Crusades or the Inquisition. But it came home to me as I read some of the words written by religious leaders in the 16th century, arguing that the native peoples of what became Latin America were “barbarians” and somehow less than human. I suddenly became more aware that this was the case throughout history—that my faith had been used time and time again to uphold empire and to oppress.

I also began to realize that this dualistic concept of church and world had been used to support the status quo. For example, the South African Dutch church’s defense of apartheid and the American Presbyterian church’s defense of slavery in the south both appealed to the supposition that the church had no business engaging in cultural issues. The attitude that the church is “spiritual” somehow meant that they had no say in the society at large. I was struck by the insidiousness of this capitulation to cultural evil. Marx critiques Christianity for this;

The social principles of Christianity point to heaven as the compensation for all the crimes that are committed on earth. The social principles of Christianity explain all the viciousness of oppressors as a just punishment either for original sin or other sins, or as trials that the Lord, in infinite wisdom, inflicts on those the Lord has redeemed. The social principles of Christianity preach cowardice…

One of the most influential people in my thinking on this issue has been Gustavo Gutierrez, the Latin American liberation theologian. He insists that there is no neutral ground for the church. A church that refuses to speak against social evil is a church that is allowing social evil to continue unchecked. There is no hiding behind the dualistic Western thinking that spiritual can be separated from social and physical. Indifference, says Miroslav Volf, is far more destructive than hate and Gutierrez castigates a church that will take refuge in the spiritual while ignoring the very real needs of the poor. He insists that “history is one” and Christ’s redemptive works embrace all aspects of existence. The coming kingdom includes real peace and justice and love. The church must stop simply talking about fellowship and Christian unity and work to bring it about in concrete terms. Salvation involves the whole person.

This has radically altered my way of thinking about God and the world. It has opened my eyes to the need to introduce a radical understanding of the imago dei, the inherent worth of every human being and the missio dei, the mission of the church to be the agent of God in the world.

Who Am I?

Just a quick introduction of myself:

a recovering fundamentalist-- I grew up in rural Washington state in a homeschooling family loosely associated with what is now called the "Quiverfull" movement. I learned that God was a severe judge that required stringent obedience to a proscribed set of rules. Now years later, I am seeking to know God as love.

a student of migration-- If God is love, then our highest call is to love our neighbor. Social justice is my passion and I am an undergrad studying immigration, specifically from a theological perspective.

an aspiring theologian-- Always told that women were unable to teach, I suppressed my desire to study theology. Free from those constraints, I rejoice in a call to pursue further theological education and ministry.

a follower of Jesus-- I believe that Jesus calls us to a life lived for him and for each other. I follow him in his mission to turn the world upside down and find the answer to my suffering in his cross.

a lover of nature-- Spring is my favorite season. I love the Pacific Northwest, with our snow-capped mountains, and verdant forests, and moss covered trees. Here, I feel closer to God than anywhere else.

a fan of mythology-- I love fantasy literature and Irish and Celtic legend.

a seeker of self-- I have not yet answered the question "who am I?" and am on that eternal quest.