The Bishop's Christmas Message, 2024

I am aware that our culture, even that within the Church, doesn’t much engage in talk, sermons, or tracts about the mysterious infusion, comingling, fusing of the divine and human in Jesus Christ. Expositions from the ancient and medieval church that established what the church holds most dear about the mystery of the incarnation—the en-flesh-ment--of God in Jesus don’t have much allure these days. It seems our words and language has shifted. When we read from the ancients that “God became humans so that the human will become divine” I am not sure we pause to consider, to contemplate, to wonder, to marvel, enough to be changed, and to allow our relationships to each other, to our neighbors, even to ourselves, be fused with the wonder God desire for us in this season. There’s a lot to distract us, including, let’s be honest, a lot of church busy-ness. Important, but not astonishing. God comes on Christmas to astonish us out of the usual.

So, I have a Christmas wish for my dearly cherished friends in this corner of God’s kingdom in New Hampshire. Let each of us devote some time this season to wonder at God’s Presence come close. May we set aside an intentional moment to be silent, on a walk in the woods, or by a fireplace or candle, or in a quiet corner of your home, to realize how God, the source of all Being and love, and life, and truth, and forgiveness, and light, is making a home in you, in your body even, and in the soul and of your friends, and even your enemies. Make some time in the silence of our heart, or even at across a table, to be with someone from whom you’ve felt estranged or have missed. Be one of the shepherds, or oxen, or even the Magii, who set aside months of hard and risky travel probably, to approach the manger in the stall in Bethlehem.

What would happen if all humanity saw in each other the truth that there is not one person on this splendid and sorry planet who is not the focus of the infinitely intense love of a parent who, if not earthly, is God? And this is true whether they be Palestinian, Israeli, Sudanese, Syrian, Haitian, American, Russian, Ukrainian, black or white, indigenous or immigrant, young or old. That’s a theological and spiritual message that turns every political message on its head. That’s the message at the very root of every Christmas. If, in world weariness, you’ve given up on wondering that “what would happen if,” then allow this Christmas, and your faithful friends in Christ, to help refresh you with the hope and light of carols, candlelight, prayers and children’s joy.

The message—that the Word that was present before the creation of all worlds has become flesh and is dwells among us—is the present that we get to unwrap not only on the twelve mornings of Christmas, but every day of our lives.

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A Reflection Following the General Election of Nov. 5, 2024

Dear Friends in Christ,

I am writing to you, the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire, my fellow disciples, with a reflection on the results of the 2024 general election.

The original twelve disciples of Jesus were a mixed bag to say the least. Politically they were all over the map. At one end, at least one of them hoped Jesus would foment an armed and religious rebellion against the occupying military force of Rome. On the other far end was Matthew, who had made himself comfortable by collecting taxes from his own oppressed people to fund the empire that was both feared and despised. There was probably a wide middle among the others who just saw in Jesus something they’d never seen before and wanted more of. And the women who followed the Rabbi were not of one mind or of one experience in their own relationship to their families, their society, or even to Jesus.

As I have come to know the disciples of the Church in New Hampshire, I sense we too are a mixed bag politically. Like the original band, we are all over map. We are socially liberal and conservative— though, let’s be honest, if we are purple, we are more “blue” purple than “red” purple. Most of us are careful about how we spend or invest our dollars. Most of us are reticent and respectful to the views of others. Many march and demonstrate in solidarity for the countless who suffer in this world. Most prefer to make their views known on these matters in the privacy of the kitchen or the ballot booth. Most of the New Hampshire Episcopalians I know, or who make themselves known to me, have very nuanced and sophisticated views that would not be fully reflected on either MSNBC or Fox News. They may tune into either, neither, or both. But the Jesus followers I know here are skeptical of extremes and are comfortable with “yes, but” or “on the other hand.”  And, characteristically, here I’ll hedge my bets and add, by and large. There are strong voices on the outer poles of the spectrum, of course, and, believe me, I hear them.

We seek to love because we know love is of God and love is our path to God. As St. Paul saw, without love, all our prophecies, statements, speeches, and pronouncements are but noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. 

Our world is not much different now than it was a week ago. There remain deep divisions within our society about financial, social, and foreign policies. There remain wide disparities in educational and economic opportunities. God speaks loudly to us with the effects of our mistreatment of the planet and each other. Hostility around race, gender, and immigration status continues. As one who allows that God still chastens those whom God loves, I even believe that God speaks to us in our present political failures, on the part of both parties, to bring healing to our persistent injuries. If we are a nation “under God” then may God have mercy on us for how we treat one another, our children, and the planet.

What has been revealed of late is deeply concerning to all of us: the anger, the hatred, the unabashed crudeness and impoliteness. If these elements of our society are given full vent, may our love for each other as a Church, especially for those who trouble or irritate us, imitate the love and kindness of our Savior. May the world know this church as a band of disciples, flawed, imperfect, often ragged, but always guided by a love that seek the face of God in our neighbor and ourselves.

We may not like it—I know I often do not like it at all—but the Twenty-Third Psalm reminds us that it is none other than the Good Shepherd who leads us out of desolate valleys to find our place at a table among those who trouble us, even our enemy. That’s how God brings about the Kingdom. Would that it were as simple as casting a vote behind a screen. But it’s not. 

Our following the Good Shepherd, our Teacher, and our Lord Savior in the time ahead of us will be much harder than that—and infinitely more beautiful and real. I pray we embrace our life together with the faith, hope, and love that God has given us.

 Yes, the work is hard and yes, I know we are all tired. Job number one is to take care of ourselves and each other. Love and reconciliation is the work of God, not the result of our striving and our fist shaking. We do not produce good fruit from the flood of fear/anger/grief that propels us to burn out, but from our wholehearted selves, rooted deeply in the presence of Christ. There is a Buddhist adage: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” A similar adage for us Jesus followers: “Before salvation, make your bed, brush your teeth, smile at your family. After salvation, make your bed, brush your teeth, smile at your family.” And may God hold us.

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Address to the 222nd Diocesan Convention, Oct. 26, 2024

Jesus makes some wonderful and positive statements about us, doesn’t he?  You are the salt of the earth. You sustain and preserve what is needed for life. You add savor, flavor, and wholesomeness to the world around you. You are needed. And you are the light of the world.  Light to see by. Light to energize. Light for life to grow and thrive. As light, you reveal what is hidden, to clear the dim paths when it it’s drear outside or inside. Your presence brightens sin-wearied souls. You are needed.  

And the light we are to inhabit and radiate is not merely for us but for the world. Don’t disguise it or try to stash it somewhere out of sight; do not hide your lightness. You are needed, not merely for the benefit of your local congregation, or of your neighborhood, but for the salvation of the world. Our saltiness, our light bearing, is not merely for our little corner of the planet, but for the whole cosmos, which is the word the Gospel uses to describe the world. Cosmos. The whole cosmos. Salt of the earth.  Light of the world.  That is who you are. Remember that. Cherish that. Deliver that. 

God knows that there is a lot at stake at how we internalize, how we are soaked through with God’s irrepressible life and expansive love and then reflect and radiate that good news to the cosmos. That’s what Jesus urged his disciples: Be salt. Be tenacious in your holding fast to God. Be radiant. Be aglow with the light of Christ. The world depends on us, each of us, in our kindness, in our pursuit of justice, and in our humble pilgrimage with God. Let your light shine, or the whole world will be continually benighted. 

This is why we began this worship by sprinkling the water (traditionally mixed with salt) of our baptism and we will soon renew our baptismal vows; to renew our identity, to remind us of each that we, each of us and all of us, are continually dying on the cross of Jesus and are continually bursting forth from the tomb. Remember, this is what we do in this diocese: We splash water. We eat together. We tell stories. God surprises. The salt by ancient traditional added as a healing compound in holy water, with which you were just splashed, and the light of Easter morning, emanating from this Paschal Candle.  That’s us, the church of the 21st century, same as it ever was.  

We hear a lot about spirituality these days. We hear of all the people disconnected from church, who describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” who’ve found that organized religion doesn’t nourish their spirituality. We dismiss that criticism at our peril. If our proclamation of the gospel does not return us to the salt and light that Jesus sees in his followers, then we might as well close.  So, I want to talk about our spirituality here in the Church of New Hampshire. What does it look like? What does it taste like, sound like, feel like 

Sometimes I worry: Has our saltiness has been diluted? Do we sometimes dim the piercing brightness of the Gospel entrusted to us?  If our light does not shine, the whole world will be consigned to continual bleakness. 

This is not a message of hopelessness. Not in the least. This is, in fact, an amazing time. Indeed, it may be the most important time, in my six decades of being a Christian and of being a member of this straining, flawed and yet utterly sacred and beautiful church. I say that because this is a time where the stakes have never been more real. And to make God real to ourselves and others, is the task of all persons baptized, all persons, not merely bishops, priests and deacons, but principally all who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Salt, Light, Yeast, Living Water, a Living Vine...these are guiding images of how we season, enlighten, raise up, and draw others into a life in God. These are images that guide our prayers and actions to make God real to this real world  

This is the spiritual reality that is deeper than all our divisions, our conflicts, our inequities and injustices. This is the spirituality I long for all our churches to preach, to teach, to practice, embody and radiate. This the sermon each of us has sworn in our baptismal promises to proclaim not just the deacons, the priests, the bishops, but every one of us. “How beautiful will be the day,” said Archbishop Oscar Romero to a land torn apart by hatred and massive political violence in El Salvador in 1977:  

“How beautiful will be the day when all the baptized understand that their work, their job, 
is a priestly work, that just as I celebrate Mass at this altar, so each carpenter celebrates Mass at his workbench, and each metalworker, each professional, each doctor with the scalpel, the market woman at her stand, is performing a priestly office! How many cabdrivers, I know, listen to this message there in their cabs? You are a priest at the wheel, my friend, if you work with honesty, consecrating that taxi of yours to God, bearing a message of peace and love to the passengers who ride in your cab.” 
(Oscar Romero, “The Violence of Love,” Nov. 20, 1977)  

How beautiful will be the day when we the baptized in New Hampshire—as our first thought upon waking in the morning and as the last thing that crosses our minds upon our slumber—know ourselves as priests of God’s grace, guiding of all our speech and actions during the day. Whatever our occupation may be, we are Christ’s Body. 

We are living in perilous times, war, violence of both physical and spiritual injury or even death. As your bishop, I have had the astounding privilege of seeing, though we may be uneven and sometimes inattentive to the depth of our spiritual formation or religious education, there is an undeniable longing and desire to feel God’s hope for us, to see God more clearly, follow God more nearly, and serve God and God’s creation more fervently, and to love God and our neighbor more dearly.   

Our churches, our parishes, missions, Gospel-oriented communities are where we bring our longing for God’s promise, where we bring our joys and our struggles, our celebrations and our sorrows, our hopes and our fears. For over the past decade we have been committed to doing all we can, to leveraging all our prayer, our love, the right use of the resources of time, treasure, talent of the amazing staff at Diocesan House, the uniquely gifted and committed clergy we continue to assemble here in New Hampshire, so that the world, from Colebrook to Nashua, from Claremont to Durham and has the light and the salt that will save the world from the division, hatred and fear that threatens it.   

When any of our church’s light is dimmed or is at risk of losing its particular character of love and devotion to our Savior Jesus, or when its peculiar character, its saltiness, is lessened by internal strife, by a lack of Christian discipleship, kindness, or charity, or even if its vitality has gone and it becomes simply a museum of the past, then the effect expands to us all, the whole community. Our churches were established, my friends, in each of the cities, towns, and hamlets of New Hampshire, not for their own sake, but for the sake of the world. As the world almost a century ago began to totter to fascism, sometimes with the church’s misguided blessing the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, William Temple, said that “The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” And the internal spiritual health of a church, how we embrace one another, how we love one another, how we disagree and work out our differences, is how the church can extend that blessing to the world so hungry, benighted, and in need of the healing it can bring as bearers of resurrection hope. That’s a spirituality we too often dilute to blandness, dim to darkness. 

So, there are two things that I wish to lift up for this Convention. The first is the work of the Reparations Task Force and the powerful resolution that is before us this morning, and how, no matter what, we may respond to the scourge of racism and injustice. Over the course of the past year, the Task Force led by James McKim and Betty Lane and assisted by church leaders, lay and ordained, representing each of our convocations, have worked tirelessly to prepare a resolution that accomplishes the task set by last year’s resolution for our diocese to listen, learn, and seek the Holy Spirit to guide us. The Task Force has clarified what reparation means:  the ongoing work to establish, repair, and mend our common humanity among siblings in God. And they have made it clear what Reparations does not mean—nothing but check-writing and box-checking or virtue signaling to those with whom we are not in relationship.  

Today, we will vote on a resolution that sets a course for us to continue to learn, listen, pray and respond to the many ways the original sin of Adam and Eve infects human society and the creation.  To my mind the original sin set forth in scripture was extraction: extracting a perceived good from that which we are to hold sacred, and that God told us to honor, not exploit or manipulate for our own purposes. The sin of extraction, fueled by a doctrine that says some people and some parts of creation are ours simply for the taking. That sin tells us we can ignore how that taking damages our relationship to God and each other. That sin continues to plague us, disordering our society, and spoiling our planet. That is the nature of sin. And the purpose of  the Church is repentance from sin, and seeking God’s grace to turn our hearts for a new beginning, even, as Scripture tells us, a New Creation. 

The conversations initiated by the Reparation Task Force have opened my eyes to see how interwoven all human and ecological suffering is. We can talk about Creation Care, and yet: generally it is white middle and upper middle-class people who can afford to shift from our dependence on fossil fuels and buy electric or hybrid vehicles, while communities in the inner city or rural areas, with higher concentration of minorities or poverty cannot afford the solar panels or the transitions to heat pumps or to abate lead, arsenic, or other toxins in their homes. Or their schools perform less well than those the towns with higher property values, even though, like in Newport or Claremont, their tax burden is disproportionally punishing.  These are examples of the intertwining of these issues: racism affects environmental stewardship, which affects health care disparities, which affect mental health, which affects education, which affects our political discourse, which as we see daily, affects everything. We remember Dr. King’s words written from the Birmingham jail:  

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All [of us] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be... This is the inter-related structure of reality.” (Letter From a Birmingham Jail, MLK, Jr.) 

Yes, these are words of a prophet of civil rights. And they are clearly the words of a Christian theologian and pastor shepherding people to Resurrection hope, the hope in a power and presence that is stronger than death. In the Body of Christ, we are entwined with each other and the burdens of the world.  

Earlier this month Diocesan Council created a new commission that will replace the more siloed and narrowly focused commissions and committees that have worked on racial reconciliations, creation care, educational equity, global mission, prison concerns, gun violence, poverty and hunger, natural disaster, and war. On our own we cannot fix any of these issues without the power of God working among us and other partners to work together.  So, in the spirit of the prophet Micah, we are establishing one commission, the Micah 6 Commission, made up of 12 faithful New Hampshire Episcopalians—lay people, deacons, and priests—to work together and see how all of these intractable dilemmas and challenges are interwoven, intertwined and require first prayer. God is with us in these things. We will continue work with partners, like the New Hampshire Black Heritage Trail, Granite State Organizing Project, Episcopal Relief and Development, Braver Angels, our schools, our food pantries and thrift shops, others who are already and may even be better equipped to do God’s mission. The Micah 6 Commission will be informed and guided by the plan proposed by the Reparations Task Force. They will see how God surprises more often when we are in the same room, rather than set apart. Ours is a God who is Trinity, a God of relationship. In the God made flesh we are forever entwined with God and each other. That is the deep vision of all true Christian spirituality. 

Finally, these words will not be complete until we acknowledge the power of the Holy Spirit that led to an amazing thing. If we had any doubt that of our salt and light, preserving our character as a feisty, resilient light filled dedicated church that is both salty, radiant, rises like leaven and is interwoven like a vine, our doubt could be set aside by the powerful news shared last week of the success of our From Deep Roots New Life Campaign. Before COVID we began to talk about what it would be like to raise funds, not for bricks and mortar, but for the ministry of our people, and those who are not yet among us. Lesley Pemberton began the work in helping us with a case statement, a plan and a feasibility study. Later, we asked Jamie Hamilton and Rob Stevens to co-chair our Campaign Committee, and we invited, teams of dedicated souls to help us set a goal of $2 million the income to provide venture capital for mission, to start new missions, support new adventures, take some risks for the sake of bringing the good news into a world in need of it. Last week, our Campaign Manager, my real boss in this work, Shelli Gay tallied that we not only reached our goal but surpassed it by a half million dollars. We have raised 2.5 million dollars to support our commitment to serve Jesus Christ by seeking his face in our neighbor and to know God’s presence in the Creation.  

So, we are salt. We are light. And we seek to become even more so by dwelling in the one Body Jesus in this beautiful, broken, straining, overflowing, shining, ragged, imperfect, and utterly holy church. It remains the privilege of my life, the challenge of my life, and the joy of my life to serve alongside you, learning as we go.  How are we salt? How are we light? By doing justice, by loving mercy, and by walking humbly with our God in the path of Jesus Christ.  

And speaking of learning, how about we memorize a Bible verse—like we’ve been to Vacation Bible School. Some of you, indeed many of us, already know this verse by heart. It could easily be a motto to start your day, posted on your bathroom mirror or your car dashboard, or to hold you in times of trial and celebration. I know at least one deacon who has a version of this verse tattooed on his forearm: Here it is:  

And what does the Lord require of you 
but to do justice, 
to love mercy 
and to walk humbly with your God. 

Repeat.

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Blessing as Holy Resistance

This message was emailed to the diocese on Sept. 20, 2024.

On behalf of St. Paul’s Church, Concord, and their Rector, the Rev. Jean Beniste, I want to invite those who may find themselves in the vicinity to attend a Blessing of the Animals on the lawn in front of the church, 21 Centre St., at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 5.

The tradition of blessing animals, including pets and domestic animals of all kinds, has grown in recent years to honor the witness of St. Francis, whose feast day falls on Oct. 4. It has been a way of celebrating God as creator, redeemer, and sustainer of the universe and all that dwell therein. Attributed to Saint Francis is the famous prayer beginning, “Lord, make us instruments of peace.”

Recent days have seen an abhorrent escalation of language against those who have come to our country from Haiti and other distressed nations, to seek a better life, and to share in the pursuit of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” enshrined in our nation’s founding documents. The defaming language has led to threats of violence, school closings, and a climate of fear in Springfield, Ohio and elsewhere. It is important to note that unless we are of Indigenous ancestry, all of us have descended from immigrants seeking the same opportunities, including the freedom to practice our religion and to speak from our deepest spiritual convictions. Jesus himself was a refugee from political violence. No doubt, we have work to do in our nation to address a chaotic and unsafe border, and we hope and pray and vote that those who bear the authority of government will be led to decisions that have thus far woefully eluded them. 

This year the Blessing of Animals takes on a new, even prophetic, meaning as those gathered will join a fellow disciple of Christ in Father Jean—born and raised in Haiti—who will lead us in the blessing of dogs, cats, any other kinds of pets or animals, and all of us who are present. Our gathering of blessing, instead of cursing, can be seen as an act of resistance to a culture that is fomenting violence of thought, speech, and action.  Love is countercultural. The Church when it is most authentic will often run counter to the dominant spirit of the age.

If we ever wonder what kind of Church we are, we get to claim that we have Gospel work to be “instruments of God’s peace” by displaying New Testament hospitality, humility, kindness, and love. Though we may be troubled and anxious, what a blessing it is to be a Christian in this time! To be a disciple of Jesus is to seek the company of those with whom Jesus sought to keep company. This is the understanding of discipleship that is shared broadly by Christians, whether they consider themselves progressive, conservative, or in the middle.

When we bless animals, celebrate God’s good creation, welcome the stranger among us and make them friends (and priests!) among us, we become prophets of God’s heavenly realm of justice, love, and life. Blessing, not uttering taunts or making threats, is the kind of holy resistance that Jesus practiced again and again. What a privilege to be called to this holy work, this St. Francis Day, and always.

How you can help

• If you wish to support the Haitian Community in Springfield, Ohio, the local Episcopal church there suggests making donations to the Haitian Community Help and Support Center.

• Also, we have a close relationship with St. Vincent’s Center in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, a marvelous and effective Episcopal ministry that teaches and serves disabled children and adults. Donations may be mailed to: St. Vincent's Center, Haiti, P.O. Box 1433, New London, NH 03257

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Reflection of Bishop Hirschfeld After The Events in Butler, Pennsylvania

This message was emailed to the diocese on July 14, 2024.

Only the most cynical among us will be untroubled by the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally. We denounce this violence and pray for the former President, his family, and his supporters. We pray also for the repose of the soul of the bystander who was slain in this attack and any who were injured.

Undoubtedly, our nation can no longer be as confident as we have been that our political processes and institutions are immune from violence and bloodshed. What is being revealed by events like yesterday’s is the fragility of our communities and our neighborhoods—a vulnerability that many nations of the world experience continually.

Sadly, these are age-old realities. We read again from the Gospel for this Sunday—Mark 6:14-29—that the way the world settles its disputes and conflict is habitually by force and savagery, rather than by the means of peace and forbearance. To follow Jesus entails being acutely aware that the way of the world’s power and the Way of Christ’s Kingdom will be in stark contrast to one another.

As I prepare to baptize an infant saint as a new citizen of God’s Realm this morning, I pray that in our part of Christ’s Body, the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire, we will continue to commit ourselves to the Way of Jesus. May we remember how in a time of extreme peril our Savior told his threatened and anxious disciples to sheathe their swords rather than look for retribution or vengeance.

Jesus taught his disciples, and us, to love and pray for our enemies, while seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. May the peace of Christ, a peace that Jesus told us the world cannot give, reign in our hearts and in our churches in the days and weeks to come. May we support each other to be the light this world so longs for and so hopes to see in us.

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Bishop Rob's Address to St. Paul’s School Spring Convocation, March 24, 2024

It’s always an honor for me to be invited to this hallowed space of worship, of music, of song, of embarking on your very full days and of return. Thank you to Rector Giles and Reverend Wydner and the whole chapel staff for this invitation. And I welcome everyone back to Concord from your spring vacation. I hope it was a time of refreshment, rest, and renewal for the final few weeks of the school year. Now that you’re back from vacation, I’m going to ask that you join me as I offer some thoughts about vocation. Vocation, a word that finds its root in the Latin word for “calling.” Though you might already be thinking of your next vacation—just over a couple months away, I’ve been wondering about how we find our respective vocations, our callings, in life.

There was a time when the opposite of a prep school like St Paul’s, or the usual alternative track for young people to follow if they were not going to attend more academically rigorous high school, was what used to be called vocational schools. It seemed then that young people were tracked, from an early age, to go into the trades among which were carpentry, mechanics, plumbing, or HVAC. They could become medical or dental technicians, metalworkers, masons. My classmates who were on that vocational track seemed to be assigned their vocations. Sadly, senselessly, those not being trained in such trades, those more at happy with their homework assignments in math, science, languages, or history, were often encouraged to look down on those who would work in the trades.

Thankfully, I have seen a blurring of the classism that those divisions in education seemed to enforce. Some of the most insightful, erudite, wise—not to mention well-compensated-- people I know, make a living by their handiwork. They practice crafts that combine knowledge, skill, intuition, and the ability to relate to people across differences. My life is filled with interactions with those whose joy in their vocations comes from the exercise of such skills.

One such example is the character of George Pocock, the boatbuilder and philosopher without whom there would be no story behind “The Boys In the Boat.” He appears in the movie, but he is more much central in the book. Just as the success of that underdog 1936 Olympic crew would be impossible without Mr. Pocock, so St. Paul’s rowing would be much less accomplished without Mr. Matt Bailey who practices his craft in the shop at the boathouse of Turkey Pond.

We encounter the teachers, staff, grounds crew, and maintenance crew, food service crew, many of whom are doing their job, quietly, with nobility and dignity every day. It’s always a joy to see Mr. Roger Farwell, the steward of this magnificent space whenever I come here. He and his colleagues on this campus do essential work, work for which I hope they derive enjoyment and even delight that’s beyond just punching the clock to fulfill the hours of the terms of their employment. I hope we notice and thank them for the pursuit of their respective callings.

I am curious about how you will hear your vocation, your calling. Perhaps you already know it in a burning desire to follow in the steps of someone you admire, someone you feel you’d like to emulate. Perhaps you’ve heard someone you know who is quite happy and content with their work say, “Do what you love, and you will never work a day in your life.” I don’t know if I’ve ever trusted that. I love being a Christian priest and bishop, can’t imagine doing anything else, but it is nonetheless work somedays.

Frederick Buechner, the popular theologian of the 20th century, is often cited as describing vocation in this way:

There are all different kinds of voices calling you to all different kinds of work, and the problem is to find out which is the voice of God rather than of society, say, or the superego, or self-interest.By and large a good rule for finding out is this: The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done...The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

What is your deep gladness? And what strikes you as the world’s deep hunger? Where do those things meet or intersect for you?

Perhaps you’re just beginning to ask those questions. So what if you get a hint of what your vocation may be by the experience, not of drudgery or tedium, or monotony, but of the opposite of those things: Ecstasy

Ecstasy is an odd word to apply to thinking of vocation. The culture might suggest ecstasy as a selfish state of extreme exhilaration, of incomparable perhaps even bacchanalian delight. It can suggest a kind of madness, a possession of the spirit, a rapt state. Ecstasy is hardly the theme of serious, purpose driven people who sit in these pews, right? We are all after all, residents of New Hampshire. We are known for being anything but ecstatic. No, we are granitic.

It's worth noting that the word ecstasy comes from the Greek, ek-stasis. Ek “out of, from, beyond and stasis, standing, the state of self, or position. Those experiencing ecstasy find themselves outside of themselves, in a rapt state, a kind of self-forgetting. We seldom notice that state, because we are less aware of ourselves when we are in it. Athletes might describe it as being “in the zone.” Artists or those solving a math or physics problem speak of being in a state of flow. Writers, speak of entering an altered state, a “fictive dream.”

As I suggest, probably the opposite of ecstasy is drudgery or tedium: where we keep looking at the watch or the clock, consigned to a minute by minute sighing awareness of the weight of time and effort. We think, all will be so much better well, once we get that one assignment done, or once that final push on the athletic field is behind us. Maybe today, as you’re back from vacation, you’re already thinking, “Just a few more weeks, and it will be summer. Can I last until then?”

More painfully, we are also aware of being mired in the deep conflicts and stresses of our world. We eagerly long for a day when there will be no more tyrants, despots, poverty, sin, brutality, violence, or death. So how can we imagine an ecstatic vocation in the face of these persistent antagonisms?

For decades now I have been working my way through the often dense poetry of W.H. Auden. He has a cycle of poems entitled ‘Horae Canonicae’ composed in the middle years of the last century. The Canonical Hours are the monastic hours that shape a day of prayer in a monastery. The poem set aside for the sixth hour, or noonday, opens this way:

You need not see what someone is doing

to know if it is his vocation,

you have only to watch his eyes:

a cook mixing a sauce, a surgeon

making a primary incision,

a clerk completing a bill of lading,

wear the same rapt expression,

forgetting themselves in a function...

There should be monuments, there should be odes,

to the nameless heroes who [first got so lost in their vocation]

to the first flaker of flints who forgot his dinner,

the first collector of sea-shells to remain celibate.

Where should we be but for them?

Auden is describing ecstasy, self-forgetting, a kind of rapture in the calling, the pursuit, the energy of God’s heavenly realm seeking to draw us our of ourselves and to send us into the world.

As I was preparing these remarks, I thought I would visit the St Paul’s School website to look at the eyes and faces of so many of you caught up in your vocation. Yes you are called here as members of this community. I saw images of many of you forgetting yourselves in a task: playing a saxophone; threading a soccer or lacrosse ball through a crowded defensive field; on stage in an intricate dance; engaged in animated discussion in a classroom; eyes trained on Mr. White’s choral direction. Nowhere did I see anyone looking at their watch, or at their cell phone trying to escape the current moment by doom scrolling or waiting for an incoming text. The eyes I saw there are, I believe, the same as what Auden describes as those in a vocation... the truest kind of ecstatic self-forgetfulness.

It’s easy to state that your deep gladness in those moments are being fulfilled, but do these things meet the world’s deep hunger? Do we actually need that? How will such things actually dig the world out of our warfare, our environmental degradation, the deadliness of our cultural, political, racial, and economic divisions?

Yes, the world needs persons skilled in diplomacy, in engineering, in the healing arts, prophets and poets, chemists, and physicists and farmers to solve our crises in hunger, water, ecological collapse. We need prudent soldiers and judicious attorneys. We need people who love keeping our streets and cities just, safe, and clean. We need people whose commerce will employ, house, feed, and educate people. We need singers and makers of song.

But undergirding all these vocations is a deeper calling. What the world really needs are those who see the beauty of living, who live with a kind of abiding joy in nourishing healthy relationships, who notice how light filters out of trees. Those who, even if doing work that many may seem as utterly tedious or incomprehensible, will see and share the miracle of living, of sharing this precarious existence on this fragile and magnificent planet. What we need are human beings fully ecstatic, and thus fully alive for each other and our world.

To the extent this place prepares and equips your being so fully alive and ecstatic is the extent to which St. Paul’s School will be worthy to be called a vocational school in the deepest sense of the word.

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Bishop Rob’s Easter Message 2024

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Bishop Rob's Lenten Message

Lent, when observed in the spirit for which it was intended, will always fly in the face of our culture.

We hear repeated and incessant calls to fulfill our appetites, to obey our ever-expanding compulsions to keep up with our neighbors’ attainments, achievements, or acclaim.  What little I saw of the recent Super Bowl was enough to convince me of how much our society—at least a large and popular segment of it—celebrates the “me” over the “we:” a famous player’s sideline abusive and shoving outburst at his own coach; commercials that urge us to “buy like a billionaire” things that will end up in landfills contaminating our water sources; not to mention the hyper-sexualized and gluttonous advertisements that intend to spur our graspingness in order to drive an economy of extraction and consumption.  It’s been noted how our bellicose politics and foreign policy more closely resembles a concussive pro-football strategy than something more reasoned thoughtful, compassionate, and—dare I say—loving?  Even our laudable and necessary efforts to turn from fossil fuels to sources of renewal energy assume that the comfort of our lifestyles will not be lessened or altered. 

Of course, I’m sure I’ll be accused of being a downer, or a moralizer, or a killjoy for casting a critical eye of these examples. In fact, one side of our family is employed by one of the dominant professional football empires of recent times, so it’s not without some dread that I say these things. But while it may sound odd, what I really hope for is a Lent of ecstasy.  Let me try to explain. 

Despite what the Church misguidedly tends to preach, Ash Wednesday and Lent run counter to all the me-first-ism that dominates so much of our attention and imaginations. Lent is not the church saying to you, “now would be a great time for you to shed those pounds for summer beachwear.”  Or, “get rid of those habits that keep you from being your most effective self, as defined by a magazine of the same name: Self.” 

Rather, Ash Wednesday and Lent are the turning points of the year when we look out from ourselves and discover who we are in our relationship with others, especially those who do not comfort us because they reflect our own tastes, race, leanings, learnings, or choices.  This season before Easter is the time to take sabbath rest for ourselves, not so much to restore our batteries to work more efficiently, but to tend and restore our relationships at home and in the wider community, to extend hospitality to strangers, to seek out that person who you know you have injured, or has slighted you, and—if it is safe and healthy to do so—seek a peace, if not in person, then in your heart.  Those practices are scary, aren’t they?  They represent a kind of death to ego, don’t they?  Indeed, the ashes of Lent signal a release of our need to control and to protect what we think is our due or our right. Lent is a time when we, as a whole body of disciples, seek to walk in the shoes of others, even our enemies. 

That’s what the best of our time-honored spiritual heritage invites us to do, to love our enemies, to heal and repair the world, to be so reckless in love so as to wash others’ feet and to allow them to wash ours, to plant new gardens and forests where God’s grace can flourish—even over the ashes of our ancient fears and hatreds and exploitations.  I wish Lent was as easy as giving up sweets or overindulgences.  Instead, it invites us to see not merely ourselves on the Cross, but all of humanity, as at one with another and with God, indeed all of God’s creation. We are invited to journey to the cross so that all of us, all the world that God loves, may rejoice in the power of Christ’s life that overcomes death itself. 

So, I pray for us all to experience a kind of rapture this Lent, which is to say a kind of ecstasy.  The word ecstasy, from the Greek ex-stasis, means a standing outside of oneself.  It suggests a kind of rapturous joy that brings a self-forgetting in love so that we remember that we are baptized into the living Body of Christ. I pray for that ecstasy for us all, even if it’s just for a moment or two, or a day, if not for the whole season ahead of us.  I pray that, by our prayers and by our acts of giving and loving service, we are so filled with God’s presence that we feel little but the desire to be in God’s love. May we know ourselves to be utterly beloved, and in that love forgiven, and thus utterly liberated to forgive and to share what’s been given us. We hope for these things not merely for how they make us feel, good or righteous. Yes, God may indeed bless us with a sense of spiritual contentment and peace, those emotions can certainly be signs of being aligned with God’s desire for us.   May our observance of a Holy Lent be more for the sake of God’s love for the whole world. If in our self-forgetting we have a rapturous season, we will have a Lent to remember.   

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Bishop Rob’s 2023 Christmas Blessing

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Bishop Rob’s 2023 Diocesan Convention Address

Let me begin by telling a brief story about an exchange I had about 20 years ago. Whenever I remember this embarrassing dialogue, it seems to me that God is still working on me, still inviting me into a deeper conversation with Christ. I’ve shared this story with a congregation or two over the past years, so I ask your forbearance if you’re hearing this for a second time, or more.

Once I was invited to meet a bishop to explore the possibility of being called to a new parish in another diocese. Of course, I thought I had a lot to offer-- all the credentials that would make a young enthusiastic priest very attractive to be invited to take on a new challenge. I put on my best suit and starched collar and visited this bishop in his office. I thought we would just get to the business of a job interview—you know—here’s an opening, these are the skills and experience needed, what do you have to match them? But once we sat down, the bishop immediately, without the cushion of any small talk, asked me: So, Rob, what is the Good News for you?

Had I been standing and not sitting, I would have felt my knees buckle. I felt stumped.

I did not have an answer.

Now this was not like an ecclesiastical game show where he was intentionally trying to stump the chump in the suit. He was sincere. He may have been asking for me to share some good news for him because within months he would surprisingly be diagnosed with a terminal illness and die. He may have been eager that morning to hear a young priest share the good news of God becoming human, taking on our condition, emptying himself by becoming weak, imperfect in the flesh, vulnerable to human cruelty, injustice, even death, and then rises to destroy death itself. Years later, when I shared that story with his widow, she told me, “You know, he just wanted to hear someone say something as simple and clear and strong as, “Jesus loves me. This I know because the Bible tells me so.”

I share this with you because it seems to me that the whole church itself is in that bishop’s office. We might be expecting smooth sailing, easy questions to be answered with coffee hour lightness and ease. Instead, we are facing some dire realities to which our God is calling us to some clear, convincing, and bold responses that reflect the unshakeable faith and hope that is in us.

Do we in the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire, feel stumped, speechless, or find ourselves faltering when we are asked, what is the Good News for you?

I think that question is both disruptive and divine. Leading us to reclaim the fervor of our beliefs in these times.

What is the Good News in the times when weather patterns are more fierce and damaging? We experienced the hottest summer on record this year. We are already seeing an increase numbers of what are called “climate refugees”. This is a result, in large part, of a broken relationship with creation. When we see God’s creation as our own, and not God’s, we presume we can have our way with it, extract its resources and exude waste without consequence. God calls us to reject domination over creation and learn a way of being in harmony and right relationship with every creature of our environment as a way of honoring and showing gratitude to our Creator.

What is the good news in this for us? And how are we being called to turn?

These and other trends and phenomena are being contended and debated in a culture of increasing anger and violent rhetoric. Language that has historically opened the way toward actual bloodshed directed at Blacks, Jews, Muslims, the poor, refugees, homosexuals and transgender persons, and those religious groups that seek to support them. The appearance of Christian Nationalism - the coopting of political and even military force in the name of God - is nothing more than a grotesque parroting of the same religious intolerance, mixed with the means of armed violence, that our world deplores in regimes like the Taliban, Hamas, the Third Reich. And lest we feel immune to those same impulses, here in the United States the early leaders of the Episcopal Church, as far north as Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, quoted the Holy Scriptures to defend chattel slavery: the denial of rights of God’s children to take in the pursuit in life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Yes, we have some repairing to do that is more than merely signaling our desire to appear virtuous but to employ our resources, financial, personal, and spiritual to good effect.

Church, what is the Good News for us, now, when our political systems and language are so frazzled and fatigued that they seem not to withstand the new expressions of fear and hatred.

In the past 50 years, the experience of the Episcopal Church, along with that of every mainline denomination of the American Church, has been steadily losing membership and attendance on Sunday mornings. This is not new news. The peak of our numbers was in the mid 1960’s when the nation had an explosion of population. The post World War II-Baby Boom led to just about every town, city, church and synagogue to build new schools, hospitals, add wings for Sunday School and sabbath schools. Since then, the birthrate has declined steadily. A kind of secularism has taken hold, a rise in the belief that meaning of life could be bought by consuming and acquiring more. Distrust in institutions followed terrible heartbreaking and egregious breaches in trust in by churches, political parties, and other institutions.

Cultural incentives to keep Sunday morning a time for church-going evaporated. It was rare for any business to be open on a Sunday. Now much of the American workforce works on Sunday.

What is the good news in these trends for us?

The Good News is this: No matter what, no matter when, we get to be the Body of Christ, alive, vibrant, hopeful. And we are! I am firmly convinced that we are exactly where God wants us to be: in need, perplexed, at the foot of the Cross, needing to be shown again the power of God’s life that is beyond the humiliations, rejections, failures, atrocities and brutalities. This is where, again, and again, the church has learned to reinvent and rediscover and reshape itself to be more and more recreated in the image of Christ. Instead of the stark, barren, bloody and horror of the wasteland that humanity insists on settling for, we can be brought to the beauty of a garden restored with life and the promise of a fresh start. That’s the Good News for me. And who preaches that Good News to me? Who gives me the parables and the words and the images that I so often need to keep going?

You do. You preach and show the Gospel to me and to the world.

Every place I go to, there are people, old and young, who are hungry for community. They want to be seen and nourished spiritually by a Church that cares for them, and where they can express and share their own God-given need to pour out their love for God and neighbor.

Everywhere I go, every Sunday morning, whether in the humble mission in Franklin, or in the glorious choir of Portsmouth; in the woods in Canterbury, on the beach in Rye, or under the biomass plant in Berlin, and every weekday worship service and meeting in between, I meet people who want to love... to build not to tear down...to find the face of Jesus in the face of the one who is in need of love, of care, of community.

Unlike my own early faltering in sharing he good news, I have had the experience of young people coming into my office and I can’t get a word in edgewise for their joyful exuberance in sharing with me the Good News of how God has brought them to love God, to seek and follow Jesus, and be guided by the Holy Spirit.

We are seeing more applications to our School for Ministry for priests and lay preachers. eucharistic visitors, eucharistic ministers, and spiritual directors. Last year, our School for Ministry has graduated its first class of persons, Ed Frost, Michael Reinke, and Steve Rugg who are now serving in parishes and in pastoral roles outside of the parish where leadership was sorely needed. This coming Advent, we’ll be ordaining Fred Chisholm, Aaron Jenkyn, to the priesthood and Joe Rose to the diaconate on the way to the priesthood.

It would be hard to imagine three more different disciples, but if you meet them you will see, oh. These persons have been called to give us hope in a wonderfully complex world. There’s something of the Holy Spirit in them that is obviously moving us. And there are more on the way. In a time when the clergy shortage in the Episcopal Church has hit a moment of crisis, we in New Hampshire seem to be where priests from other parts of the wider church look to come, to apply, and even settle. Good News.

There is something in the hopefulness, courage, faithfulness and tenacity of expansive and radically inclusive love that this church, the people of this convention exhibit, that brings people here to serve and grow in love.

Consider Christ Church, Portsmouth who are doing a new and bold thing in redeveloping their property to provide desperately-needed housing and shelter for women and children at risk.And at Epiphany, Newport, serving school children.

There is a strong pulse of love and life that is at heart of this Church.

It’s a heart that breaks when it sees the brutality committed against God’s children and hears of the horrors of war and terrorism among our siblings in the faith of the God of Abraham. And it is a heart that will pour out generously in compassion.

In the midst of such agony, God is raising us. That is good news.

Not all disruption is divine and not everything that is divine disrupts. But here we are, and will always be, God willing, seeking to restore, renew, and repair the bonds of humanity and creation that God longs for us to cherish and live in. Born out of the hateful and bloody conflict of the protestant reformation our Anglican communion choose to say, we will be both, protestant AND catholic and seek a comprehensiveness and compromise.

Tomorrow we will see a brief presentation of what Bishop Mark Beckwith has called the secular version of the Anglican Communion, and it should be no surprise that the deep fierce but hope-filled conversations between red and blue and left and right are taking place in an Episcopal Church...at St. Andrew’s, New London. This is how we are showing our commitment to our baptismal vows to love our neighbor as ourselves and to uphold the dignity of every human being. Good News.

Finally, consider the apostle Paul, writing from prison, what does he say, Woe? Misery? Calamity and disaster?

No. Then he says, and I say the same: a countercultural word of resistance, or resilience, and above all, hope. If it’s the only word you can say if someone asks you, what is the Good News for you, well, you can do much worse: Rejoice. Rejoice. Again I say, Rejoice.