Delivered via Zoom from All Angel’s Chapel, Diocesan House - November 14, 2020
Behold, I am doing a new thing,
do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:19
Usually we see our Annual Convention as a time to tout accomplishments and share our goals for the year ahead. In these addresses, I’ve striven to provide encouragement, a spiritual boost, and clarity of vision that sets a direction for the time ahead. This year is both no different and completely different.
We find ourselves in 2020 in a strange and painful place. Who would have thought after the celebration we shared with the North Country just 12 months ago, we would be here? Gathered by a technology — Zoom — that hardly any of us had even heard of a year ago because of a deadly pandemic — no, a second wave of a pandemic that has infected 12,000 persons and has claimed 500 lives in New Hampshire. We have been pressed to take hard measures, out of loving concern for our neighbors and ourselves, to maintain physical distance and to deprive ourselves of one of our primary outward and visible signs of Christ’s living presence among us: the Holy Eucharist.
I speak to you from an empty altar in the tiny chapel of All Angels’ at Diocesan House in Concord. The emptiness mirrors an empty space in my heart and a hollowness that we all share.
This is grief, and even in a Convention Address that usually rallies and rouses, we have to face the realities right before us. The Hollowness in our hearts can be hallowed, made holy, when we remember that Jesus rising from the dead was first made known to his disciples at an Empty Tomb by the women who came to grieve. So, I ask us to devote some time, even this morning, to our grief and our lament. We grieve for what we enjoyed and even took for granted — I know I did. I never imagined that there would be a day, a month, a year when I wouldn’t be able to share the meal of the Resurrection in person, around the table that, as the 23rd Psalm tell us, God sets in the wilderness, even in the wilderness of the valley of the shadow of death. Christians, standing on the solid truth of the Risen Jesus, need not fear facing the shadows of life, knowing that light rises and that God’s love and presence is sustaining and stronger than death. But in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection, we are called together to walk through this valley of the shadow of death together this year. We do this in faith.
Let me start by naming some dear friends of this diocese who died since our last meeting. As I mention these few names, I invite you to type in names of those who have died in the past year into the chat function, so that I may give voice to our prayers for them as well.
Our dear sister in Christ, Judith Esmay, Vestry member of St. Thomas, Hanover, Canon for Lay Leadership, ardent knitter and weaver of prayer shawls, signs of welcome and protest hats, steward of all things canonical and constitutional, spiritual director to many whose lives have been enriched by her wisdom and council, President of the Standing Committee, universally respected and often-time deputy to this and our General Conventions, above all friend in Christ.
The Rev. John Adams of All Saints’, Peterborough. Companion to Christine Howe, interim pastor at Union, Claremont. As a young curate, John brought me communion when I was in traction for a broken neck as a 13 year-old boy. When I recovered, I served as his acolyte. I continued to be an acolyte (a follower) of John even as I was his bishop.
The Rev. Lew Stone, long-time rector of All Saints’, Peterborough. Devoted spouse to Eve Stone. A priest who, in my mind at least, was as close to the soul of a country rector with the heart of a poet and pastor. Lew was so easily touched to tears by both our sorrows and our joys. Lew made up part of the soul of the Church of New Hampshire.
Susan Sielke, a steady and joyful soul and lay leader from St. James’, Keene. Spouse to Eleanor Vander Hagen, observant to the movement of the spirit in the Church and individuals. Susan was my shepherd, and a good shepherd she was, when I was called to join this Diocese. She was such friend and pastor to many.
I would like to invite the names of others who have died and I will give voice to them in this moment:
(Pausing for submissions and reading of names)
Rest eternal grant unto them, O Christ, and may they rise in glory everlasting with all your saints.
Mourning and lament are Christian meet and right responses when we experience death, violence, trauma. Have we grieved? Have you experienced some of those off-cited stages of grief? Let me remind you of them:
Denial: (This can’t be really happening? They are making too much of this? These results aren’t to be trusted. Let’s keep going as though nothing is happening then maybe it will just go away.)
Anger: (How dare you? What are you afraid of? Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do!)
Bargaining: (I know we can’t do this, but what about this instead? I know everyone else can’t, but maybe you can make an exception for us?)
Depression or Despair: (What’s the point? I give up. It’s hopeless. I’m done. Nothing good will come of my efforts, so why even try?)
Acceptance: (Since it’s not going away soon, there no use fighting it. I might as well get on. We’ll go on.)
A Sixth Stage has been suggested: Finding meaning and purpose. What is this situation teaching us? What new thing is emerging? Do we see a path, or paths, opening up, even as the smooth pavement ends. Where might these trails, faint as they are, be leading to?
I firmly believe God desires more for us than mere acceptance as the final response to the trauma, dislocation, disillusionment, fear and anxiety that beset God’s people in past ages.
God wants more for us than mere stoic resignation, firm upper lip, resolute leaning into our suffering merely for the sake of leading into hardship. That is the New England, one might say granite-like posture, to take. And I know we value that here in the Granite State. The alma mater of one of our colleges extols how deeply set is “the Granite of New Hampshire in our muscles and in our brains.” That may be a hymn for a college, but it’s not a hymn for Christ’s Church, the Body of Christ, which, after all, has a heart of flesh and blood.
When I search for meaning and purpose, I look to scripture. This year, I hear the prophet Isaiah who lived in times that bear some comparison with our own… actually much worse. Isaiah lived through the incomprehensibly traumatic experience of God’s people seeing the collapse of its government, the invasion of an occupying Assyrian empire, and the forced re-location of Judah to Babylon where it was urged to worship gods and kings that were not its own. God’s people have always been led through the wildernesses of denial, rage, bargaining, the despair, then the reluctant acceptance. Just read the Books of First and Second Kings alongside the Prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, or the Psalms, and you’ll see all those stages of grief laid out so clearly.
Isaiah is led by God to find a new meaning and purpose, a way of seeing what’s happened with the eyes of hope, tenderness, even joy. Judah had been cut off from its past traditions, its most cherished routines and patterns, its deepest sense of itself. Then see, a sprout of new life, something new, fresh, something in spite of everything.
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots. Isaiah 11:1
and later:
Behold, I am doing a new thing,
do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert. Isaiah 43:19
So let in the spirit of facing reality, honest and courageous lament, let us bear witness to the stumps — the deep wounds — of our communities.
We are now cut off from the illusion that our nation is united, of one spirit. We have Democrats and Republicans as neighbors, and the toxicity of our national discourse is insinuating itself into our sanctuaries and threatens to harm the Body of Christ.
We are now cut off from the idea that we have already built the City on a Hill that is the flawless and immaculate moral beacon for ourselves and all nations,
We are cut off from the illusion that the social flourishing of our nation is universally fair and impartial: from the delivery of health care, to policing, to housing availability, to the quality of our schools, to unjust wages, to uneven vulnerability to the dire risks of environmental degradation and climate change.
We are cut off from the notion that we in the church are indeed welcoming to “those people” (a phrase we still say and hear as people of good will but referring to black and brown skinned persons) — and yet we remain confused as to why “those people” feel nervous about coming through the doors of our communities, our economy, our churches. Life in the Body of Christ sees “those people” as us.
Out of this stump, God says, I am going to try again, and behold, tender seedlings will spring forth and sprout. Molecule by molecule, cell by cell, I will make it grow. But I need you to care for it, tend it, make sacrifices for it. “Behold I am about to do a new thing. Do you not perceive it?”
To which we first may answer God, “Well. Actually. No. I don’t see it. Show me.”
Exile makes people see things with new eyes. We might see things that we would not have noticed before. We come to appreciate afresh what we missed. Perhaps God sends God’s people into Exile in order to show them who they really are. Perhaps people leave their homes on pilgrimages because even being home they are homesick.
Earlier this fall, I asked for a survey from you to reveal what Communion means for you, now that we cannot receive it. Here is one way we found to display the results of that survey.
You’ll see the most frequently used word that came back was this: LOVE.
I wonder if you can see this image not merely as a display of what we desire most, love, God’s love. But it is also WHO WE ARE. A tree. A Vine. It’s going through a period of pruning — the word in John’s gospel for the pruning is cleansing.
But the life of this vine has not been extinguished. The life of God with us is still, well, life-ing.
Some of us were shocked and almost had our breath knocked out of us when we saw the attendance statistics for New Hampshire published and we saw a deep decline in our Average Sunday Attendance in 2019. Turns out, the data was inaccurate and incomplete. After a closer look at the data, we saw that our weekly attendance actually rose by 3 people last year! Talk about growth that happens cell by cell!
Who are those three people? Can we buy them a cup of coffee? Maybe some new snow tires? God did something with three… the three angels who visited a decrepit and past hope of childbearing Sarah and Abraham. Three. What if the three who showed up for worship, increasing our weekly attendance, represent the metric of Amazing Weekly Encounter (AWE) as signs of a tender, tiny shoot of renewal. What if we focused our attention on those small signs of encounters rather than so much for which we have such marginal influence, at best. Every moment you have with a neighbor or a person with whom you have some different outlook, every cup of coffee (even over zoom) that builds a community, that re-stitches our torn social fabric, every one of these has spiritually cosmic impact. In the coming months I hope we can re-start in earnest having conversations across political and other divisions, even within our churches, so that the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire can be seen as a place of deep trust, honesty, and where healing takes place for the life of the world.
When Jesus sends out the disciples two-by-two, the Bible stories tell us, I’m convinced it’s as much for the powerfully sanctifying effect on those two disciples as it is to anyone they meet on the way. Maybe more.
Other shoots from the stumps: The efforts of Renewal Works, of the School for Ministry, for a new mission in the town in Franklin, the new creation of a church in the Pemigewasset-Baker Valley in Ashland, Plymouth, and Holderness, a renewal of the Episcopal Identity at White Mountain and Holderness Schools (even new attention to restore and refresh the spiritual underpinnings of St. Paul’s School), our calming, contemplative spiritually-grounding presence on social media by our priests and lay leaders: listen to the Red Church Door Podcast produced by Colin Chapman and Dave Deziel or see Linnae Peterson’s educational contributions on Facebook, Aaron Jenkyn’s Messy Church in Newport, not to mention the astonishing revival of the Daily Office services by the laity in several of our congregations. Nightly Compline is offered by deacons Derek Scalia and Maryann Davis… (By the way, the School for Ministry Dean Kelly Sundberg Seaman and I are eager to train others to further that revival of the Daily Office). There are some shoots coming out of the painful clearcutting of the past year.
PHOTO OF STUMP WITH EVERGREEN SHOOT
FOLLOWED BY PHOTO OF STUMP WITH SEVERAL SHOOTS
The conversations, long overdue and put off, about inequities that are driven, whether deliberately or unconsciously, by racial, class, and/or gender prejudices are evidence of the insistent sprouting of God’s kingdom pushing up through the wounds in our society. It does no good to deny these wounds, long festering and slow to repair and mend. The call to justice, as our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry said recently to the House of Bishops, is not an end in itself, but a call to love, as God loves. Justice is what love looks like in public. Our second resolution this morning, encouraging us all to have conversations that lead to the repairing of society, if we are faithful to the spirit in which it is proposed, will foster the tender and fragile beloved community that God urgently seeks to plant and see flourish among us, for the life of the world.
I anticipate we will be hosting conversations that cut across the political divide in our congregations in the coming year. A movement called Braver Angels: With Malice Towards None, equips people of divergent perspectives to find common ground, with the goal of repairing what has been torn, even cell by cell. I know that Kate Siberine, Joe Rose, and others have already laid the groundwork for the movement of such healing.
And speaking of a new shoot from a stump. Here’s a photo worth sharing:
PHOTO OF METAL SIGN IN FRONT OF FRANKLIN MISSION
We don’t perceive all that God is doing, but there is clearly something new happening, even as we come to settle into this time of extended Exile.
To conclude: we are on the cusp of Advent in our calendar. Many congregations sing portions of O, Come, O, Come Emmanuel every week in Advent. All Saints’, Peterborough will offer an Advent Service of Lessons and Carols in the afternoon of the First Sunday of Advent featuring the verses of an ancient chant called the O Antiphons. They are familiar:
O come, O come Emmanuel
O come thou Wisdom from on high
O come thou Dayspring from on high
O come thou Branch of Jesse’s tree
And this verse: O come Desire of nations bind in one the hearts of all humankind;
bid thou our sad divisions cease, and be thyself the King of Peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, Israel!
These “O Antiphons” are all about where we are now. In Exile, homesick for our church fellowship in person, longing for a day when we are seen and honored, forgiven, healed, renewed by our weekly coming together, so eagerly hoping to see our nation healed from this long and intense period of bitter division, even hatred. We don’t know when we will return. In fact, it’s more and more clear that when we do return it won’t be the to the same experience of Church as we had a year ago. God loves us too much to want that for us. God wants to give us something even more beautiful, more wonderful, than our imaginations previously allowed for us.
And so for now we are left with this word, a word that sums up this whole address, the word that precedes to many of the most powerful psalms, the word that so often is the only one that comes out of our longing, seeking, yearning hearts to know God with us more deeply and to see God more clearly in our blindnesses. This is the word: O… O.
O Come, O come, God-with-us. Show us the new thing you are doing among us. Show the rose blooming in the desert. And then may the O Antiphons of our yearning be turned into the Alleluia of new Life, the new life that keeps life-ing among us. Amen.