Williams | Good Friday

At the end of a Good Friday service, we get to the point where nothing we do will be or feel adequate to what’s being remembered. And that’s completely right, because what matters on this day is what’s done elsewhere, done by God, somehow using the stark injustice and horror of the execution of Jesus to turn around the way the world works. Intense activity elsewhere; as if you could hear faintly a workman hammering steadily away at the blank surface of human self-satisfaction and self-deception, and an irregular sound of plaster dropping to a distant floor. And it’s not an intimidating feeling. It’s not that we’ve got an appointment we mustn’t miss and we don’t know which door to walk through or which staircase to go up. In this empty hallway, there’s nothing expected of us at this moment. The work is out of our hands, and all we can do is wait, breathe, look around. People sometimes feel like this when they’ve been up all night with someone who’s seriously ill or dying, or when they’ve been through a non-stop series of enormously demanding tasks. A sort of peace, but more a sort of ‘limbo’, an in-between moment. For now, nothing more to do; tired, empty, slightly numbed, we rest for a bit, knowing that what matters is now happening somewhere else.

— Rowan Williams, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury

Auden | Horae Canonicae: Lauds

    Among the leaves the small birds sing;
    The crow of the cock commands awaking:
    In solitude, for company.

    Bright shines the sun on creatures mortal;
    Men of their neighbours become sensible:
    In solitude, for company.

    The crow of the cock commands awaking;
    Already the mass-bell goes dong-ding:
    In solitude, for company.

    Men of their neighbours become sensible;
    God bless the Realm, God bless the People:
    In solitude, for company.

    Already the mass-bell goes dong-ding;
    The dripping mill-wheel is again turning:
    In solitude, for company.

    God bless the Realm, God bless the People;
    God bless this green world temporal:
    In solitude, for company.

    The dripping mill-wheel is again turning;
    Among the leaves the small birds sing:
    In solitude, for company.

Auden | “On Good Friday the spears were real!”

In 1953, Auden attended a public lecture at which Joseph Campbell said that Christ and the Buddha were the same because spears had been used against both, although the ones used against Buddha had been transformed into flowers. Auden, as his friend Wendell Stacy Johnson recalled, “Exclaimed quite loudly that ‘On Good Friday the spears were real.’”

— Edward Mendelson, Later Auden, p. 252

The Stripping of the Altar

Maundy Thursday is the first panel of a triptych, the first of a three-part service, the Sacred Triduum. It will take us into the darkness of the vigil where we keep watch with Jesus in Gethsemane. We are like those first disciples who fell asleep and then ran away. When the time comes to put the world to rights we are not up for it. We’re not heroes. We can go only so far walking the way of the cross with Jesus. We want to be somewhere else. 

When the Solemn Mass of the Lord’s Supper ends the Altar and nave are stripped of all ornamentation. The candles are extinguished. The bare Altar is washed and ceremonially dried; even the Sacrament House candle is put out, the Tabernacle left open and empty. The Church is made bare, liturgically destroyed. Everything which pertains to its life — even the Blessed Sacrament — is removed and the building is empty and lifeless, no longer, in a liturgical sense, a church. We’re naked, isolated with this fact laid bare; our need. And we are left to face the terrifying reality of Good Friday.

St Matthew’s Passion

Holy Week: What is Religion?

The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame, is a book about a group of small, vocal animals who lived once upon a time on the banks of the stripling Thames in Oxfordshire. There is one rather famous chapter in the book called “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn,” and the way the chapter begins is roughly this. A family of otters discovers that a small, fat, otter child named Portly is missing. Rat, who is a water rat, and Mole, who is a mole, decide to go search for him in Rat’s boat, and off they go one morning just before daybreak.

Strange things begin to happen. Rat suddenly hears a scrap of music such as he has never heard before, and then before he knows it, it’s gone. “So beautiful and strange and new,” Rat sings (and since these are British animals you have to imagine the British accent). Rat also has a rather flowery way of expressing himself. “Since it was to end so soon, I almost wish I had never heard it. For it has roused a longing in me that is pain, and nothing seems worth while but just to hear that sound once more and go on listening to it forever.”

At first his friend Mole can’t hear anything — “only the wind playing in the weeds and rushes,” he says — but then when it comes again, he does hear it; and then, as Grahame writes, “breathless and transfixed, he stopped rowing as the liquid run of that glad piping broke on him like a wave, caught him up, and possessed him utterly. He saw the tears on Rat’s cheeks, and bowed his head and understood.”

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Religion is listening the way Rat and Mole listened — which is listening with more than just your ears, of course, which is listening with your heart, with your intuition, with whatever is that part of you that longs, like a castaway, to hear news from across the seas. Worship is a response to that news, hearing it even in the ancient words of our forbears who themselves were listeners, who heard and then spoke of what they heard — Shema ’Yisrael, adonai Elohenu, adonai echad. Ecce agnus Dei qui tollit peccatum mundi.

Maybe it’s misleading to speak of religion as listening to something, maybe listening through would be more accurate — listening through the silence, through the prayer, through the music, through the sound of the wind in the rushes or through the sound of your own life, for whatever is to be heard beneath these things. It is listening the way a child listens or the way an animal listens for all I know, without any presuppositions about what you are going to hear or what you are not going to hear.

When you hear something like what Rat and Mole heard, what do you call it? Rat called it music that struck him dumb with joy and at the same time sent tears running down his cheeks. As for me, I would call it the sense that not the world certainly, not existence, but whatever it is that existence itself comes from, the power or ground out of which our lives spring, wishes us well, you and me, wishes to restore us to itself and to each other. It is the power that ultimately all theology and worship is about. It is the power that stirs inside us at those rare moments when we make the effort of real speech with each other, and with it. 

Is the Lord among us, or not?

Palm Sunday Signal Flares

On Palm Sunday we commemorate Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey. In the What are the dumbest interpretations of the Bible sweepstakes, this story has inspired real winners. Here, we’ve been told by clergy who should know better, is a picture of a meek and mild Jesus riding into Jerusalem. This is very dumb.

In ancient Israel, you could tell who was king because he rode into the city on a pack animal. In the Book of Judges, Jair had 30 sons who owned 30 donkeys and they ruled 30 cities in Gilead. [Judges 10] King David’s son Adonijah couldn’t wait for the old man to kick the bucket so he made a bid for the throne and announced himself as king, the successor to David. When word reached David, he gathered his trusted officers — Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah, one of his mighty men — and commanded them, “Take your Lord’s servants with you and set Solomon, my son, on my own mule, and take him to Gihon. There anoint him king over Israel. Blow the trumpet. Shout, ‘Long live King Solomon!’” [1 Kings 1]

Jesus’ riding into Jerusalem on a donkey at Passover (nobody does that) put Rome and the religious establishment on notice. I own this city, is what Jesus was saying. This place is mine. He deliberately staged the whole thing. 

The Christ who promises to be with us always, the one who says, “I tell you these things that in me ye might have peace. In the world you will have trials and tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” is no milquetoast. He is the same one we say this to on the 5th day of every month in Morning Prayer.

The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, / the world and those who dwell therein; / for he has founded it upon the seas, / and established it upon the rivers. / Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? / And who shall stand in his holy place? / He who has clean hands and a pure heart, / who does not lift up his soul to what is false, / and does not swear deceitfully. / He will receive blessing from the Lord, / and vindication from the God of his salvation. / Such is the generation of those who seek him, / who seek the face of the God of Jacob. Selah / Lift up your heads, O gates! / and be lifted up, O ancient doors! / that the King of glory may come in. / Who is the King of glory? / The Lord, strong and mighty, / the Lord, mighty in battle! / Lift up your heads, O gates! / and be lifted up, O ancient doors! / that the King of glory may come in. / Who is this King of glory? / The Lord of hosts, / he is the King of glory! Selah

Welcome to St Stephen’s. 

—PCE+

Dear Chums,

“Every Sunday is a little Easter and every Easter is a big Sunday,” Our boss in New York, Bill Tully, used to say that to me and Christine twenty-five years ago. I want to call Bill today, down there in Santa Barbara, to check on him and say, like a good protégé, every Sunday is a little Palm Sunday. Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might, / heaven and earth are full of your glory. / Hosanna in the highest. / Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. / Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna in the highest. 

We sing the Sanctus and the Benedictus every Sunday in church when life is normal and we keep saying them at home in our slippers now that life is cattywampus. (When coronavirustide has blown over and we all get to go back to church, bring your slippers. Let’s be Japanese. We’ll take our shoes off at the door. Christine and I want to see you in the mules you wore for livestreamed services.) Every Sunday, at the Altar or at the altar you make of your sofa, we say or sing Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.  

Hosanna in Hebrew is a signal flare; it means ‘Help!’ or ‘Rescue us!’ It has always meant that. What’s different now is that we’re more aware that we need to be saved. This year, we tell the Most High we need him to come among us and sort things out and we put our hearts into it.

I was perplexed last week. Anxiety announced that she would be staying for a while. And as I said Compline that night, I remembered where I was in time: the Eve of the Annunciation. On the 25th of March we commemorate the announcement of the Archangel Gabriel to the blessed Virgin Mary. All he asked her to do was become the mother of God the Son, Jesus Christ. Mary said to the angel, “How can this be?” She was perplexed.

Sometimes in life the unexpected happens, something big, something that demands a lot from us. We cannot fully comprehend what’s happening. St Bernard of Clairvaux, commenting on this scene from the Gospel of Luke, tells us how the whole world waited anxiously for Mary’s response. Without it, humanity would never have received its savior. “I am the handmaid of the Lord,” said Mary. “Let it be done to me according to thy word.” Her Yes means that in nine months time it will be Christmas Day.

One of my favorite pictures is this thirteenth-century one of Mary sorting the devil out whilst an angel holds toddler Jesus who’s clapping or praying.

Mary doesn’t have enough middle fingers for the devil. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

Our thoughts at this time are especially with the sick, the poor, the elderly, with medical professionals caring for us in hospitals and in research labs. They move us to tears. At 8 o’clock sharp here in Tiburon every one of us in the parish it seems steps out onto our decks or sticks our head out of a window to shout cheers into the night sky in support of them. Hosanna! I hoop n’ holler and take myself to Austin, Texas and my niece Hannah, a nurse, and so many others like her. You are a kind of nurse when you bring meals and cookies to people. Those are signal flares, prayers made soup or banana bread. 

Perhaps you’ve seen the pictures of two nurses who posted a video of themselves holding up signs through the window of their intensive care unit: “We are at work for you. You stay at home for us.” It’s a small thing, but it’s a big ask. That’s how we can all help and show our solidarity, looking not after our own interests but also the interests of others. Our faith unites us with our Creator and those willing to do his bidding. Learning of how you're going about that business puts me in touch with my deepest longings. Together with you I ask the Lord for the grace, energy, and power to do what would otherwise be impossible. To bear sickness, suffering, tragedy, and even death. To bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. It is my prayer today we’ll soon overcome this crisis and be able, like Mary, to look forward to the future with confidence, whatever the cost. 

On the eve of Palm Sunday, thinking of the donkey who gave Jesus that ride into Jerusalem, I want the poem I gave you in December for Christmas, a poem from Ursula Askham Fanthorpe, to be now a Palm Sunday card. The poem gives us what she called “an ass’s eye-view of the manger.” In the poet’s fancy, the narrator is the ass in the stable whom Jesus will later ride into Jerusalem.

No room in the inn, of course,

And not that much in the stable

What with the shepherds, Magi, Mary,

Joseph, the heavenly host –

Not to mention the baby

Using our manger as a cot.

You couldn’t have squeezed another cherub in

For love or money.

Still, in spite of the overcrowding, 

I did my best to make them feel wanted.

I could see the baby and I

Would be going places together.

—PCE+

Together Apart

We pray together apart. We’re together even sheltering in place. We feel the presence of one another the way I feel the presence of God sometimes, as an absence. 

Yesterday, I said Morning Prayer with someone I haven’t seen at all, a fellow Anglican priest whose writing put me on the Canterbury trail. We commemorate John Donne on the date of his death, March 31st (1631). Born January 22nd 1572, Donne’s poetry mesmerizes. Donne was Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral, London (the church Christine served as Priest Vicar and Chaplain). His romantic poems are theological. His Holy Sonnets are erotic. Because obviously, as kids say these days. Theology is desire or a waste of time.

As preachers go, Donne was a rock star. “Old St Paul’s” — Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s replaced it after the Great Fire of London — was one of the longest churches in the world, and when Donne mounted the pulpit the cathedral was standing room only. He and Lancelot Andrewes, the other spellbinding preacher in London at the time, were supple interpreters of biblical Hebrew and Greek. Andrewes oversaw the translation project that produced the Authorized (‘King James’) Version of the Bible.

I just read that 1,040 people died of coronavirus today in America. In December 1623 when Donne wrote Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions two hundred people were dying of a contagion in London every week. Gravely ill, he was sure life was handing him his walking papers. Meditation XVII is one of twenty three meditations. Each consists of three parts: the meditation, the expostulation, and a prayer. This passage from Meditation XVII is unforgettable:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind, and therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Confirmation | Teaching Religion

If the adjective ‘religious’ is taken to mean possessed of certain virtues such as faithfulness, compassion, humility, self-understanding, self-discipline, and integrity, you cannot teach people to be religious.

If the noun ‘religion’ is taken to denote that area of human experience in which people encounter the Reality beneath reality as a Love which both judges and transforms them, you cannot teach religion.

To the extent that God is One whom we can never make the object of our speculation without to one degree or another reducing God to a god fashioned in our own image; to the extent that God can never become an ‘It’ which we reach at the end of a logical demonstration of divine existence, but remains always an ‘I’ confronting us with divine grace and imperatives at times and in ways which we cannot control; to the extent that the most profound and subtle words we use to describe God are at best the crude metaphors that a blind man must resort to when speaking of the appearance of the sun which he knows only by feeling its warmth upon him, you can never teach God as an academic subject; to the extent that the deep and crucial questions with which religion is concerned involve people in every phase and area of their lives — to speak of a philosophy of teaching people religion is a kind of absurdity.

What then is left after all these resounding negations? What is it that I’m doing preaching the Gospel and celebrating the Sacraments? Only this, I think, and it is plenty: I’m trying to help people to see — even the high schooler who already looks upon religion as a cumbersome and implausible irrelevance (which much of the time it is) — that it is not religion in itself that matters but the Reality to which true religion points. 

And I bear witness that this Reality is Jesus Christ in at least a double sense. First, in the life of Jesus as a human being is made manifest human life as it was created to be, a life where all our tragic estrangement from ourselves, from others, and from God as the true center of our being is overcome in sacrificial love. Second, in the event of Jesus as the Christ — his life, death, and resurrection — a power is released among us which brings us to the One who hung the stars in the heavens and calls us all by name.

27 February 2020
George Herbert, Priest and Poet, (1593 – 1633)

Jesus Is Praying For You

“I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

from John chapter 17

Jesus is praying for you. His prayer is a reminder that what we try to live out in the Church, the attempt to live together as a community of love, isn’t just an attempt to be nice human beings. It’s much more trying to let the eternal reality of God come alive in us. And that eternal reality is the love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is not just a human being transmitting nice ideas or ideals to his followers.

If you look into the face of Jesus, you see reflected the eternal life of God. And that in turn is reflected in you, not just you as an individual but you as the community connecting with each other in a time of distancing, the time of corona. And in this prayer Jesus is both hopeful and realistic. He’s praying for all those who will believe, praying for people who are not insiders as it were but for the entire potential body of believers which is anyone and everyone. He’s praying for you. Welcome to St Stephen’s. 

Dear Chums,

As of this writing, last Sunday’s livestream service has been viewed 779 times. The livestreams remain viewable at any time. Here’s the livestream of the March 15th Mass: https://vimeo.com/397550214. We can all thank Jock Putney, Vestry member, for making this possible. The pandemic has forced us to be creative, and to recognize opportunities for engagement with a much wider market. 

Tomorrow, we’ll be livestreaming at 10.00am from Christ Church, Sausalito. Fr Larrimore has crafted a service of Ante-Communion. Christine will officiate. Chip will preach. Jock, again, is the camera man. That service will not include musicians. On the 29th we’ll return to St Stephen’s to broadcast our livestream customary of Holy Communion, with Bishop Marc presiding and preaching. More about that anon. 

What I want to write about today is you; your voices; your text messages; your emails. We need community all the time. We need the strength and the joy we gain from one another. It’s just that now, when the streets are quiet and we’re sheltering in place, the need is more felt, more obvious than ever. “Sally’s 85 years old and by herself; does she need us to bring her milk?” “Hey Phil. Hope you and Victoria are well. Anyone coordinating shopping / errands for the elderly from the church? I am volunteering if needed.” That’s you. That’s who you are. That’s what’s going on, what you’re doing in the time of corona. You’re looking after one another, calling each other, zoom virtual meeting each other to check in, to study what Joe calls Slow Religion: The Gospel according to St John and what I think of, affectionately, as John’s Gospel with Joe, with all of us Joes. (His zoom class meeting was terrific, by the way. I don’t mind telling you that it made tears well up in my eyes.) 

You’re going for walks together six feet apart and closer than ever. You’re teenagers FaceTiming to discuss your baptisms. You’re taking back, some of you, all your jokes about homeschooling, or you’re making new ones about it. You’re deciding social media isn’t the worst thing to happen to the world after all. You’re working frenetically, one earbud in your left ear to join in one call, another in your right ear to join in another, drawing blood from here to Sacramento as you join the international effort to chase down a vaccine. You’re doing everything you can — even not going to church when your natural instinct is to be in church to pray — to buy time for that to happen, so the doctors and nurses and hospital workers can do their magic without being overwhelmed. You’re a Deacon working faithfully in one of those hospitals as Chaplain.

I needn’t write here to update you on how we’ve pivoted operations. You can read the St Stephen’s Central page of our web site for that, a page that we’ll be curating and updating week by week. Here I want to put in a good word for anxiety. Well-intended people, perhaps some of them clergy, are telling you not to be anxious. And while I understand the intent behind that, I want to say that anxiety is the appropriate response to what’s going on right now. It’s okay to be honest about that. It’s okay to be anxious. Also, I’ve spent a lot of time (and money) to read the Bible closely in the last 45 years. I do my best to be a non-anxious leader, and much of the time that comes naturally to me. But there is no biblical account of non-anxious leadership. The Bible is full of anxious leaders. Moses, Jeremiah, Mrs Job, David, Blessed Joseph (whose Feast Day was March 19th), the Blessed Mother, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Paul. These are the shoulders on which we stand. They all went through a thing or two.

From Paul’s letter to the Philippians, chapter four, verses six and seven: “Let your reasonableness be known to everyone; the Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything but in everything [my emphasis] by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

I think there is this tendency when we tell each other not to be anxious that we’re saying please just shut up. Right? Please just keep it to yourself. We don’t want to hear what you’re worried about because it will make us more worried. We don’t want to hear what you're afraid of because it will make us more afraid. 

But we do, actually, those of us in this Body of Christ we call St Stephen’s, we do want to hear what you’re worried about, what you’re anxious about. So stay in touch. Keep calling and texting and emailing and zooming us. Don’t shut up.

The Lord that we worship and love, from the Altar to our dining tables, from the Font to our bathtubs, from your fridge to Sally’s doorstep, is a God with us always, a God who so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son. Bring your anxiety to God. The Most High won’t turn you away, but instead will offer you steadfast love, from this corona time forth and forevermore. God says, Come to me with your supplications. Come to me with your worries. Come to me with your anxieties. Don’t just do it yourself. Bring it to me.

—PCE+

7 Things Seen or Heard

PBS runs 5 hours of kids shows in the morning. Like his predecessor, Mister Rogers, Daniel Tiger and his family have long been a source of comfort to parents and children all over the world, especially in times of trouble.

The Advent Choir, Boston | Choral Evensong, 18th March 2020. Live recordings of The Church of the Advent Choir, an all-professional choral ensemble in Boston.

Christian History Almanac | A daily 5-minute podcast that highlights those stories—sometimes well known, other times less so—that have shaped the history of the church. Hosted by historian and author Dr. Daniel van Voorhis, each daily podcast concludes with a piece of prose or poetry.

Comfort in Covidia | “ ... you and I find ourselves ‘strangers in a strange land’ (Exodus 2:22). What we face is threatening and even frightening. Nevertheless, I’m comforted by the fact that many of the followers of Jesus have trod this path before.” Hat tip to Marjorie Sennett.

Yale Public Health | Experts address latest novel coronavirus developments.

Italians Sing from their balconies | Questo è bello! Hat tip to Karen Foss.

Worship from St Stephen’s |Holy Communion, from St Stephen’s Belvedere, 15th March 2020.

Is the Lord among us, or not?

From Exodus, the 17th chapter: “Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” May I speak in the name of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. There’s anxiety in the air. Play, as natural as breathing, is shutting down. In isolation, the mind turns in on itself and it can get ugly in there. Throats are dry. And people are letting God have it. They want to know, “Is the Lord among us or not?” 

It’s not pestilence; not coronavirus; it’s three days in the desert without water. The Israelites are about to die of thirst at Rephidim, and they “quarrel with Moses.” 

And Moses says, “Why contend [vai·ya·rev] with me? Why do you put the Lord on trial?” His being God’s anointed, that’s what the Israelites are doing: putting God in the dock. They want a trial, they want to charge Moses with a capital offense, which is why Moses says to God, “They’re about to stone me.” 

In the Bible, when people are stoned to death it’s a judicial execution, it isn’t a mob action. So the dangerous question raised by this story is, What’s God going to do with Israel when it puts him on trial? 

And God answers that question by saying, in effect, You want a trial? I’ll give you a trial. Look at the text.

“And the Lord answered Moses, ‘Walk ahead of the people. Take some of the elders of Israel.’” 

Why elders? God’s calling a jury; the elders will assume the role of witnesses at the trial.

 “And take in your hand the staff.” 

Why a staff? The staff is a kind of gavel. In ancient Israel you could tell who the judge was in a trial by who’s holding the staff. The staff would be used, in some cases, as the implement of smiting, the judge not just hearing the evidence and pronouncing the verdict but also executing the sentence straightaway. 

Then God says, “And I will stand before you on the rock at Horeb.” With the one exception of Jesus standing before Pilate, this is the only passage in the Bible where God stands before a human being at a trial; in every other case, people stand before God’s anointed. The daughters of Zelophehad stood before Moses because they had a problem about their inheritance rights [Num 27]. Two prostitutes stood before Solomon debating about whose baby it was. [1 Kings 3]. 

So who is put on trial at Horeb? God. 

Who’s acting out the part of judge? Moses. 

Now let’s say you and I are those elders. What would we expect? Here’s God in a theophany possessing the rock. Not a little stone like a Petoskey stone. The Hebrew word [צוּר / tsur] translated ‘rock’ is used to refer to all of Mount Sinai. 

So God in the glory cloud ‘stands’ on the rock, possesses it. 

There is Moses with the staff. 

Israel, represented by her elders, witnesses the case. 

As elders, what are we to expect will happen now that we’ve had the temerity, playing the blame game, to put God on trial? We expect that God will say to Moses, “The staff you smote the Nile with and caused it to divide, lift the staff and point it at the elders, and let them have the justice they’re asking for.” 

But that’s not what happens. God confides in Moses saying, “Lift the staff. I’ll stand before you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock . . . and water will come out of it so that the people can drink.” 

Here is God’s awesome pillar of glory cloud inhabiting the rock. Moses lifts the staff and strikes the rock which bears God’s presence—and God takes the blow! And water flows out of the rock! God takes the blame that the people would receive the blessing. God takes the judgement, and Israel has a drink on the house. (Some of you are thinking you could use a drink on the house.) 

There’s anxiety in the air. You’re asking, “Is the Lord among us or not?” Take that question to the One put on trial and struck at Rephidim, take it to the One put on trial and struck on the Cross, take it to the One who gives his life for you so powerfully that you become little Christ’s to one another for the life of the world. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

St Stephen’s Has Pivoted Operations

To All Members and Friends of St Stephen’s Church,

This is to follow up on the March 11th directive from Bishop Marc: “I prayerfully ask all churches in the Diocese of California to cancel ALL public worship services for the month of March.” While St Stephen’s mission doesn't change, how we live into it does. That has always been true; this week the need to adapt to conditions is obvious. 

I write to outline St Stephen’s plan to transition from in-person open-to-the-public worship to worship that is livestreamed. We're novices at this; we'll get better at it. (I’ll resist the temptation, tomorrow, to look into the camera and say, Hi, Mom!) This just in: Bishop Marc, long scheduled to be at St Stephen’s on the 29th of March, will keep that appointment: He’ll be presiding and preaching at St Stephen’s for our livestreamed Mass that morning.

This is a shift with no parallels in our parish history. The last time St Stephen’s had to pivot operations this significantly was in the 1940s, against the backdrop of World War II. The transition we’re making this week has widespread implications for us, and, working with Christine Trainor, I wanted to outline our initial thinking about our planned approach and what it will mean in the future. First, though, I want to emphasize a few key points.

St Stephen’s is business (almost) as usual. We are embarking on a different operating mode so as to minimize the spread of the virus. As our own Philip Norris has instructed us, social distancing and de-densifying are key means of limiting rapid spread of the coronavirus. So we are doing what we can to help avoid overwhelming area hospitals and to enable vulnerable populations to receive the health care they need. 

All in-person small group and outside group meetings on our campus are cancelled for the time being to help flatten the curve. We will be experimenting with Zoom Virtual Meeting and FaceTime to enable us to continue things such as the Confirmation class (Sundays 5:00 - 6:00p), the Rector’s Bible Study (Mondays 9:30 - 10:30a), the Lenten Class (Thursdays 6:00 - 7:00p), Joe Jennings’ Bible Study Slow Religion: the Gospel of St John, Karl Belgum’s adult forums, Vestry Meetings, and so on. 

Though this is new territory, we have experience on which we have been drawing, some within our own parish family. Medically, longtime member Philip Norris has for three weeks now personally informed us of steps to take in the interest of loving and protecting the parish, especially the elderly and the immunocompromised. Jock Putney, new member of the Vestry, was consulted in advance of the Bishop’s anticipated directive so as to give us more lead time to be prepared. We are leveraging Jock’s expertise in this area and preparing to provide live streaming services beginning this Sunday, 15 March, at 10 o’clock. Again, here is the link: https://vimeo.com/397550214

Q: How will I receive Holy Communion if not by mouth?

A: By faith. Our Anglican tradition has been through pestilence and passed wisdom down to us in the Book of Common Prayer. Here’s the rubric straight from the 1689 Prayer Book [you can translate it into contemporary Californian]: “But if a man, either by reason of extremity of sickness, or for want of warning in due time to the Curate, or for lack of company to receive with him, or by any other just impediment, do not receive the Sacrament of Christ's Body and Blood: the Curate shall instruct him that if he do truly repent him of his sins, and stedfastly believe that Jesus Christ hath suffered death upon the Cross for him, and shed his Blood for his redemption, earnestly remembering the benefits he hath thereby, and giving him hearty thanks therefore; he doth eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ profitably to his soul's health, although he do not receive the Sacrament with his mouth.” 

There’s your answer, and we didn’t make it up. Via livestream you will receive what Tradition calls Spiritual Communion. Inclining your hearts, you will eat and drink the Body and Blood of our Savior Jesus Christ to your soul's health, although you do not receive the Sacrament with your mouth.

Pastoral Care is constant and changing. Alberta, Christine, Dorothy, Richard, Shari, Zoila, and I are working at what we’ll call tele-pastoral care. We are already collaborating to call parishioners who are most vulnerable in these circumstances. We will be building out an old-fashioned phone-tree system. Don’t be surprised if you get a call from the clergy checking in on you to ask how you're dealing with the disruption and what we can do to help you, explaining how to livestream, and so on. Let us know-email Elizabeth or call the church office at 415-435-4501 if you need a device and / or need help with WiFi access. Let us know also if you have an extra device you are willing to lend to a parish member.

Your clergy are aware of the pastoral needs of the parish. What we are not is omniscient; we appreciate it deeply any time you make sure to inform us of someone in need, sickness, or any other kind of adversity. Every member of this Body is part of the pastoral care system. We encourage you to be more intentional about this now than ever. 

As always, during normal business hours, the clergy may be contacted at the office number: 415-435-4501. After hours, if you have a pastoral emergency, call or text the Clergy On Call number, 415-328-8812.

Pastoral Care begins at the Altar. That is in part why we’re live streaming services. I think of two of my priestly heroes, George Herbert and John Donne, who lived when 200 people were dying of plague in the City of London every week. Even as pestilence kept people from the parish church, parishioners heard the church bells and knew that though physically removed, the Mass was being celebrated, the Body of Christ was being broken, and they received the Sacrament if not by mouth. With this in mind, we’re planning to livestream services even after this virus blows over: shut ins at the Redwoods, say, or in their own homes will be strengthened by it. Parishioners in far off places will be able to say their prayers connected to their parish community, their Altar.

The Clergy and Professional Staff are working light on their feet. One of the most important assets we have is the professional staff. We expect our work to be adjusted but uninterrupted. (For example, we’re still moving the chains [that's a football analogy, Virginia] to open a St Stephen’s Preschool in 2021. On the Camp Create Goes to Angel Island front, school communities are reporting that families are registering apace.) In everything we do, we will continue to prioritize the health and well-being of everyone in our community.

We know you will have many questions. We hope you will send them to Elizabeth Gravely (elizabeth [at] ststephenschurch.org). Learning what is on your mind is the best way we can identify what additional information we should share broadly. We will deal with any questions that are urgent, and ask for your patience as we respond to the rest.

We hope this shift, extraordinary as it is, addresses the growing uncertainty this pandemic has generated, as a decision that was feeling increasingly inevitable has now been made and we can plan for the future. The first priority of any institution, including ours, has to be the safety of its community. We take these actions with that primary aim. Together, we will continue on with the work of St Stephen’s Church and figure out a new normal in an abnormal time.

I began by asking you to do what you do, to pray. I ask you now to make this prayer the prayer we say together, especially at bedtime: Keep watch, dear Lord, with those who work, or watch, or weep this night, and give your angels charge over those who sleep. Tend the sick, Lord Christ; give rest to the weary, bless the dying, soothe the suffering, pity the afflicted, shield the joyous; and all for your love's sake. Amen. 

—PCE+