25th March 2018, The Sixth Sunday in Lent

Crosses with men dying in agony upon them in public places and along well-traveled roads were common in the Roman Empire. In 4 BC when there had been a rebellion in Syria, the Roman governor Varius led his legions to restore ‘the peace’. To show he meant business, Varius ordered the execution of 2,000 men at once on separate crosses. Fast-forward to the Jewish Wars of 66 – 70 AD, after which Jerusalem fell again to the Romans. The Roman general Titus, to show his mettle, crucified as many as 500 Jews daily outside the walls in plain view of the citizens of Jerusalem. But for truly spectacular cinema, go back to 68 BC. The gladiator Spartacus was leading 100,000 slaves against Roman authority. Once the legions eventually put down the uprising, the authorities crucified 6,000 rebels alongside the Appian Way, the road from Rome to ancient Capua. To imagine the linear scale of that horror, drive the route from St Stephen’s Church to the Historic Carmel Mission in Carmel-by-the-Sea, and picture a crucifixion every 116 feet along that 132 miles.

18th March 2018, The Fifth Sunday in Lent

Wisdom is knowing what to do and when to do it. Timing is everything. And Jesus has his own timing, his own sense of God’s work in him. In John’s gospel, we see that something is happening, is lifting him up and drawing all people to him. We hear him express it in the lesson today. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” 

Jesus zeros in on this Passover time and place because the authorities can expect him there and then. And they’re right about that. Jesus must die not on Groundhog Day or the Winter Solstice but during the festival of death out of life and life out of death.The forces that oppose God and undermine the teaching that makes him known are to be confronted and defeated. When the Gentiles approach the disciples and ask to see Jesus, Jesus announces that the hour has come. By his death new life, new growth, new fruit blossoms forth. Welcome to St Stephen’s. 

11th March 2018, The Fourth Sunday in Lent

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.” [Shakespeare, King Lear]

A boy we know lived in White Sands, New Mexico on the north side of the Organ Mountains below Rattlesnake Ridge. He got very acquainted with snakes — bull, rat, king, hognose, several kinds of rattlesnakes. He caught and kept tarantulas, horned toads, scorpions, and, yes, flies, for sport.

    In Milton’s Paradise Lost Satan is a shape-shifter who takes the form of a cherub in one place, a toad in another, a serpent in another. The Bible is an intricate web of allusion about snakes; the first part of that web was spun in the court of Pharoah when Moses threw down his staff which shape shifted into a serpent. God’s peaceable kingdom, as the prophets picture it, imagines snakes learning to play with a child. And Jesus says, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Welcome to St Stephen’s.

4th March 2018, The Third Sunday in Lent

We felt a deep twinge of sadness at the news of Billy Graham’s death last week. In many ways, he was not our kind of Christian. A Baptist, he was an enthusiast, he was outspoken about sin and, especially, about “Jesus loves you.” Episcopalians tend to be more low-key, more reserved about boldly proclaiming the gospel. We chalk it up to modesty or to Marin or whatever. 

Graham had the most fundamental Christian virtue, humility. He was teachable, willing to learn. He changed his views on many issues, including human rights. I think he saw in the gospels Jesus’s constant concern for particular people. He grasped the significance of the Christian proclamation of God incarnate, in a person, as a person, Jesus. The choir used to sing the hymn Just as I am as people went forward to give their lives to Christ one by one, each soul precious in God’s sight. The heart of his gospel was of human dignity and redemption, and it changed many lives. That same gospel is changing our lives here and now. I encourage you to bear witness to that cheerfully. Welcome to St Stephen’s.

25th February 2018, The Second Sunday in Lent

My parents used to live on Lake Gogebic in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Behind their house a Canadian National Rail train would come by once a day, and so when Evan and Gabriel were boys, I explained to them how you can hear a train coming by pressing your ears to the track. “Be quiet and get low,” I showed them, “that’s how you know it’s coming.” They put their ears to the rails. I watched their six and three-year-old bodies hold still. A rare sight. But in that moment, there was something worth holding still for.

Lent is like that. It’s preparation for Easter, as Advent is preparation for Christmas. It’s an annual opportunity to turn down the volume in life, get low, and listen for the coming rush and roar of Easter resurrection. To know that God is God, you’ve got to slow down sometimes and be still. Welcome to St Stephen’s.

18th February 2018, The First Sunday in Lent

Not since 1945 has Ash Wednesday fallen on Valentine’s Day. Shiny heart-shaped balloons and sweets, extravagant gestures — and untold millions of people around the world being ashed, each person having the sign of the cross smudged on the forehead and addressed with this, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The two rituals at first glance don’t seem to have much in common. 

But both are imaginative attempts to express something complicated about being human. In both you put yourself ‘out there’. To tell someone you love them leaves you vulnerable. It’s why we resist expressions of love even within close relationships; it’s risky. In Lent we move toward a love which risks, endures, and survives even death. Valentine’s Day. Lent. In the rituals of both we discover the dignity of a love which dares to give itself away. Welcome to St Stephen’s.

11th February 2018, Quinquagesima Sunday

The Transfiguration happens just after Jesus has told Peter, James, and John what he will do and where he is going. This prophet mightier than Elisha sets his face to Jerusalem and a cross and bids us follow as far as we can. Peter does not know what to say so he proposes a building project. He was afraid. 

We get to a place in our walk with Jesus where we cannot keep up with him, where he does things we do not understand, where he wants us to follow him but leaves us behind. Anxious, we propose our building projects, try to freeze the frame, to capture him in glory. When we get to such places in our spiritual journeys, it’s transfiguration time. Time be quiet, to listen to him, to watch what he does without need of us at all. The path to new life, to dazzling fellowship, to victory over death, goes through Golgotha. That is where we’re turning now, to Jesus’ Passion. Welcome to St Stephen’s.

4th February 2018, Sexagesima Sunday

Two parishioners are rooting for Philadelphia to win the Super Bowl, one because he doesn’t want New England to win a sixth NFL title which would surpass the 49ers’ five, the other because he doesn’t want the Pats to pull even with his Steelers’ six. For the record, the Green Bay Packers are in possession of thirteen NFL championships, not that anybody’s counting.

In 1958 the Packers recorded one win, ten losses, and one tie. For the previous ten years the only publicly-owned sports franchise in the country had been able to win but 34 games whilst losing 84, a record of futility which made them the doormats of the NFL. In 1959 they restructured. They reassessed strategy. They sold off nonproductive assets and acquired a few key new ones. They concentrated fiercely on their core business—blocking and tackling. They assembled a new management team made up of old timers and newcomers, got a firm grip on their pride and their determination, and set about making one of the great turnarounds in the history of sports, or for that matter in the history of management. What’s this got to do with us? Nothing. And everything. Welcome to St Stephen’s.

28th January 2018, Septuagesima Sunday

There’s a wonderful poem by the Welsh priest R. S. Thomas called Sea Watching. He speaks of years of looking out over the vast gray waters of the Welsh coastline, not quite knowing what he’s looking for or what rare bird might circle into view. There’s something about this image that describes perfectly the sort of groundwork that’s required for both creativity and prayer, faculties we draw upon when we come into a space like this, or stand at ocean’s edge, or atop a ridge looking out upon great vistas. 

Creativity and prayer need time and space and lots of it, and sometimes it’s so boring, and nothing happens, and we twitch and fidget and complain how useless the whole thing is. And then, on other days, a rare bird does fly into view, and we haven’t seen anything like it before, and the world becomes a different place, and the whole thing feels worth it once again. Welcome to St Stephen’s.

21st January 2018

His first week at the breast, my grandson Samuel Tamaoki would nurse only as he lay on his left side. He made his Pa remember the prophet Ezekiel. Prophets were performance artists. Ezekiel was to lay on his left side for 390 days, staring at a model of a besieged Jerusalem, sustained by bread baked on human turds. Jeremiah wedged his soiled underpants into the cleft of a rock until they rotted to symbolize Israel’s degradation. What was Jesus’ prophetic sign? When he found out John the Baptist had been beheaded, Jesus was so cheesed off that from then on he taught only in parables so as to make things more difficult for everybody. [In the Ancient Near East, prophetic signs were proprietary. None of Jesus’ disciples ever taught in parables for this reason: Jesus owned the franchise on that prophetic sign.]

Prophets are not the type of people you can take with you anywhere; they call attention to things nobody wants to see. So whilst we try in this flock to make church user friendly, we won’t pull the wool over your eyes: the story we’re living is peculiar. We harbor no illusions about getting to the bottom of it. Welcome to St Stephen’s.