Where it All Begins

The Feast of the Annunciation of the Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary (March 25) is likely not all that often celebrated.  It rarely falls on a Sunday, and even when it does, the readings otherwise scheduled for that Sunday would be used unless that parish at issue were named for the Annunciation (or somebody breaks the rules, which I personally encourage).  I regret its rarity.  The gospel for that celebration, from the Gospel of Luke, is one of the most important passages in all of Scripture, and it is far too easily overlooked.  In fact, overlooking it has let to a lot of bad results.  It gets right to the heart of things even before Jesus shows up on the scene at all. 

 The Annunciation is often portrayed in art with the Archangel Gabriel hovering above the Virgin Mary.  He is making an announcement.  She is receiving it, often with her hand over her chest., perhaps over her heart.  Sometimes she is portrayed with both hands crossed over her chest, almost in a self-protective posture.  It’s all rather meek.

The text of the gospel, however, paints a very different picture from anything either meek or weak.  First Gabriel makes the announcement he has been sent to make.  It is what happens next that warrants a more careful look.

To tell you the truth, I would be inclined to respond to a visit from an archangel, speaking directly for God, no less, with something along the lines of, “Whatever you say.”  Not so, Mary. The young woman, really probably a girl by our standards, does not just take the news and acquiesce.  Rather, she asks a question herself.  "How can this be, since I am a virgin?” (Lk. 1:34) 

And do not be mistaken.  The archangel of God does not respond, “Because I said so.”  Rather Gabriel explains, ending with words that must have gladdened Mary’s heart, “For nothing will be impossible with God” (v. 37).  Then, and only then, does Mary agree to the angel’s proposal.  “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word” (v. 38).

I conclude with one more reference to art.  Many, but unfortunately not all, representations of the Annunciation, portray the Virgin Mary being interrupted from her reading by the angel’s presence.  That’s right.  Artists portray Mary as a woman who could read, a rather rare thing in their days and hers.  One of the reasons, of course, is that she is about to make the Word incarnate.  We should not forget that the Word could not have become incarnate without her cooperation.  But even more importantly, at least in my mind, is that she was way outside preconceptions of who could and should do what.  She was a force to be reckoned with.  I imagine Gabriel reporting that to God.  I imagine God responding, “I know.”

I don’t know where we got the idea that women are supposed to be passive in the world and men are to play the leading roles.  It’s just not biblical.  It is not the world God intends.  It is not a world Jesus accepts.

                                                                                    Agape,

                                                                                    +Stacy

                                                                Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                                                    Founder and President 

Distracted from God

This may not be a good thing for a bishop to say.  Nevertheless, here it is.  I do not like Lent.  At all.  There; now that’s out in the open.           

There are many reasons for it.  One is that it starts out with a peculiar hypocrisy on Ash Wednesday.  On the very day that the gospel urges us to be wary of practicing our piety so that we can be seen by others, what do we do?  We all trot out of church with a big, and very public, smudge of ashes on our foreheads.  Then there is the whole idea of giving something up.  I’m not good at all at giving things up.  I’m willing to confess that my spiritual logic here is faulty, but if God provides something that gives me pleasure what joy could God possibly get from me giving it up.  And besides.  Most of the things we are willing to give up show the triviality of the exercise.  I’m willing to give up Oreos, for example.  What could possibly be the spiritual reward in that?  Is God that easily bamboozled? 

In fact, I don’t think I would get any of it were it not for this week’s Old Testament reading.  There are two things about the passage from Isaiah worth noting here.  Let me begin with the second.  Isaiah urges the people in a passage filled with anything but giving things up, “Seek the LORD while he may be found, call upon him while he is near” (55:6).  It makes perfect sense, but the conundrum it leaves me with is when, exactly, is it that the Lord may be found, that the Lord is near and may be called upon?  And how on earth would I know?

But look back at the beginning of the passage, the other thing to note about it.  Isaiah invites people to come and receive the rich gifts of God.  “[C]ome to the waters; . . . come, buy and eat!  Come, buy wine and milk” (55:1).  This is the opposite of giving something up for Lent, especially something like Oreos.  This is not sacrificial.  It is indulgent.        

But look more closely.  To whom does Isaiah issue the invitation to indulge?  To come to the waters, he invites those who thirst.  To buy and eat and to receive wine and milk, he invites those without money.          

When you put it together, I think you have God near and accessible to those who have nothing to distract them from perceiving God’s presence.  Lent isn’t so much about taking on a purposeless discipline as it is about removing the things that prevent us from perceiving God’s abundance, God’s presence, God’s nearness.  Isaiah’s invitees don’t need help to do that.  The hungry, the thirsty, the poor have nothing to get in their way.           

I, however, do.  That calls for a time of spiritual help.  Lent is not about giving things up.  It is about a time of help for people like me.

                                                                                    Agape,

                                                                                    Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                                                    Founder and President

The Jesus We’d Like to Forget

This week’s readings are of the Transfiguration, a story I confess I’ve never much understood.  What I find most interesting is the little story that follows the part about what happened on the mountain.             

It involves the healing of a boy with a nasty unclean spirit.  When Jesus, Peter, John, and James came down from the mountain, a man called out to Jesus to see his son.  The spirit seized the boy, convulsed him, mauled him, and would not leave him.  “Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father.  And all were astounded at the greatness of God” (Lk. 9:42-43).           

Here’s the part we tend to overlook, I think, and might like to forget.  Right before Jesus healed the boy, he was confronted with the news that his disciples had tried and failed to do the same thing before he got there.  He was not pleased and responded, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” (v. 41).         

Now that just doesn’t sound like the Jesus whose picture was on the Sunday school classroom wall.  That Jesus was sweet, always nice, and never offensive.  The Sunday school Jesus, however, bears little resemblance to the Jesus of the gospels. 

We should not forget that it is the Jesus of the gospels, according to Luke, and not the Sunday school one, that revealed the greatness of God.  The people present that day understood.  I’m afraid we might miss it.  It’s up to us to choose between the Sunday school Jesus and the real one.  The revelation of the greatness of God depends on it.

Agape,

                                                                        +Stacy

                                                       Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                                        Founder and President

                                                                        Love Must Act

August 11, 1979

This week’s readings are a gold mine for preachers.  Among the really good options provided, I have a personal favorite, really personal.

When Ginger and I were dating, it became clear that we had some different aspirations for our lives.  This is not terribly surprising.  We just had different expectations about what the future should hold and how we should shape what came for our future family.

I had spent my growing up years in Atlanta, where I was born, and the suburbs of New York City, where my father had been transferred.  I imagined an urban life.

Ginger who had a much more stable, even idyllic, childhood than I had grown up in a small town in South Carolina.  It was a very small town.  Ginger remembers when the red light was installed. 

Not surprisingly, each of us imagined our roots also being our roadmap for what was to come.  I know Ginger had some fear related to my dreams of where we would live out our lives.  I didn’t name my feelings fear at the time, but in retrospect, I was just as afraid of a small town as she may have been of big city life.  It isn’t a spoiler to say that our lives have mostly followed the big city course.  Along the way we have made our home in Atlanta and New York, each more than once, and the truth is that we love both.  It still makes me smile to think of the girl from small-town South Carolina running errands on the streets of New York City or driving me home from work up Madison Avenue.  And, to tell you the truth, I have expanded my horizons, too.  We love a small cottage we bought many years ago in the mountains of North Carolina.  Our idea of a perfect life is the combination of both.

But the point of this really has nothing to do with the pluses or minuses of where to live.  It has everything to do with what love means, in this case, that we make our own visions of what should be yield to the happiness of those we love.  We risk our own happiness for theirs.  One thing I have learned from Ginger along the way is that love means making someone else’s needs more important than your own.

That is exactly what Ruth did with her mother-in-law Naomi.  After her husband had died, Ruth bound herself out of love to Naomi, even though, as Naomi pointed out, the prospects would have been better for Ruth if she hadn’t.  Despite Naomi’s protestations, Ruth stuck with her.  Along the way, she spoke these very memorable words. “Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; Where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.  Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried” (Ruth 1:16-17).

There’s a bit more to this story.  Not only did Ruth give us a living example of what love means in her devotion to Naomi (Naomi called it determination), she accomplished more than she probably imagined she was going to.  Ruth, you see, is one of three women mentioned by Matthew as an ancestor of Jesus in addition to Mary (Mt. 1:5).  Whether you call it determination, devotion, or love, it is certainly an essential characteristic of God’s salvation of humanity.

Now the part I have not yet revealed is that Ginger recited Ruth’s words to me on our wedding day, August 11, 1979.  I, in turn, recited what I hope is a similar commitment, but words of Shakespeare, not Scripture, from Sonnet 116 (“Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds”).  Scripture’s story is more universal, but Shakespeare’s point strikes me as essentially the same.

And that commitment has produced a life, mostly a city life but with some country elements.  I could not have asked for anything more.

                                                                                    Agape,

                                                                                    +Stacy

                                                                Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                                                    Founder and President

Hope for the Rich People

This week’s gospel is one of the hardest passages in all of the New Testament, I think.  It has more than a little bit of a silver lining, though, for those of us to whom God has entrusted the means for a privileged lifestyle.  Of course, it involves giving that up.    

Now rich is not something the Gospels often associate with Jesus.  Usually Jesus is found caring for, teaching about, and living among the poor, the sick, and the marginalized.  Indeed, I would argue that Matthew 25 establishes the sacramental presence of Jesus in the poor in exactly the same way a sacramental presence is established in the bread and wine in Matthew 26.

I am not a poor person, and if I were to be honest, the truth is I have no desire to be one.  By the world’s standards I am materially rich indeed.  It does leave some uncomfortable questions about how I relate to God and, indeed, whether God cares about me the same way as God cares about the poor.  

Mark 10, though not easy, provides a grace-filled answer.  A rich man once approached Jesus, knelt, and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus’ answer, though it may not seem like it at first, is full of good news for the rich among us. 

Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”  When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.  Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”  (Mk. 10:21-23) 

Now, as someone who has more than a little, this sounds like not such good news to me, I will admit.  Could that be because I am not looking at it with the eyes of the kingdom of God?

The first thing I would point out is that Jesus has not forgotten about the wealthy.  We are not left out.  There is a way for us.  It isn’t an easy way, to be sure, but there is a way.  After all, what worthwhile is easy?

The second thing is that point is, at least in this story, not so much the good of the poor but the good of the rich.  It’s about helping us be free enough to follow Jesus.  As the passage goes on to show, there are lots of things, not the least of which are possessions and even family, that can hold us back.  All of them are things we think of as good.  It is hard for those with wealth to enter the kingdom of God.  A lot of the things I was taught to be thankful for growing up have to be given up and replaced with other things to be thankful for.

The main thing to note, though, is the way this passage begins.  It is a detail that might well go unnoticed at first.  Maybe it’s because we take it for granted.  We shouldn’t.

Before giving the hard teaching he gave to the rich man about giving away all his possessions, Jesus looked at him and loved him.  Jesus did not take him for granted.  He looked at him.  And his counsel, though hard, is fundamentally and primarily loving.  It is all based on love.  In this case it is Jesus’ love of the rich.            

There is hope for us.

                                                                        Agape,

                                                                       + Stacy

                                                                        Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                                        Founder and President

                                                                        Love Must Act

Bavumeleni Abantwana Beze

Over the entrance to Holy Cross School in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), South Africa are three words in isiXhosa, the language most of our students speak at home.  They are “Bavumeleni Abantwana Beze.”  They are the words of Jesus from Mark 10:14:  “Let the children come.”            

The complete story is even more revealing, although “Let the children come” sums it up nicely. 

People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them.  But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.  Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."  And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

It’s hard to overestimate the importance of this passage, I think, for how we live our lives.  The moral consequences of what we teach children are enormous.  In fact, they are nothing less than the kingdom of God.  Let us not overlook that the kingdom belongs to the children and not to us.  That is to whom God has given it.  We do well to remember that our entrance to it has to do with whether they give it to us, whether we are open to receiving it from them.  It is not the other way around. 

Holy Cross School exists not nearly so much for us to teach our students about God but for us to learn about God’s love from them.  It is not what we do for them.  It is what we get from them. 

Love Must Act exists for that principle.  We enter the kingdom of God, if at all, not for the children but by them.  Let the children come for the kingdom already belongs to them.  I have found them incredibly generous in sharing it.  Bavumeleni Abantwana Beze.  I’m pretty sure it’s the language Jesus speaks at home, too.

                                                            Agape,

                                                            +Stacy

                                                            Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                            Founder and President

                                                            Love Must Act

Madiba and Ubuntu

I am writing this reflection from South Africa, where Andrew Joyce and I are working on Love Must Act’s primary project, Holy Cross School in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown).  The spirit of Nelson Mandela, the perseverance of democracy, Jesus’ mandate to love our neighbors, and the conflict we face in the United States with people so angry at one another is much on my heart and mind. 

While walking through the school’s break room yesterday, I noticed a poster.  It featured the smiling face of Mandela, (known most often known by South Africans as Madiba.  The name is related to Mandela’s heritage and clan within the Xhosa tribe.  It is both a term of respect and endearment.  It is noteworthy, I think, that with all the facets of the legacy he left, Madiba is the name Mandela himself preferred to be called—respect and endearment.

The poster I mentioned has a quotation of Madiba that struck me as pertinent to our lives at this moment. “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”  Love demands nothing less. 

This is something important I’ve learned from my African teachers.  It’s not about me.  It’s about us.  There is no true freedom that ignores the needs of others.  Indeed, I think love might be understood as placing the needs of another before my own needs, maybe even giving up my right to do or have something so that another can be or have something. 

It relates to another African principle, something Desmond Tutu calls ubuntu.  Its meaning is complex, basically untranslatable into English, but Archbishop Tutu defines it as meaning “I am because we are.”   I do not exist as if no others do.  Indeed, I exist myself because and only because others do.  I exist, in fact, to love those others, even when there’s a cost, even a high one.  Especially when there’s a high one.  The greater the cost, after all, the greater the love. 

                                                                        Agape,

                                                                        +Stacy

                                                      Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                                        Founder and President

                                                                        Love Must Act

A Spiritually Happening Place

Spiritual moments of truth come, according to Proverbs, “when panic strikes you like a storm, and of your calamity comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you” (1:27).  Catastrophe is not the end of the story, however.  According to Proverbs, the storm and the whirlwind, distress, and anguish, are God’s opportunity to make God’s words known, God’s will clear.  That makes New Orleans one spiritually happening place, a Petrie dish of God’s revelation.  It isn’t just New Orleans, of course, but the aftermath of devastation in Louisiana is where I have seen it myself.

The storm at issue, though, was not Ida but Katrina.  God’s words were brought home to me by a dear friend, the late Charles Jenkins, who was the Bishop of Louisiana sixteen years ago when Katrina struck, the anniversary of which Ida ironically reminded us of.  I’m sad about losing Charles for many reasons.  One is that I am sure Charles could have had some valuable counsel about God and Ida. 

Charles never failed to make me laugh.  He could tell jokes about his native Cajun culture perhaps best not repeated.  He was a good companion for dinner.  He knew a fine bottle of wine and many a fine New Orleans restaurant.  I think of him as dapper.  He was meticulous about his appearance, both in grooming and attire. 

He was a graduate of Nashotah House, which gave him a distinctly Anglo-Catholic and generally conservative perspective on theological issues.  He was a Southerner, which gave a generally conservative perspective on social issues, including many that came to the fore among the leaders of the Episcopal Church in his day.  He was not, either theologically or socially, what we would today describe as “progressive,” but that is only because he was not sure the causes of the day might be more regressive than progressive.  He had a good heart, the best, but he looked at the issues of the day from a point of view a little to the right.

The House of Bishops met not long after Katrina struck and Charles, as he would do, made a Herculean effort to attend.  So Herculean, in fact, that he arrived without his normal meticulous attention to his appearance.  I had never before seen him disheveled.  He was in bad need of a haircut.  Both my wife and I expressed concern to him.  He said there was not yet a barbershop open in New Orleans.  As a small way to express our care for him, we arranged for him to get a haircut in the hotel where the bishops were staying before we all left to go home.  Charles had clearly experienced the storm and the whirlwind.

There was more going on than an uncharacteristic lack of attention to grooming details.  From Katrina on, Charles became a powerful voice, especially among bishops, for defeating racism.  It’s not that he had ever been for racism, of course.  It’s just that he had never seen its effects quite so clearly as when laid bare by Katrina.  As the mostly black residents of the Ninth Ward struggled, were displaced at first temporarily and then more permanently, Charles saw, I think for the first time, that the cards were stacked against black residents of his beloved New Orleans.  What he saw became a powerful incentive to speak and to act. 

Charles’ words made God’s words known in a new way and were a powerful instrument of God’s will in the world to be paid attention to.  He was a light in post-Katrina New Orleans.  He was a light to me.  He was a light in the storm and whirlwind.  He was a light worth being guided by.  Charles was never a stranger to love, but he became a witness to love acting, at some personal cost, in a way I had not known him to be before.  Charles is the epitome of why New Orleans is a spiritually happening place.

                                                                        Agape,

                                                                        +Stacy

                                                                        Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                                        Founder and President

Cooking for Love

I confess to not being that fond of the Gospel of John.  It is a little too ethereal for my tastes.  I’m more earthy.  For example, Mathew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of the Last Supper, from which we get the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the body and blood of Jesus. They’re very down-to-earth.  I like those. John, however, does not even tell that story.  Too earthy for him, I guess. 

Over the last couple of weeks, the gospel reading has had to do with the partaking in the body of Jesus, but not in the sense of a meal.  John is too ethereal for that.  This week, for example, Jesus says:

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.  Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.  This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.  (Jn. 6:56-58)

One of his disciples responds, “This teaching is difficult” (v.60.  I’ll say.

I don’t know what to make of Jesus’ language here, but I think it may have something to do with the task I finished a few minutes ago—cooking dinner for my family.  Now, granted, that’s pretty earthy and necessary to survival, but it points to something bigger.  Indeed, it points to love. 

We returned home yesterday from a trip to California, so I decided it was time for something Southern.  I made dressing, Vidalia onion pie, and collard greens with dumplings.  I ran out of steam before the fried okra.  I’m not a particularly good cook.  I basically follow the recipe in front of me.  But there’s nothing I’d rather do than cook dinner for the people I love, so I do most of the cooking in our family.  It is a tangible way to love the people who love me.  It nourishes me to nourish them.  It connects me to those who loved me many years ago.  The dressing recipe came from my grandmother through my aunt.  All these people have nourished me along the way.  Love yields love, which yields more love, and so it goes.  It’s all about love.

I think that’s what Jesus might be talking about in John.  I think he may be using the metaphor of sharing a meal, eating the bread that he gives, which is itself an intimate act, to teach that when we share most intimately, we give one another life through love.  It doesn’t really even have to be a sacrament to do the trick.  It just is in acting on love to do something concrete that spreads life and love all the more. 

                                                                        Agape,

                                                                        +Stacy

                                                      Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                                        Founder and President

The Gift of Simple

                  The alternative Old Testament reading for this week contains a strange and perhaps unhelpful association.  Speaking of the house she has built, Wisdom calls from the highest places to the simple:  “You that are simple, turn in here!” (9:4).  Then she speaks again, this time “to those without sense, . . . ‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.  Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight” (vv. 5-6).  Through Proverbs parallelism, it appears Wisdom associates the simple and those without sense and urges both to grow up and become insightful.

                 This seems consistent with my upbringing.  To be a simpleton was not a positive thing.  I’m wondering about that now, though.  Grandchildren will do that to you.

                 My granddaughter Sophie is three and a half.  She talks up a storm, and it pays attention to listen.  One night this week Ginger went over to take something to her parents.  Ginger came through the door, and Sophie called out from the where Da-Da was giving her a path.  “I’m playing in the bathtub upstairs,” she announced.  Sunday morning I met her at the neighborhood park, which Sophie calls her “favorite park,” not distinguishing that it’s actually her only park.  She cackled uncontrollably watching our dog Georgia run with the other dogs.  She looked up at me and said, “Granddaddy, I love you,” and then wanted to be picked up, the very essence of a simple pleasure.  Then she wanted to go on the swings and the sliding board.  Finally she was ready to go home.  Her mom had to set a deadline, but you could tell she was actually worn out.  She asked to go home “nakey,” which means only in panties.  It was hot, after all.  The day before I had taken her to get leotards and a skirt for her ballet class, which starts later this month.  She was very excited and picked out what she wanted, including a pink and purple bag to carry it all in.  “I’m ready to go now,” she announced.

                 But here’s the main thing.  He mom took her to the Dollar Store later that day and bought her a fall craft project.  It was an outline of “harvest time” to be painted by budding artists.  She was quite proud of her work.  She said, “I painted the sky orange, the fence and words brown, the pumpkins red, and the truck green.”  I have a picture of it.  It’s just what she did.  And the project cost all of, as the name implies, one dollar.  A dollar well spent on the simplest of things.

                 Today she got her picture taken with her “My First Day of School” sign announcing that her name is Sophie and she is in Pre-K 4  and her teaches are Ms. Nikki and Ms. Mandi.  Oh, and by the way, her favorite colors are pink and purples, she wants to be a doctor when she grows up, and her favorite things are Teddy, coloring, Legos, and Barbies.  But it’s hard to get to all that other information because she is standing behind it with the biggest smile on her face.  Sophie is simply happy.  And she simply makes me happy.

                 She is the very model of simplicity at this age, and although I know that won’t last, I’m not sure I’m happy about that reality.  I know she has a lot to learn, but I also know I’ve never seen anyone so happy.  I’m pretty sure it’s related to the simplicity.

                 There is a hymn that is better at Sophie’s perspective of the matter and I think quite different than Proverbs’ understanding.  It is a hymn of the Shaker tradition, known to many as ”Simple Gifts.”   

Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where I ought to be;
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan't be ashamed;
Till by turning, turning we come round right.  

I like hymn better than Wisdom’s house, I’m afraid.  I think I’ll teach it to Sophie.  She loves to sing.  Maybe she’ll sing it to me when I need to be reminded of the simplicity of being three. 

                                                                                    Agape,                                    

                                                                                    +Stacy

                                                                                    Bishop Stacy Sauls

                                                                                    Founder and President