30 October

This weekend was a truly festive celebration of the ministry of Fr. Bob and Helen Dekker – 20 years of ministry!

 On Friday night, almost 200 people gathered for dinner at the Metropolis.  Today, Sunday, over 300 people packed St. Simon’s for Fr. Bob’s last Eucharist as Rector.  What a wonderful celebration followed by a beautiful reception in the parish hall.

Thank you to everyone who made this weekend possible.  A special thank you to Parish Life (particularly Caryl Medsker, Julie Wood, Katie Suprenuk, Amy Stomper and Ann Kee) for organizing both Friday’s dinner and today’s reception.  And thank you to everyone for attending – it was quite a testament to all the lives touched by the Dekkers over the years.

There is no doubt they will be missed, but I know you all join me in wishing God’s blessings to them as they begin this new chapter in their lives.

With love,

M.E.+

23 October

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.  And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. With this answer to the lawyer’s question, Jesus sums up the 613 commandments in the Old Testament on how a person should live their life.  Sounds simple enough, right?

I think not.  The main reason I don’t think it’s so simple is because, different than a list of dos and don’ts, these two commandments are all about relationship.  Notice Jesus says that we are to love the Lord your God – not some abstract higher power, but the God who created us, who loves us and wants to be in relationship with us.  Then Jesus says love your neighbor; again, Jesus is not referring to the whole world’s population, but your neighbor – the person living next to you.  Living into these two commandments is really hard.

What about love your God?  How often do you think about your relationship with God?  Do you think of your relationship with God in the same way you think about your relationship with, say, your best friend?  I don’t mean to ask the question that we sometimes hear: “do you have a personal relationship with your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?”  As an Episcopalian, I always cringe when asked that question.  But the truth of the matter is: yes, I do.  I do have a very personal relationship with God.  And I would suggest we all do.  We come together every week and remind ourselves that we do; in particular, I point to the Lord’s Prayer.  Remember how it starts?  “Our Father…” Jesus didn’t teach his disciples to pray to “Oh higher power, somewhere out in the universe…” but “Our Father”.  And the rest of the prayer is about very real, tangible things that are about relationship; we pray to God to give us bread, to forgive us when we sin, just as we do our best to forgive others when they hurt us; protect us from temptation and please, please keep us from evil.  Yes, the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer of praise – but it is praise for the relationship with our Creator, with our Savior and it is a prayer about living in relationship to God and one another.

Relationships are hard.  We want things done a certain way – our way.  But living in relationship means we need to open our hearts – to patience and forgiveness.  After all, don’t we want the same?  I know I do.

M.E.+

16 October

This is a risk-filled moment in the gospel.  In the language of our time, it’s a set-up.  Jesus is in a public place.  Around him is the usual mixture of people, some attracted to his teaching, others just curious.  Mingling with the group are some of his enemies.  He is too popular to attack openly so they try to trap him into saying something that can be used against him, something to show that he is subversive.  It’s a tactic as old as politics.  With wide-eyed innocence, someone asks the dangerous question prefaced by a stream of flattery.  “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the Emperor or not?”  There must have been a dead silence.  Anyone with any intelligence in the crowd would know what was at stake.  If the teacher said yes he would be making enemies at every level of Jewish life.  If he said no he would challenge the Roman occupation.

Jesus’ answer has come down through time.  It is the reply of a razor-sharp mind.  He holds up the coin and says, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  Centuries roll away but the question and the reply remain.  Why?  Because the question and answer present men and women with an eternal equation which has to be worked out in human life. 

We all live somewhere between the two poles expressed as Caesar and God.  Each of us has to live in what we tend to call the real world, the world of nine to five.  Whether it is really the “real world” is another story.  Each of us has to decide what we give to the “Caesar” of our nine-to-five life.  Do we give everything, all our time, all our energy?  Do we make that part of our life an ultimate value; in a word, do we make it our God?  Or do we acknowledge that only God is ultimate and that this God demands our allegiance, our integrity, our trust, our worship.  That’s the real question. 

It is a matter of not looking at our lives as being divided into two worlds, the world of work and the world of worship, with God in the latter but not in the former – a sort of life with a set of compartments.  Thinking like that has long been the trap of our culture.  God is the God of both worlds.  Not until we realize this are we able to begin to work out the relationship between Caesar and God for our lives.  Even then, working out the balance of that equation is always difficult, and there are no neat answers.  The important thing is to realize that the equation must be continually worked at if we are to be responsible stewards of the one life we have to live.

Peace, 

Bob+

9 October

It’s not often I get jazzed about the 2nd Reading, mainly because Paul drives me nuts.  But I do resonate with most of Paul’s letter to the Philippians and this Sunday’s passage is one of my favorites.

First, it is one of the few places women leaders and mentioned and supported by Paul.  Next, the following bears quoting:

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

What a commendation!  Think about what is just, what is honorable, what is true.  Sometimes, in today’s world, we have no idea what is true.  Just because we hear a story on the news or read something in the paper, or follow a link on-line, do we know it’s true?  Is that journalist writing to sensationalize or to expose truth and make us want to respond in an honorable, just way?  Paul is telling his readers, the Philippians and us, to think!  And then, go and do!

M.E.+

2 October

Jesus offered a vision to the people of his own time.  As the risen Christ, he offers the same vision to us.  The vision is of a kingdom, what he always calls the kingdom of heaven.  It is another way of living life, a kind of alternate universe.  And Jesus didn't just talk of that vision - he was the vision.  He didn't just speak of the demands of that kingdom – he did them!

So why didn't it all work out in a wonderfully successful way?  Why didn't everybody think that Jesus and his vision were just what this hurting world needed?  It's difficult to frame a simple answer to this, but we can try.

In his Gospel, John has two phrases which express the tragedy without necessarily explaining it.  He says "The world knew him not . . . his own people received him not."  Why?  John later reports a statement of Jesus which seems to answer that question.  Jesus says, "This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light"(John 3:19).  There it is in the clearest and simplest words – the tragic heart of the human condition.  The Bible's word for this condition, itself simple and clear, is sin.

This is what this parable of Jesus is about.  In it, he tells his own destiny.  Jesus had no illusions about the consequences of his words and actions.  He knew the dark depths of human nature which surrounded him.

The ironic contradiction in human behavior and experience is to reject that which is clearly in our interest to accept.  Our judgment is deeply flawed, and our choices are apt to be terribly wrong.

The kingdom that Jesus offers us is not taken from us by some grudging God; we ourselves choose something else!  But even as we paint that grim portrait of our human nature, another face shines through it, that of Jesus Christ.  The face is a promise that in Christ our humanity is also capable of a shining glory.  Through Christ we can, if we choose, to set foot from time to time in the very kingdom we refuse most of the time.  Thank goodness for our patient, gracious, steadfast and loving God!

The Peace of Christ be with you,    

Bob+