From an advertisement in the back of a magazine, I found my destination. I begged and pleaded to go to sailing camp. Three weeks in the Caribbean learning how to sail and scuba and so on. 6 teens and two adults on a sailing yacht in a small fleet of other boats much the same. When I hear this gospel lesson My first gut response is - how is Jesus sleeping in a boat under sail in rough seas? I imagine the yacht we were on How I would have to stick my head up above decks every few minutes When I was cooking - my most common duty - when I was cooking And we were under sail I would have to stick my head up above deck and take a few breaths To keep from getting sick. So I have an whaaaa?!? response to Jesus snoozing on this boat. The disciples are amazed that the winds obey him I am amazed that he could sleep.
They got on a boat on purpose. In the dark. Going across the water, to a foreign land. I feel that this week. Having driven clear across the country, from Eastern Washington to South Jersey, In some ways I have gotten on a boat in the dark to cross the sea to an unknown land. I have the distinct idea that there are plenty of things I can figure out, and a multitude of things that I don’t even know to ask. On that boat there were four girls. Myself, Wren from Georgia, Amy from California, And Niko who was from Japan, her parents were Japanese and Asian Indian. The strange part of the communication wasn’t with Niko. It was with Amy from California. Niko would have to translate between us. Four young smart capable women speaking the same language But not communicating. Only later did I realize the issue. I didn’t know how to speak Californian, yet.
I know I don’t know how to speak South Jersey. However, after over 15 moves in my life, I have shown that I am good at acclimating, figuring things out, asking questions. However, I am also human and I don’t know what I don’t know. I will need your help as I dive into the life of this place and parish. I have been in parish ministry for over 20 years, And leading in an interim parish for nearly 3 years, However, I have only been a priest for just over a month. My lower case p priesthood is an old sailor, My capital P priesthood is a brand new sail, But some people think that a new priest has more juice. That is silly, but I will take it.
Interim ministry is rather like a summer camp session. We begin a new session this week - let's call it Grace sailing camp. There are 4 focuses which are like ports of call that we will wander through HERITAGE CONNECTIONS MISSION LEADERSHIP. My number one task is to be your caring, competent and curious pastor. My number two task is to help you make a good match for your next settled pastor. Maybe an Interim Rector is the summer camp director, a settled pastor rather like the school principal. Some campers who go to camp exhibit maturity and abilities well beyond their years, and others well, regress. Most camper, however,r do a little bit of both and ae are mostly themselves, if also a better version of themselves. Having left all the pressures and norms and masks of their everyday life on the shore, they are more free to be really themselves. In my life I having spent a significant amount of time serving at Girl Scout camps and Episcopal camps And I can tell you that we want campers to come to camp to try on being their best self so thoroughly that when they go home the new habits have become one with their whole life. I love Interim ministry because it gives us space to leave behind the old familiar stains And to try fresh things, to become revived people. Lifting anchor and sailing with courage and candor toward your next era of mission and ministry.
My Interim ministry mentor says he comes pre fired. I like to think of it as being the captain of a summer sailing camp session. We are on a boat, on a cruise. We are not where we were and we may not know exactly where we are going, But we are going somewhere I will care for you on the journey, and the session will come to an end. As long as we are here, we are going to make it work. Try some new foods, clean the decks, let some weights go, take on some wholehearted ways to be the church in this day and age. My top duty is to be your caring captain. My task is to get you to your next port.
I drove all the way across the country with two cats to start a new call in a place I had never really been before and what was nauseating me this week was the news and the stream of shameful terror across my social media. Every cry in the night is a stormy dark sea of complicity and discombobulation. How is this us? Revelations this week about the treacherous dehumanization of migrant Latino/a families: my mind swims in desperation and my heart panics. I feel myself at night in rough seas looking for a rescuer to bring me peace.
Mark is the shortest and most urgent of the Gospels. The last line in the most ancient version is for Jesus’ followers to meet him in Galilee Where it all began. What the end of this Holy Gospel says is you are not done. You have only begun. Go back to the start Read and hear this good news with the insight and revelations of the whole journey. The whole witness lays plain the awful twistedness of us-ness And that Jesus comes to that storm he comes and is words of truth and compassion. He comes and is rest and stillness. And he gets up. The word in the lesson for wake up is the same as the one used for Jesus’ resurrection.
We are always in a storm. We are always headed into an unknown future. Jesus is awake and he is up and he is with us. The whole shipload. The attentive and the lazy and the brave and the illinformed. Jesus was at rest for those of us that need to hear that there is a respite from the storm. Jesus wakes up because he is with us as we wake up, act up, love love love. This simple story about a boat and a storm is a Jonah allusion: the Hebrew story that the earliest Christians seem to have been the most attached to. Jonah is in a ship with people he doesn’t know and to calm the storm he gives up his life, or so it seems. Jonah was no Disney prince. He didn’t want to save the people God sent him to save. He got mad when they repented because he didn’t like those people at all. Jonah is the perfect example of an imperfect disciple. God calls us to love and care for everyone, whether or not you like it. Mark’s episode today isn’t as much about a boat and a storm As it is about how big and broad and powerful the love of God is for the whole world.
The disciples and Jesus were on a boat going to the other side, to be the strangers. Scripture itself says there are only two directives that can stand all by themselves. Love God as much as God loves us, love all people as much as God loves us, because we were once the lost and last and lonely and the least. God was with us and rescued us from oppression and exile. God raised Jesus from systematic injustice and twisted broken cruelty. The answer to the question about who is this Jesus that even the elements obey him is this: He is God who made heaven and earth and loves all and cares for all and will rescue all from every storm we can stir up; and this same God who the elements obey has called and invited and told us to do likewise, like it or not.
Jesus is here on the cruise with us, Helping us see how and what we need to be. Be compassion, even when we don’t like it. Be speaking truth to power. Be still enough to listen to strangers whose life and ideas we cannot begin to comprehend. Jesus is with us on this journey. Showing us in real time that we can trust that God’s lifegiving love is in the water and the wind and the sails and the boat and the food and the neighbor. God’s love is what is in charge.
Let us pray.
Interim ministry is rather like a summer camp session. We begin a new session this week - let's call it Grace sailing camp. There are 4 focuses which are like ports of call that we will wander through HERITAGE CONNECTIONS MISSION LEADERSHIP. My number one task is to be your caring, competent and curious pastor. My number two task is to help you make a good match for your next settled pastor. Maybe an Interim Rector is the summer camp director, a settled pastor rather like the school principal. Some campers who go to camp exhibit maturity and abilities well beyond their years, and others well, regress. Most camper, however,r do a little bit of both and ae are mostly themselves, if also a better version of themselves. Having left all the pressures and norms and masks of their everyday life on the shore, they are more free to be really themselves. In my life I having spent a significant amount of time serving at Girl Scout camps and Episcopal camps And I can tell you that we want campers to come to camp to try on being their best self so thoroughly that when they go home the new habits have become one with their whole life. I love Interim ministry because it gives us space to leave behind the old familiar stains And to try fresh things, to become revived people. Lifting anchor and sailing with courage and candor toward your next era of mission and ministry.
My Interim ministry mentor says he comes pre fired. I like to think of it as being the captain of a summer sailing camp session. We are on a boat, on a cruise. We are not where we were and we may not know exactly where we are going, But we are going somewhere I will care for you on the journey, and the session will come to an end. As long as we are here, we are going to make it work. Try some new foods, clean the decks, let some weights go, take on some wholehearted ways to be the church in this day and age. My top duty is to be your caring captain. My task is to get you to your next port.
I drove all the way across the country with two cats to start a new call in a place I had never really been before and what was nauseating me this week was the news and the stream of shameful terror across my social media. Every cry in the night is a stormy dark sea of complicity and discombobulation. How is this us? Revelations this week about the treacherous dehumanization of migrant Latino/a families: my mind swims in desperation and my heart panics. I feel myself at night in rough seas looking for a rescuer to bring me peace.
Mark is the shortest and most urgent of the Gospels. The last line in the most ancient version is for Jesus’ followers to meet him in Galilee Where it all began. What the end of this Holy Gospel says is you are not done. You have only begun. Go back to the start Read and hear this good news with the insight and revelations of the whole journey. The whole witness lays plain the awful twistedness of us-ness And that Jesus comes to that storm he comes and is words of truth and compassion. He comes and is rest and stillness. And he gets up. The word in the lesson for wake up is the same as the one used for Jesus’ resurrection.
We are always in a storm. We are always headed into an unknown future. Jesus is awake and he is up and he is with us. The whole shipload. The attentive and the lazy and the brave and the illinformed. Jesus was at rest for those of us that need to hear that there is a respite from the storm. Jesus wakes up because he is with us as we wake up, act up, love love love. This simple story about a boat and a storm is a Jonah allusion: the Hebrew story that the earliest Christians seem to have been the most attached to. Jonah is in a ship with people he doesn’t know and to calm the storm he gives up his life, or so it seems. Jonah was no Disney prince. He didn’t want to save the people God sent him to save. He got mad when they repented because he didn’t like those people at all. Jonah is the perfect example of an imperfect disciple. God calls us to love and care for everyone, whether or not you like it. Mark’s episode today isn’t as much about a boat and a storm As it is about how big and broad and powerful the love of God is for the whole world.
The disciples and Jesus were on a boat going to the other side, to be the strangers. Scripture itself says there are only two directives that can stand all by themselves. Love God as much as God loves us, love all people as much as God loves us, because we were once the lost and last and lonely and the least. God was with us and rescued us from oppression and exile. God raised Jesus from systematic injustice and twisted broken cruelty. The answer to the question about who is this Jesus that even the elements obey him is this: He is God who made heaven and earth and loves all and cares for all and will rescue all from every storm we can stir up; and this same God who the elements obey has called and invited and told us to do likewise, like it or not.
Jesus is here on the cruise with us, Helping us see how and what we need to be. Be compassion, even when we don’t like it. Be speaking truth to power. Be still enough to listen to strangers whose life and ideas we cannot begin to comprehend. Jesus is with us on this journey. Showing us in real time that we can trust that God’s lifegiving love is in the water and the wind and the sails and the boat and the food and the neighbor. God’s love is what is in charge.
Let us pray.
Gentle us, Holy One, into an unclenched moment, a deep breath, a letting go of heavy experiences, of shriveling anxieties, of dead certainties, that, softened by the silence, surrounded by the light, and open to the mystery, We may be found by wholeness, upheld by the unfathomable, entranced by the simple, and filled with the joy that is You.
Amen.
Proper 7
Grace Episcopal Church
Pemberton, New Jersey
Prayer by Ted Loder
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