While Haiti has been a long-term commitment of St. Margaret’s, the Mission Outreach Committee continues to identify and try to remedy urgent needs in our local community. The support we give to the Food Cupboard and the twice-weekly Toddlers’ Playdate are well-known examples. The committee’s newest endeavor is to support local volunteers for the formation of aSoap Closet. For many people, it is difficult to purchase toiletries and detergents, items that are seldom covered by food stamps. Sometime next fall, the Soap Closet will begin to provide people with hygiene products such as toilet paper, soaps, detergents, toothpaste and other dental needs, and much more. Distribution of these items will occur on a monthly basis at food cupboards in Searsport, Belfast, and Northport. Stay tuned for more information on how you can help.

Let us know:  If you see a need that St. Margaret’s can help fill, please tell us about it. Call John Arrison at 338-4605, or email him at: arrison@myfairpoint.net. Or talk to one of the current members of the committee: Alden Johnson, Joan and Maynard Clemons, Susie Kraeger, Mary Rackmales, Juliet Baker, Cipperly Good, Mary Ann Whaley, Ed Williams, and Tom Duplessie.
]]> http://www.stmargaretsbelfast.org/2012/05/18/mission-outreach-news/feed/ 0 http://www.stmargaretsbelfast.org/2012/05/18/gathering-with-the-vestry-may-20/ http://www.stmargaretsbelfast.org/2012/05/18/gathering-with-the-vestry-may-20/#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 18:43:43 +0000 admin http://www.stmargaretsbelfast.org/?p=1633 FROM THE VESTRY: Please join us this Sunday, May 20th during coffee hour for our first Coffee with the Vestry. The vestry is hoping to host a monthly or every other month coffee hour and discussion between the services. Our topic for discussion this month is ways to engage more people in worship. We are looking forward to seeing you there.
]]> http://www.stmargaretsbelfast.org/2012/05/18/gathering-with-the-vestry-may-20/feed/ 0 http://www.stmargaretsbelfast.org/2012/05/18/the-rev-truman-fudge/ http://www.stmargaretsbelfast.org/2012/05/18/the-rev-truman-fudge/#comments Fri, 18 May 2012 03:02:40 +0000 admin http://www.stmargaretsbelfast.org/?p=1617 Dear People of St. Margaret’s,

I know by now many of you have learned that Truman Fudge died Monday evening at the hospital. We are all shocked and grieved by the loss of this man who touched so many lives in deep and profound ways. Truman has been a loving and buoyant presence in this community since he came to St. Margaret’s in 1974. We had all thought that he was doing well, but I learned late last week that Truman’s health had taken a turn for the worse and the cancer had spread to his abdomen. He asked me to come to his house Friday morning to receive anointing and Holy Communion. We had a lovely visit and to be honest, I think I was the one who received pastoring. He thought then that he had less than the 1 to 3 months that the doctors had indicated, but no one thought death would take him a couple of days later.  One parishioner described him as “such a dear man, trusted friend, gifted preacher, fierce fighter against injustice.” His loss is deeply felt by all who knew him.

The service for Truman will be Saturday June 2 at 1 p.m. Sue Murphy and I will both preside. Please keep Suzanne and their family in your thoughts and prayers. May Truman’s soul rest in God’s peace.

Faithfully,

Martha+

(A link to a Bangor Daily News article:
http://bangordailynews.com/2012/05/16/news/midcoast/church-members-mourn-passing-of-episcopalian-priest-who-served-21-years-at-st-margarets-in-belfast/)

Click here for a podcast of the sermon.

St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church
6B Easter
May 13, 2012
Acts 10:44-48; Ps. 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

What does the Holy Spirit need these people of God to hear from these texts right now?

A New Song

The text today from Acts begins “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.” Still speaking what? What’s going on? If you feel you’ve come in on the end of a movie, you’d be right. The lectionary has skipped right over the story of Peter and Cornelius the Centurion, and what we’re hearing is the grand finale, without its context. Because it’s too long – a full chapter. Too long to be read, but not too long to be told. It’s a strange and wonderful story, complete with strange visions, angelic messengers and Holy Spirit-driven encounters between unlikely people where profound things happen. And, it’s important to the context of what the passage means. It is the first conversion of a known gentile in the book of Acts, so it marks the decisive step in extending the early church beyond Judaism.

So the story begins with Cornelius the Centurion, an officer of high rank in the Roman army who would have commanded a group of several hundred soldiers. He is a devout man in Caesarea who, scripture tells us, “feared God with all his household, gave alms generously to the people and prayed constantly to God. (Acts 10:1-2). One afternoon at about 3 o’clock Cornelius had a vision where he clearly saw an angel of God coming in and saying to him, “Cornelius.” He stares at him in terror and said, “What is it, Lord?” He answered, “your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. Now send men to Joppa for a certain Simon who is called Peter; he is lodging with Simon, a tanner, whose house is by the seaside.” When the angel had left, Cornelius calls two of his slaves and a devout soldier from the ranks. He tells them everything and sends the three of them off to Joppa.

Then the scene shifts, it is noon the next day and Peter himself is approaching Joppa. He goes up to the roof to pray. He gets hungry and wants something to eat, and while it is being prepared he falls into a trance. It might be more helpful to think of this as a meditative state, his conscious mind at rest, having stilled the chattering mind. In this state he sees the heaven opened and something like a large sheet being lowered to the ground by its four corners. In it were all kinds of four-footed animals, reptiles and birds. Then Peter hears a voice saying “get up, Peter; kill and eat.” But Peter says “by no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” The voice says to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” This exchange happens three times, and the blanket-like thing is suddenly taken up to heaven. (Remember Peter’s experience with things that happen three times. Jesus said to Peter during the last supper “before the cock crows you will deny me three times. Later, Peter does indeed deny Jesus three times. When Peter encounters the risen Christ on the beach, Christ says to Peter three times, “feed my sheep.” So we can surmise by not that things coming in threes get Peter’s attention.)

Peter doesn’t know what to make of this rather disturbing vision when he spots the three men who have been sent by Cornelius. The Spirit says to him, “Look, three men are searching for you. Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation; for I have sent them.” So Peter goes down to the three men and says “I am the one you are looking for. Why have you come?” They tell him “Cornelius, a centurion, an upright and God-fearing man, who is well spoken of by the whole Jewish nation, was directed by a holy angel to send for you to come to his house and to hear what you have to say.”

Peter extends them hospitality, invites them in and gives them lodging. And the next day the four of them depart for Caesarea, along with some believers. Cornelius in the meantime has gathered together his relatives and close friends. When Cornelius sees Peter he falls at his feet and worships him. But Peter says “stand up; I am only a mortal.” Then Peter went into the room where all Cornelius’ friends and relations had assembled, and said “you yourselves know that it is unlawful for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile; but God has shown me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean. So when I was sent for, I came without objection. Now may I ask why you have sent for me?”

Cornelius tells him of his vision (which scripture recounts in detail from the previous verses). And Cornelius concludes with “Therefore I sent for you immediately, and you have been kind enough to come. So now all of us are here in the presence of God to listen to all that the Lord has commanded you to say.”

Peter then summarizes the main themes of the book of Acts: that Jesus is the messiah prophesied in scripture, his death has been vindicated by God, the apostles are chosen witnesses to proclaim Jesus, and that all who believe experience forgiveness of sins. God judges impartially, regardless of wealth or status, that impartiality which now extends to ethnic differences.

And then we come to where our text today begins, “As Peter was still speaking…” While Peter is giving this eloquent sermon — on the theology of Christ and forgiveness and the radical inclusiveness of God — the Holy Spirit interrupts, cuts him off mid-sentence.

And then the events of Pentecost are repeated: the Holy Spirit descends and they begin speaking in tongues and praising God. (Recall that while we have not yet observed Pentecost, which will be in a couple of weeks, in Scripture it has already happened. Peter and the disciples have received the gift of the Holy Spirit and been sent forth.) Now that gift, the gift of the Holy Spirit, in much the same way, is poured out on the gentiles. The Holy Spirit sends Peter there to speak, but doesn’t let him finish.

So what can we make of this? We know what our religion makes of it. It marks a critically important move of the church to include the gentiles. But if the text is only for us something that happens “out there,” to someone else, somewhere else, a matter of historical interest only, it is nothing. It must be also a doorway into the life of our own spirits right now, yours and mine. Our faith journey is always about our own relationship with God. So the question is: what does the text have to say to you and me about our own spiritual path? Let me ask the question this way: who experiences a conversion? This story is often described as “the conversion of Cornelius,” and he and all his household do receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and are baptized. But God was at work in Cornelius long before Peter shows up. I suggest to you that the bigger conversion is Peter’s.

Last week I talked of conversion as a movement of the heart. Here I would describe it as a “transformation of consciousness.” I have said before that Jesus came as a teacher of inner transformation. This is what Peter experiences, his own inner awakening. Not the first for him, but a hugely significant one nonetheless. Here’s Peter who fully understands himself as a servant of God, and apostle. He is orthodox and faithful. And Peter has practices, we might say habits — habits of tradition, habits of religion, habits of culture and practice, and habits of thought. Many of these have been carefully cultivated and are the markers of devotion. He eats some things and not others. He associates with some people and not, except under unusual circumstances, with others. He is faithful to tradition. And here’s this strange message, in threes, that goes against so much of what it means for him to be faithful. But it is from the Holy Spirit …

The distance from Joppa to Caesarea is about 30 miles, a trek on foot. He’s on his way to the household of a Roman citizen and a gentile. He has a while to prepare himself for the sermon he never gets to finish. We can imagine some questions might have been running through his head, questions like –

• What am I doing?
• How will I explain my visit to a Roman household to my brothers and sisters in Jerusalem? Dreams of sheets descending from heaven with animals on it?
• If the Gentiles are to be part of the church, how will we maintain our identity as God’s chosen people?
• Is this Cornelius thing an isolated incident, or is it the beginning of a radical new vision of our community?
• How will the structure we have built around the faith handle this change?
• I didn’t set out to do this. We didn’t talk about this. This wasn’t on our agenda, bringing in gentiles. How can I be expected to be a leader in the church if I cannot predict or understand these questions? Am I the one to do this…?
• What is God up to?

And in fact, later, in chapter 11, when the other apostles and believers heard about the baptizing of the gentiles they do ask “why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” notice that the socializing appears to be a bigger problem than the baptizing. But Peter, after explaining to them in detail what had happened, says “who was I that I could hinder God?”

So the startlingly odd story reinforces the monumental nature of the boundary crossing. And this responsible, faithful follower of Christ experiences a transformation of consciousness that opens him up to the connection of all people to God. Remember that in the language of the day, Jews plus Gentiles equals everybody. Along with this inner knowing, his understanding of his role shifts. He realizes he’s not the one who’s going to bring people to Jesus. The apostles are not the stewards of the tradition, or the explainers of the truth, or the gatekeepers of the movement. What he comes to understand is that their responsibility is to recognize where the Holy Spirit is moving and to try to keep up. Recognize where the Holy Spirit is moving, and start by not getting in the way. “Who am I that I could hinder God?”

We too are a community with responsible, hardworking, faithful people. We’re busy. We serve on boards and committess inside the church and out. We have family responsibilities, some of them all-consuming. And when we see change happening, as responsible people, we feel responsible for understanding that change, growing the good and averting the not-so-good. For trying to decide what it should and shouldn’t be and control what we can. To be Stewards of tradition. Explainers of the truth. Gatekeepers of one sort or another.

Sometimes, for all sorts of good reasons, those agendas and habits of tradition and work and thought, our ideas about what the future should look like, may end up getting in our way. They can put up barriers where God wants there to be none. They may keep us from seeing where the gospel needs to be lived and in what way. They may keep us too busy to make breathing space for the spirit to move.

Last evening at our Saturday service, after we read this story from Acts, Cipperly had a helpful insight. She said “you know, Peter’s process was also in threes: awareness, acceptance, and action.” He noticed the Holy Spirit’s message to him. He took it in and accepted it. And he had the courage to act on it. This is available to all of us, right now.

The practice that is critical to inner transformation is to still the chattering mind. The deepening of our spiritual lives only happens through our own experience. We can talk belief and we can read books and we can sign on to creeds, but at the end of the day what the life of the spirit is about is our connection to the holy, our own direct experience. This happens to us. It happens to all of us, if we are awake for it.

The things we do are important. But more than anything, God wants a relationship with each on of us. Joseph Campbell said something like this. “We think we are traveling outward to experience, when we are actually traveling to the center of our own consciousness.” We think we are alone, and we find that we are with all the world.” Peter quieted his mind and something broke through. So I invite you to try this. Take one thing that is on your heart and mind. That you worry about how it will turn out, what the future will hold, how to envision “the right future,” and what that looks like. Take that thing, sit with is, meditate with it, and see it as a journey of your own consciousness. Know that the Spirit of God is already at work. As in all things for God’s purposes God is ahead of us –as it has always been–creating, agitating, opening new space, inviting us onward and others to join in. Promising us that where we are going, God already there.

Amen.

Click here for a podcast of the sermon.

St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church
5B Easter
May 6, 2012
Acts 8:26-40; Ps. 22:24-30; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

The Eunuch’s Three Questions

We have just witnessed a conversion. In one of our readings this morning, we witnessed a conversion. We don’t get to do that very often. Usually they are so private, so interior, sometimes so subtle, movements over time, that we don’t know they’ve happened until after the fact. Even for ourselves, let alone others’. But there is a moment when the heart turns. This is the grace of storytelling, of telling our own stories, and receiving the stories of others. We are given a privileged inside look into the movement of the heart, and we become witnesses.

He experienced a conversion. I’m speaking of course about the unnamed eunuch from Ethiopia in the story from Acts. What was his conversion? What I don’t mean is that he was a Jew and ceased being a Jew and became a Christian. First, we don’t know whether the eunuch is a Jew attempting to worship in the temple, or a Gentile attracted to Judaism. In any case there were many Jewish followers of Jesus. People who would come to be called Christians who did not cease to be Jewish. Philip, we know, was a Jewish Greek-speaking Christian. What I mean by experiencing a conversion is that he discovered Jesus all the way in, in his heart. And in finding Jesus, he experienced an affirmation of his own personhood. He understood himself as a human being, fully loved and fully worthy of love, a full human being fully vested as one of God’s beloved. And it changes everything. And this is how it happened.

We start with someone who is on the margins, excluded, left out. Not economically; eunuchs in Jesus’ day were on some level people of high status. He has a royal job in worldly court, in charge of the Ethiopian queen’s treasury. He has a chariot, a sign of his status. He could read, so clearly he was well educated. And yet, having been physically mutilated – presumably so that they might perform their function in the court without distraction or disloyalty — he was considered “unclean.” He was prohibited from worshiping in the synagogue. He had status in the Queen’s court, but he was unwelcome in the court of God. His job brings him wealth and status, but the price is isolation. Notice that we don’t know his name. That’s another way the text signals to us that in the eyes of the world, his job, not his humanity, defines who he is. He was invisible.

We witness the movement of the Eunuch’s spirit through his three questions.

The eunuch is reading scripture aloud, which was a common practice then. Reading was done aloud, rather than silently. Philip, a stranger, comes up to the eunuch and asks “do you understand what you are reading?” And the eunuch replies with his first question: “How can I, unless someone guides me?”

Indeed. How can any of us understand what we are reading, whether it is scripture, or the prayer book, or Shakespeare, or the newspaper, without someone who has guided us? But the Eunuch has a particular problem understanding scripture. Because, guess what: Scripture contradicts itself. I said earlier that the Eunuch was unable to worship in the synagogue. Why? Because it says so in scripture. [ask for Bible]. Deuteronomy 23:1: No male who has been sexually mutilated] shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.” I modified the language somewhat, but the actual language leaves no room for interpretation. Never mind that his mutilation was inflicted by someone else. Blame the victim. “You. Out. God doesn’t want you here.” It is written!

And yet, there he sits, and reads Isaiah. And if he’s reading Isaiah he may have read this, from Isaiah 11:11:

“On that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that is left of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Ethiopia, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea.”

So, not just the nation of Israel, but other places too? The Lord will recover the remnant of his people … from Ethiopia … could that be me?

And he may have read this, from Isaiah 56:4-5:

For thus says the Lord:
To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
Who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant,
I will give, in my house and within my walls,
A monument and a name better than sons and daughters.
I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

To the eunuchs who hold fast the covenant, the Lord, within the Lord’s walls, will honor by giving an everlasting name. Scripture contradicts itself. So which is it? How can I understand without someone to explain it to me? And so the eunuch reads the fourth servant song from Isaiah, perhaps the saddest of the servant songs, and these words from chapter 53, verse 7, as rendered by Luke in the book of Acts –

Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
And like a lamb silent before its shearer,
So he does not open his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.”

And he asks his second question: “About whom, may I ask, does the prophet say this? About himself, or about someone else?” This question has perplexed people through the ages. We don’t know who the suffering servant is. But the real question the eunuch is asking is “is it me?” Which is it? Am I in or out? Does this religion, does this God, welcome me or not?

So of course he needs someone to guide him. And that guidance doesn’t come in the form of a hermeneutical, interpretive exercise of the relationship between Deuteronomy and Isaiah. It’s not an examination of the purity laws, some complex head game about how the various scriptural passages relate to each other. The text says only “Starting with this scripture, Philip proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.” The guidance Philip offers, both by his words and by his presence, is this: love wins. Inclusion wins. Isaiah tells of a suffering messiah, and the eunuch relates to the experience of humiliation and responds to the prophet’s words of hope. Philip tells him it is true, and he can trust it. And his heart moves.

Just to be clear, this is not to be understood of an expression of preferential Christian reading over Judaism, a oneupsmanship or holier-than-thou-ness. Again, Philip was a Jewish Christian. And, Jewish teachers saw this conflict in the text too! In the nation of Israel, there were many rabbis and priests who read Isaiah as offering freedom for the marginalized, including release from certain older laws from the Torah in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. Laws that would exclude people who were biologically or sexually different from dominant cultural norms.ⁱ There were plenty of Jews in Jesus’ day, including Jesus himself, who encouraged and affirmed those who had been excluded from society, encouraging them to live into the good news of their place in God’s kingdom. There’s a conflict with restrictive, exclusionary Deuteronomy or inclusive hopeful Isaiah that speaks to all the faithful: love wins.

Thomas Long reminds us that “the biblical word is never merely about “back then.” It is always a word to us, to this moment, to these circumstances.”ⁱⁱ The Ethiopian is reading from the Book of Isaiah. Jesus had a rabbinic practice of reading from the book of Isaiah. Christians have identified the “suffering servant” with Jesus Christ, seeing Jesus as the fulfillment of this prophecy. Philip’s answer reflects this. And what the eunuch sees, as he is meant to see, himself, his own humiliation, and through Jesus, his own hope.

Again from Thomas Long, “When the eunuch’s story of shame is refracted through the story of the cross and resurrection of Jesus, it becomes a narrative of redemption, restoration, and hope.”ⁱⁱⁱ That’s what the incarnation is. We come to understand that Jesus, taking on our humanity, suffering as we suffer, gathers all things to himself. Coming up from below, as Jesus does, no place is too dark, and no one is left out.

It is me! This is for me! There is hope for me! So, what’s to stop me from being baptized? In the kingdom of the world, there was everything to prevent him from being baptized. He belonged to the wrong nation, he had the wrong job, and he possessed the wrong sexuality. In the kingdom of God, there is nothing; it’s right there. And all that had ever been in his way in the first place was that he had come to believe the lies that were told him about himself. All he needed someone to show him the way.

We’ve just witnessed a conversion. The eunuchs three questions reveal the movement of his heart. It started with the attention of Philip, which starts with the nudgings of the Holy Spirit, which Philip pays attention to. This conversion moves through the hospitality they extend to each other. It is a hospitality of presence, of companionship, and affirmation. Philip approaches, meets the eunuch where he is. The eunuch says come sit with me. They have a conversation about scripture, and Jesus. The eunuch’s humanity and inclusion in the kingdom of God is affirmed and sealed in baptism. And they part, rejoicing.

What a day Philip has! His agenda was probably very different. The Holy Spirit sends him off to the wilderness, a reward for his success, probably the last place he wanted to go. But there he was. He notices someone reading scripture and goes over to him, met him where he was, companioned him through his questions. Affirmed the eunuch’s humanity just by his presence.

We think that moving hearts is so difficult! But often it is just this simple – being willing to have our own plans interrupted, to follow the Spirit’s nudging, which are always in the direction of love, being fully present to someone.The Holy Spirit hovers, wanting to use us in service to each other. It doesn’t take much, except our attention. The Holy Spirit will do the rest.

Amen.

ⁱ Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 2 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 458.
ⁱⁱ Thomas Long, Feasting on the Word, 456.
ⁱⁱⁱ Long, 458.