On Sunday, James Ammon, a certified lay preacher at St. Paul’s, talked about Jesus’ toughest teaching: John 6:53f. Jesus says essentially, if you don’t eat my flesh and drink my blood you have no part of me.  We who call ourselves Episcopalians understand this as a part of sacramental theology. Our corner of the Christian community highlights and cherishes sacraments as the best way of understanding God and God’s purposes in this world. 

Sacraments are defined as outward visible signs of inward and spiritual grace. Wine and bread at communion, water at baptism, these signs tell us about grace. And – and this is a biggie: they also make us participants and embodiments of grace.


Jesus urged us to see them that way. Why else would he be so outrageous as to say eat my flesh and drink my blood? In John 6, he says this in a public gathering. But in the other gospels, Jesus says this while he is holding  of bread and a cup at the table with his closest friends. It’s the night before he will be tortured and killed by the powerful. He knows what’s coming. And he offers his friends tangible symbols of sacrificial love. When we take the bread and cup, that’s the sign of grace we are given. And the grace we are invited to become. 


Episcopal theology is not defined by a theologian. We don’t have a John Calvin or Martin Luther to quote. We don’t have a doctrinal statement. We don’t particularly trust doctrine. Our theology is found in our Prayer Book. In the action of prayer and sacrament. How we understand the Trinity, the crucifixion, human sin, free will, or divine providence, those things are left for us to explore and embrace using the tools offered from other traditions. We don’t take a firm line on them.


Our non-negotiable is the goodness of God embedded in this good earth. In bread, wine, water, the love between partners, the love that calls people to serve, the oil of healing resting on the skin of one who suffers. These are our theology.
​

Look for other visible signs of grace today. Perhaps you’ll hear a song that God shines through. Perhaps a smile from a stranger, or an unexpected thank you letter will be your sign. Goodness surrounds you. Grace is everywhere. If you doubt, just take a breath, and give thanks for the air that fills you. Grace.

Modern medicine has enabled six generations to co-exist at the same time. In the hundreds of thousands of years humans have walked the earth, this has never happened before. Yet, here we are. It's an amazing and wonderful thing. But for families, it can be confusing and exhausting. Particularly when it comes to end of life issues. 

It’s tough being in your seventies making medical decisions for your ninety year old parent. The choices are fraught. Grandad demands French fries but he may choke and die. His Parkinson’s requires pureed food. Granny won't stop sneaking cigarettes even though she has COPD and is on oxygen. What to do?! 

In his superb book, Being Mortal, Dr. Atul Gawande says such decisions are “a consequence of a society that faces the final phase of the human life cycle by trying not to think about it. [We don't ask the ultimate question:] how to make life worth living when we’re weak and frail and can’t fend for ourselves anymore.”  
We people of faith say that our times are in God’s hands,  yet, so often we cling to life for fear of death.

As we age, enough life might mean choosing to say no to the relentless effort to keep us alive. It might mean deciding that at the mature age of X, we will refuse vaccines or medications that prevent sudden death. We'll support prevention, not intervention.  We'll let nature run its course. 

This is not a common approach to aging and dying in American culture. But considerations like the well-being of our descendants, the toll on families, health care pollution and its effects on our planet, and our own commitments to quality over quantity of life make it one worth considering.

Alternatively, enough life might mean that we choose to prolong our lives as long as possible accepting that we may die by a thousand diminishments. We learn strategies for sustained meaning, for graciously giving away control of our lives and we practice blessing those who will support us during our prolonged dependence and confinement.  

We Americans are likely to survive longer than we  expect.  So, let’s make a choice. Let’s not end up in extreme old age because we capitulated to medicine’s fetishizing of survival. Let’s not arrive there because we didn’t want to think about it and suddenly it happened. 

We can decide in advance how we want to live our last days. Hear me now, I'm not saying fret about it, I'm saying look with clear eyed candor at your mortality and make decisions. Consider what abundant life will look like when you are frail, dependent and weak.  How do you want to approach it? How will you live enough life?

In God’s created order, death is a gift, not a curse. We can approach our death with courage and confidence, trusting God’s infinite generative powers. We can say with the Apostle Paul, "Death where is your victory, grave where is your sting? Indeed, death has been swallowed up in victory!" (I Corinthians 15:55) With that hope,  death has the appropriate place in our story. 

-- Pastor Rebecca

Boy howdy, if I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard or spoken the sentence, “I don’t have enough time.”  Not having enough time is a fundamental truth of being a mortal. 

One of the most helpful concepts of my seminary education was taught to me by Dr. Damayanthi Niles: Finitude.  Finitude, at its heart, is the concept of limitation. We are  bounded on all sides by the limits of time, space and context. 

Our culture embraces infinite freedom, capacity, and possibility, but these are illusions. Our time is too limited. Jesus reminded us that our greatest freedom is obedience (Mark 10:44), our possibilities are greatest when we are standing by faith alone (Mark 11:23-24), and our capacities rest in our trust in God, not in ourselves (Matthew 14:22f). 

So what does enough time mean for us as followers of Jesus?  I would suggest that it means at least three things:

• Honor what is before us in the now.
• Our time is precious regardless of our achievements and outcomes. Time is not money.
• Enough time is the amount of time we have.

Let’s unpack those ideas briefly.  First, Jesus was extraordinarily good at honoring the present moment. He was constantly interrupted, harassed and demanded of, and yet, in the Gospels we see him attend to what was before him. Jesus said "sufficient for today are the evils of today."(Matthew 6:34). He didn’t dread or stew over the fact that his death was on the way. In fact, the only time he is portrayed as anxious and upset was in the 24 hours before he died (more). For years, he knew it was coming, but he trusted God to keep him.  Doing that is an act of trust .  

Time is not money. Income disparities fundamentally claim that one person’s hours of work are worth more than another person’s. The 10 hours of the CEO and the 10 hours of the security guard are fundamentally the same, yet one is paid 300% more for them.  This is not God’s economy.  God holds each of our lives as equally valuable. Our achievement, income, accomplishments in any 24 hour period, or over a life-time, do not define us. Who we are defines us – the qualities, character, and choices of our lives matter. They are timeless and eternal.

 Enough time is the amount we have. In a culture where we are encouraged to live as long as possible, our faith invites us to another way of thinking.  Enough time is the time we are given. Living by faith is living relinquished to God’s timing. This might mean choosing to say no to the industrial medical complex’s constant effort to keep us alive until we die by degrees and a thousand diminishments.  Jesus came that we might have abundant life – life to its fullest.  In God’s created order, death is a gift, not a curse.

What is enough time for you? Your time is a gift. Give some back to your creator and trust that God will always meet you in the present. Just be there to receive it.

​-- Pastor Rebecca