Habits of Grace with Presiding Bishop Michael Curry

I don't know about you, but one of the things that has been a bit confusing during this pandemic has been sort of a discombobulation or a confusion about what time it is and what day it is. I found myself on more than one occasion just asking someone, "What day is today?" There's a Psalm in the Hebrew scriptures, Psalm 31. It's actually quoted in the service of Compline, which is a late night prayer service, and it's also quoted by Jesus on the cross.

This past week, for some reason I thought of Mr. Rogers, who once said that his mother told him when he was a little boy and he asked her about scary things in the news and about difficult and painful things in the news. And his mother gave him some simple advice of how to handle that. She said to him, "Always look for the helpers." I have a sneaking suspicion that signs of God's continued watchful care, signs of hope, are in the helpers. This past April 27, was the 100th birthday of one of those helpers.

There's an interesting pattern in some of the stories of the resurrection. In Luke 24, for example, some of the followers of Jesus are traveling from Jerusalem itself to the small village of Emmaus a few miles down the road. A stranger comes up to them, walks with them and carries on a conversation with them and all along, the stranger was Jesus raised from the dead. They didn't recognize him. They didn't see that it was Jesus until, as the Bible says, their eyes were open as if they turned and actually saw him in the breaking of the bread and saw him alive.

Prayer matters. It's not magic, but it makes a difference. There's a prayer in the prayer book that I thought you might like. It's a prayer for in times of sickness, for use by the sick person, but maybe it's a prayer that can apply to us all.

It looks like the storm has passed over and the sun has come out, at least for a little bit. It is the day after, if you will. Monday in Easter week, Jesus has been raised from the dead. The miracle has happened. Hallelujah, Christ is risen.

I've often asked myself the question, who's the family? Who's the family we are asking God to behold? Is it the family of faith? Those who have been baptized and accepted and follow Jesus as savior and Lord? I think that's true. But is it bigger than that?

Last week I was reading in Matthew 22 and I noticed something that I hadn't seen before. Matthew 22 is Holy Week, it's smack dab in the middle of Holy Week. The conflict in Jerusalem is escalating. Jesus knows this and it's at that point that he's tested by, clearly someone who probably was trying to entrap him. He knows that. It was the guy who came up and said, "What is the greatest law in the entire legal edifice of Moses?” And Jesus responds, drawing on what Moses taught in the Hebrew scriptures, in Deuteronomy and Leviticus, "You shall love the Lord your God with all yourself, all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself." And then he says, "On these two, hang all the law and the prophets."

This past week I came across two passages, one from the Bible, one a poem. The one in the Bible, I was just reading through parts of Matthew's gospel and was reading through the Sermon on the Mount and got to chapter seven where Jesus says, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Last week while we were all planning and trying to reorder our lives and adapt to the new reality that we are in, I was texting back and forth with the Reverend Gay Clark Jennings, president of the House of Deputies, as we often do. And in the course of our texts back and forth, she asked, "Have you ever thought about maybe doing a short meditation each week for the church while we're in these days of the coronavirus?" I texted her back and said, "That's a good idea." And so this week we began what I think will be a weekly short meditation. Just a word or a song, not sung by me, but a song, a poem, a prayer. Just something for the week in which we are living.