That kind soul in the back pew reminds us angels dwell among us 20NOV21

 

WHAT a beautiful story, one that needs to be shared just to remind us there is good in this world, good in the church regardless of what is posted on social media and the headlines. From National Catholic Reporter....

That kind soul in the back pew reminds us angels dwell among us

Nov 20, 2021

by Patrick T. Reardon

"Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" 

Dozens of big-name African American entertainers sang for joy when I started my car. It was the "Hallelujah" chorus from "Handel's Messiah: A Soulful Celebration," a 1992 performance of the "Messiah" as channeled through the full range of Black music — gospel, soul, blues, R&B, spirituals, ragtime, big band, jazz fusion and hip-hop. It was a joyful noise.

I had just learned that the angel had died. That jubilant music, that rollicking, swinging rapture, that dizzying elation was an apt celebration of her memory. And her holiness.

The angel was a member of our parish. She would sit in the back pew with her ailing husband and their 40-year-old son Andy, who has developmental disabilities. Her name was Diana, but I didn’t know that until I heard the news of her death.

What I did know was how lovingly she cared for her husband and son. And I saw a lot of them because I like to sit in a back pew, too.

Her husband seemed to have a great number of ailments, a man who was once strong but who now had to make his difficult and painful way up the center aisle to Communion. She was with him every step of the way. And with Andy, too.

They often would be the last people to receive the Eucharist, and, just at the opening of the left aisle that they used to return to their pew, the three of them would stop and, with their arms on each other's shoulders, bow their heads together in a communion of family, a communion of love. Or, if there were people behind them, they would wait until they got to the back of church to do it.

Diana had snow white hair and the brightest of eyes. She seemed to have an inner glow. And her eyes were focused almost always on her husband and her son.

She really impressed our adult daughter, who offhandedly and with deep respect called her the angel. It wasn't a nickname like Angel. It was a noun, a descriptor: angel. And we all came to use it among ourselves.

One time, downtown, at the ballet, my wife Cathy and I saw her and Andy coming into the lobby during an intermission. We talked a bit.  She said she often brought her son to watch the dancing. 

It might have been then that she mentioned that he was soon going into a sheltered care facility where he could live on his own in a community for the rest of his life. He'd come back to visit on occasion, and we'd see him at church. I remember once he'd grown a moustache.

Diana never knew that our family thought of her and called her the angel. We never mentioned it to anyone else in the parish. But I suspect that there were many others who looked at her over the years and saw a woman who was glowing with love and with life.

Diana's husband died in August 2020, and she followed him nine months later. She was 82, and I can't help thinking that during all those 82 years she was an angel to many, not just her husband and son.

And I can't help thinking that every parish is filled with people like Diana who are, in their own particular way, holy and who, in their own particular way, touch those around them. I don't mean that all these people glowed and loved in the way Diana did. She was special. What I mean is that, when we gather in the church or in the parish hall or on the sidewalk outside, each soul is there, each soul is present in some way, each soul touches others in some way.

Maybe it's the woman who comes each Sunday and participates in Mass but doesn't go to Communion. When I see her, I see a woman of strong faith who is a member of our community and our family even though she doesn't feel she can approach the table of the Eucharist. 

I wonder at the pain she must feel not to be able to join the Communion line. Was there a priest who roughly told her she could not because of some decision she’d made in life? Did she come to this on her own?

Or maybe it's the two gay men who adopted three babies born to troubled women and raised them and loved them and have loved them into adulthood, even with the challenges and difficulties they faced.

Or maybe it's the guy who's a funeral director whose wife had a debilitating disease that slowly killed her. He spent a lifetime dealing with death, and he faced his family's tragedy with strength, resoluteness, openness and even humor. 

Each Sunday, I am honored to be in the same church with him. And I am honored when those two gay men are at Mass. And I am honored by the woman who doesn't take the Eucharist but shows up anyway.

And I was honored by the angel. And by her husband. And by Andy.

A parish is a congregation of souls. Each of us is an angel and a saint and a sinner. I have no idea how my presence in the congregation touches anyone. But I’m sure it does.

Each parish, I know, is like this. And not just parishes. Each neighborhood, each work team, each sports team, each council, each gathering — all the fans at Wrigley Field watching the Cubs — each and every one is like this.

Wherever souls are gathered, God is. And, wherever souls are gathered, we can see each one of us struggling to find the way through life. Some will make bitter choices. But even someone who acts mean or greedy is a soul yearning for some kind of goodness, yearning for rightness.

As Christians, we understand that we're all yearning for God. That can be a help in the here and now, but it doesn’t take away the yearning. 

For me, God is in the yearning. God is in each soul in its pain and joy, in its wonder and fear.

God was in the angel. No question of that. But, when I look around the congregation at the 10:30 Mass, I see God in every soul in every pew.

Hallelujah

HALLELUJAH

Patrick T. Reardon

Patrick T. Reardon is the author of 10 books, including the recently published poetry collection Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay Books) and the history The Loop: The “L” Tracks That Shaped and Saved Chicago (Southern Illinois University Press). 

 

Sermon on Baptism and the Devil 27JAN13

I believe in the Devil and his demons and the struggle between good and evil in this world. My faith is in God the Father and Son and Holy Ghost, and the forgiveness of sins and the promise of salvation and the resurrection through Jesus. I believe in the legions of Angels God has watching over us, and the power of the Saints among us to help all believers along the way, if we have faith and seek them out. This sermon on Baptism is a powerful statement of faith and God's love and grace, and the Devil's constant attempts to turn us from God. From the Sarcastic Lutheran, Rev Nadia Bolz-Weber....

2013-1-27 NBW Sermon    <—-click here to listen along.

In the church of my childhood it was taught that the “age of accountability” was somewhere around 12. To hit the age of accountability was to, like,  spiritually go off of your parents’ insurance. At age 12 the clock starts ticking, spiritually speaking; you know right from wrong now and because of this you are accountable for every time you screw up. And if you sin knowing right from wrong and then die before you chose to be baptized, you might burn in Hell for eternity. So age 12, as you can imagine, is when kids start choosing to get baptized. The lag time between entering the age of accountability and having your slate wiped clean through baptism can be terrifying. Many of us kids would pray not to die in a car crash before we were baptized, like other people pray to not get sick before their employee benefits kick in.  So basically, Twelve year old Church of Christ kids experience a wave of devotion like a Great Awakening comprised only of 6th graders. And this is partly because we were all terrified of the devil and temptation and sin. Since, as we were told, all the bad things we’d done may have been washed clean in baptism, but the devil was waiting right outside the baptistery to try and get us to be bad again.

While I am certain evil exists I’m not sure it’s in the form of a red man with horns and pitchfork and tail.  That image that terrified me as a child is now a bit too cartoon-y for me to take seriously.

31 years later I still don’t know what to do with talk of the devil and demons or that whole “powers and principalities” thing. Like a good middle class mainline Protestant, I tend to arrogantly look down my theological nose at all of it as superstitious snake handling nonsense, as though it’s all the embarrassing spiritual equivalent of a Monster Truck Rally. At best I think the talk about demonic forces I hear in some parts of Christianity is no more than a result of ignorance and lack of education; at worse it’s just a way to externalize our own sin. Because if the Devil made me do it, then I don’t have to face the reality that perhaps I made me do it. Not to mention it’s all so ripe for abuse:  some of you guys have fallen victim to other Christians trying to cast out the so-called demon of homosexuality as though spiritual warfare and culture wars are one in the same thing.

Yet I know for a fact that evil exists.  And more and more I think it’s dangerous to pretend otherwise. Call it the devil, call it darkness call it what you will, it is out there. Darfur, Sandy hook, Penn State.  But it can be more subtle than that too: white lies, self-involvement, cheating.  Addiction, compulsion, depression. There are forces that seek to defy God that swirl around us and even within us.

Which brings me back to baptism and the Devil.  How awesome is that a few minutes ago we stood here and vowed to renounce the Devil and all his empty promises.  Take a moment to take that in.  When else do you get to stand in public and renounce evil?

So were you to ask me what good is baptism to us, I would have to say that, in part, it is humans partaking in an event of God which defies evil and forever claims us as God’s own.

Which is nice theological language, but what good is it to us really?  I mean really, really.  Well…that’s where Luther comes in.  Luther had some very real encounters with what he believed to be the devil.  But for him, rather than the devil tempting him to do bad things, the devil mainly tried to get him to doubt the power of God’s promises.  When Luther started to revert back to thinking that God was an angry hostile vengeful God he knew that it was the Devil trying to get him to doubt God’s grace.  And when Luther experienced this despair and discouragement he was known to throw an occasional ink pot at the devil while yelling I am baptized! Not I was baptized, but I am baptized.

To yell I am baptized! is to again renounce the devil and all his empty promises.  To yell I am baptized! at the forces of discouragement and addiction and every other thing that tries to rob you of the peace that is yours in Christ is to again renounce the devil and all his empty promises.  To yell I am baptized! when the power of fear and self-loathing and hubris and hatred creep in to try and tell you who you are, is to again renounce the devil and all his empty promises.  And this is now at your disposal Cassie.  It may sound crazy, but use it. It should totally come in handy.

Renouncing the Devil is awesome, but if baptism is in some part about the defiance of evil and all of its empty promises, it is even more so about the receiving of God and all of his binding promises.   So today as the waters of your baptisms glisten on your head from the mark of the cross, may you know this: You had about the same chance of choosing your God as you had in choosing your parents.  This God of Sara and Abraham, this God who so madly loved the world God created that God slipped into skin and walked among us as Jesus…this God who speaks through crazy prophets and kisses lepers and makes whole that which is broken, this very God has chosen you…claimed you and named you as God’s own.  It’s a wonderful mercy.  A wild mystery to have a God who comes down to claim you in water and words forever marking you as God’s own.

These promises of God are forever bound to you Cassie.  And to all the baptized.   It’s what we call a “done deal” You can’t escape them.  Because these promises will hunt you down and bring you new life as you die and are raised again and again in your baptismal walk.

And this will happen to you Cassie; this death and resurrection of the baptismal life.

So I really hope that you grow to love metanoia, which is repentance, changing your thinking and returning to God. For in the act of repentance there is the hope of new thinking, new acting, and new life which you simply don’t get when you still think you are right about something.  Don’t listen when people say that following Christ means being right.  To follow the crucified and resurrected one is to live as a people who get to be wrong –and be re-born to new life in Christ.  So I hope you are often wrong Cassie …so that you might drink deeply from this grace of God which makes all things new.  Because this is now a life of returning to your baptism.

So I hope in this baptismal life ahead of you that when you encounter water – this most common of substances which surrounds land and comprises our bodies…I hope when you drink it in; when you dive deep in a pool of it; when you wade in a stream of it; that even when you wash dishes with it; I hope that you are reminded of the promise of life eternal: a promise that life with God is as close to you as water and bread and wine and human bodies.  Because to be Christian is to know that the eternal is always contained in the present.

So may you not neglect to gather around the table in the community of Christ with all the other blessed and annoying sinners so that there you might behold who you are and become what you receive:– the very body of Christ for this hurt and broken and beautiful world.

And when voices other than God’s try to tell you your worth – when the categories of late stage capitalism or the siren song of professional advancement or the various ridiculous ranking systems in society, or your own head tries to tell you your value and trust me, this will happen, but when it does may you again remember your baptism – remember that you have renounced the Devil and all his empty promises and are marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit and that you belong to God, because nothing…nothing else gets to tell you who you are.

Amen

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2013/01/sermon-on-baptism-and-the-devil/

LOVE, FAITH AND ANGELS

Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. - Hebrews 13:1-2

Faith is permitting ourselves to be seized by the things we do not see. - Martin Luther Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. - Philippians 3:14-15 It is not enough for us to say: "I love God, but I do not love my neighbor." Saint John says that you are a liar if you love God and you don't love your neighbor. How can you love God whom you do not see, if you do not love your neighbor whom you see, whom you touch, with whom you live? And so this is very important for us to realize, that love, to be true, has to hurt. - Mother Teresa, Nobel Prize acceptance speech, 1979