Rev. Valerie's Reveille

In our Gospel lesson for this Sunday, Jesus sends 70 apostles out with this message, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.” Luke 10:9 It is a deceptively simple statement with awesome ramifications, should we choose to witness to them.  In light of this weekend also being the celebration of the United States’ independence, it offers a sobering moment of reflection as well. Perhaps it will be helpful to dig a bit deeper into this message. What does the phrase “kingdom of God” or “realm of God” mean?  Is it a place, a destination?  Can we only get there through death? Does it exist in 2016 or only in “biblical times”?  My understanding is that all of Creation is God’s realm, that God’s presence and perfect ordering is expressed in that Creation, of which human beings have been given the great honor to be stewards over it.  However, due to our own limited understanding of God’s presence, we choose to subjugate Creation to our own desires and forget God’s pr...

These words are spoken by some Greeks attending a festival in Jerusalem to Philip in John 12:21. This scripture quotation is also inscribed on the inside of many pulpits, including (if my memory serves me correctly) at the National Cathedral in Washington DC.   It is a reminder to the preacher of his/her weighty job to offer the presence of Christ in the sermon.   It is also a reminder to all Christians of our duty to seek and see Jesus at all times, in all places and people.   This can be extremely challenging given much of what we are exposed to everyday.   That is why it is crucial for all of us to nurture continually our faith, planting deep roots of relationship with Christ through practices of prayer, worship and reflection. What have you done for your faith lately? Have you made time to pray with your full attention?  Have you sought direction and discerned God’s will?  Have you read Scripture and thought about what it means in your life today?...

When I woke up last Sunday morning, my mind was filled with all the details involved with preparing for worship and the picnic for St. Barnabas Day. As I glanced at my phone and saw a news notification about the tragic shooting in Orlando, I thought, “Oh, no, not again.”  I didn’t spend much time finding out the details (and they were still sketchy at that point), but I immediately thought that we needed to add a petition to the Prayers of the People about the incident, both as a way to connect what we do in the church building with the greater world and to find some consolation in the midst of such horror. Since Sunday, both our Presiding Bishop, The Most Rev. Michael Curry, and our Diocesan Bishop, The Rt. Rev. Chip Stokes, have offered statements about the events, which can be found on the St. Barnabas Facebook page ( www.facebook.com/StBarnabasNJ ).  These are messages of solidarity with our LGBT sisters and brothers, reminders that our Baptismal Covenant include a vo...

“And the   Lord   God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there God put the a-dám whom God had formed.   Out of the ground the   Lord   God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. . . ” Genesis 2: 8-9a I had the wonderful opportunity this week to visit a new program sponsored by Princeton Theological Seminary called “Farminary,” which integrates theological education with small-scale sustainable agriculture.  Working intimately with God’s creation while reflecting both on God’s Word and the produce of that work offers a unique perspective of our (that is human’s) relationship with all of Creation.   I am not a farmer or a gardener.  Most of the time I think I inherited my mother’s “brown thumb." I consider it a victory when I manage to keep house plants alive through both neglect and over watering.  But I am still fascinated by the growing process.  The fact that a seed must “die” in order to...

Our Presiding Bishop, The Most Rev. Michael Curry, has been proclaiming that we are “the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement.”  By that, he is reclaiming our identity of being part of the early movement started by Jesus Christ in his earthly ministry and passed on to the apostles and to the communities they helped establish.  These communities were not created to begin a new religion, but to follow “the Way,” that is the way of life Jesus preached and taught to his followers – to love God, love your neighbor and love yourself. In our post-Christendom society (i.e. where faith is no longer a priority in many people’s lives), the Church is looking to reclaim relevance and impact.  We cannot depend on the model that people will come looking for us because we have something they want.   Rather, we need to be more like the members of the early movement and find ways to go out into our community and share Jesus’ message of redemption and love. That sounds ...

This Sunday we celebrate Trinity Sunday, which is an important part of our Christian tradition, but unlike many other holy days, it celebrates a concept rather than event.  (Other days like this include All Saint’s Day and The Reign of Christ {or Christ the King} Sunday.) The very nature of such an event seems to beg confusion at best and irrelevance at worse for the average lay person.  But I am here to make a case for not only celebrating the Trinity, but also making the effort to see its importance in our life today. In our worship we refer to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit often enough that it can lose meaning.  The purpose for stating the three parts of the Godhead is a constant reminder that God is a relationship within one entity, through which we experience God in different ways. Yet we must tread lightly here to be careful not to fall into an explanation that can be heretical – against the Church’s teachings. What is your favorite heresy?  Don’t ha...

The Collect for the 7 th Sunday of Easter - O God, the King of glory, you have exalted your only Son Jesus Christ with great triumph to your kingdom in heaven: Do not leave us comfortless, but send us your Holy Spirit to strengthen us, and exalt us to that place where our Savior Christ has gone before; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. I’m pretty sure this prayer comes under the heading “Be careful what you ask for.”  On the surface it seems reasonable, even hopeful.  Who doesn’t want to be comforted or comfortable?  That is what society tells us we should strive for all the time.  That is the ultimate life pursuit – to find comfort.  But if we really understand this prayer, we realize that we are not seeking comfort to the exclusion of all else, but the strength to deal with what Christ as also done. Wait, what?  Do we mean the rejection, suffering, torture and death?  Yes, but ...