Rev. Valerie's Reveille

Contrary to current belief, Jesus did not die for religious freedom, freedom of speech or demonstrating the importance of the separation between church and state.  All of these ideals/points of view have co-opted Jesus’ life and death to support their political agenda.  In some ways that seems logical since he was killed as part of a political solution to a social issue.  But those that killed Jesus then and those who are invoking his name now in a political way are still missing the point.  Jesus died because he loved us – God’s perfectly imperfect creation.  It’s as simple and as difficult as that.  As we progress through the most holy week of the Christian year, it is vital that we claim this truth at the core of our faith.  In fact, the Triduum – the holy 3 days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil/Easter Day – begins with solemnizing the commandment that Jesus gave this disciples (both then and now), “Love one another as I have lo...

Happy Feast of the Annunciation!  Only 9 months until Christmas! (You can go ahead and scream, now.) While it might seem like I am rushing the season, it is actually an intriguing notion to consider the gestation period prior to the birth of our Lord, especially as it overlaps the end of our Lenten journey and the start of our Easter celebration.  In this way we see that life in Christ never really ends but is always beginning anew in one way or another.  Even more importantly, we acknowledge that things take time.  Modern medicine tells us that it takes 40 weeks for a human child to gestate.  Even in this day and age of short attention spans and desire for instant gratification, this process cannot and should not be rushed.  Each moment is necessary for the creation of a new life, one capable of living on its own after birth.  In some ways, it seems miraculous that it only takes 40 weeks to accomplish that feat!  It definitely takes longer...

At our Diocesan Convention last month, one of the presenters was Lisa Kimball, Ph.D, the Professor of Christian Formation and Congregational Leadership and Director of the Center for the Ministry of Teaching at Virginia Theological Seminary.  She offered a session on looking life-wide Christian Formation as well as lifelong. I am intrigued by the term life-wide as it acknowledges our need to be formed as Christians not just at certain significant moments in our life (baptism, confirmation, marriage, etc.), but also in our daily labors at school or work, with friends and family, in health or sickness.  We need to be formed as Christians to approach all life has to offer, the blessings and the challenges, the joys and the sorrows.  The season of Lent offers us the perfect time to consider our life-wide relationship with God.  How do we seek and serve God throughout our day, wherever that takes us?  Do we choose to approach our work as part of our life in Ch...

I must apologize.  In my rash desire to push an agenda of social justice and anti-racism, I committed the very sin I preach against by not respecting the dignity of every human being.  Too often I let my passion and fervor run my mouth without being certain of the facts to which I am referring.  During the sermon this past Sunday, while commemorating the 50 th Anniversary of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, AL, I made reference to Ferguson, MO and the case involving Michael Brown.  My intention was to say that 50 years later, we still have much work to do in the cause of civil rights, as reported in the U.S. Department of Justice’s report finding systemic racism in the city’s judicial system. My offhanded comment, however, did not respect the facts about Michael Brown’s case and the police office involved in that situation.  The same report from the DOJ reports that Darren Wilson acted in self-defense and he has been exonerated of any crime...

For the past three weeks I have been enthralled with a PBS documentary series called A Path Appears , which follows “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn and a group of dedicated actor/advocates to Colombia, Haiti, Kenya, and throughout the United States. They uncover the harshest forms of gender inequality, the devastating impact of poverty and the ripple effects that follow: including sex trafficking, teen-pregnancy, gender-based violence, child slavery and the effective solutions being forged to combat them.” You can watch the episodes at http://video.pbs.org/video/2365387809/ . In the first episode, an organization called Thistle Farms/Magdalene House is featured.  Located in Nashville, TN, this ministry was started by an Episcopal priest, Becca Stevens, to address the terrible cycle of human trafficking, drug abuse, poverty and lack of education.  It was startling for me to see the horrible way humans treat other humans in this day a...

It has been 42 days since Christmas.  I know this without looking at a calendar because February 2 nd is when the Church remembers the Feast of the Presentation, which is based on the Jewish custom that a woman would be made ritually clean at the Temple 40 days after childbirth.  It combines nicely with the tradition of parents “buying back” first born sons from being given (literally) to God by making an offering at the Temple (1 Samuel 27-28).  The Feast commemorates when the Holy Family went to the temple to take care of these ritual obligations, and encountered Simeon and Anna on their visit, who prophesized about Jesus (Luke 2:25-38). Another name for this occasion is “Candlemas.”  As the Church began to develop its traditions, one way of celebrating the “light to the nations,” as Simeon declares in his speech (which became an integral part of evening worship in the canticle Nunc Dimittis ), was to bless all the candles that would be used in a church for the...

On January 26 th , history was made.  No, not the “blizzard that wasn’t” (more on that later), but the ordination and consecration of the Rev. Libby Lane as the first female Bishop in the Church of England (CoE). This might seem like old news to those of us in The Episcopal Church (TEC), where women have been allow to be ordained for almost 40 years (yes, when I was born, women were not allowed to be ordained!), but women’s ordination has been a huge controversy in our Mother Church.  Unlike TEC, the CoE did not chose to allow women to be elected bishops once they allowed them to be ordained to the priesthood in 1992. This capitulation to traditionalism was only part of the uphill battle. Several people filed law suits against the Church saying that women’s ordination was illegal.  Others were more passive-aggressive in their dissension and would walk out of a service if a woman was presiding.  I bore witness to this in 2004, when the first woman priest on the s...