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    • Sunday service - Holy Communion December 28, 2025 at 9:30 am – 11:00 am Grace Church 215 Pleasant Street, Sheldon, VT Website: www.gracechurchsheldon.comTime:  09:30 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada)        Every week on Sun.Join Zoom Meetinghttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83929911344?pwd=alZQTWZMN0ZkWFFPS1hmNjNkZkU2UT09Meeting ID: 839 2991 1344Password: Call for detailsOne tap mobile+13126266799,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (Chicago)+19294362866,,83929911344#,,1#,816603# US (New York)Dial by your location        +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)        +1 929 436 2866 US (New York)Meeting ID:…
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Advent 1C RCL December 2, 2018

Posted on December 2, 2018 by Beth Crane

Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

Advent is a time when we look back to the first coming of our Lord as a baby and look ahead to his coming again to complete his work of creation. Advent is also the new year’s season of the Church. We move from lectionary year B to year C, and our liturgical color changes from the green of the post-Pentecost season to the purple which befits both penitence and the welcoming of our King.

As we look around our world, we have been seeing all kinds of destructive weather events—forest fires consuming people’s homes and destroying their lives, severe storms, continuing mass shootings, war, famine, refugees seeking asylum, and on and on the list of tragedies goes.

Our very brief reading from the prophet Jeremiah comes from a tragic time as well. Jeremiah is writing from prison. He is under house arrest because he has displeased King Hezekiah. He has been telling the king truths that the king does not want to hear. The Babylonians have leveled Jerusalem. Earlier in the chapter, Jeremiah describes corpses being piled up in houses. It is a terrible time, a time in which it would be easy to lose all hope.

And yet, Jeremiah reminds his people and us of God’s great promise to all of us. A righteous branch will spring up. From an old stump, a new shoot will appear. The kingship of David will be restored. People will live in peace; they will raise crops; business will be carried out with honesty and integrity; people will marry and have children.  The Lord will “execute justice and righteousness in the land.”

As Christians, we see that shoot from the stump of Jesse as our Lord Jesus Christ. In times of darkness and turmoil, we look for his return and the establishment of his shalom of justice, love, and peace.

Our epistle today is from Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. Scholars tell us that this is probably the earliest writing in the New Testament. Paul had founded this community of faith and then had been called to a new mission. But he had always wanted to go back to visit these people, whom he loved very much. He sent Timothy to see how they were doing, and Timothy returned to Paul with a glowing account of this loving community which continued to show forth the compassion of Christ even under persecution.

Paul writes, “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?” Paul prays again that God may make it possible for him to visit this beloved community. And then he prays, “May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you. And may he strengthen your hearts in holiness….” That is St. Paul’s prayer for us as well. Love is at the heart of our faith. Paul is praying that we may continue in love for each other and for all people and that God may strengthen our hearts in holiness that we may remain steadfast in our faith. And a key part of our faith is that our Lord will return to set all things right.

Our gospel for today is full of apocalyptic images, “signs among the sun, the moon, and the stars,” “distress among the nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves,” “fear and foreboding.” Every age has its turmoil, and our Lord counsels us not to run to the hills, but to be ready for his coming.

He says, “Stand up, and raise your heads. because your redemption is drawing near.” He tells us to be careful that we are not “weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life.”

Jesus calls us to “be alert at all times.”

Herbert O’Driscoll writes, “The great significance of this passage for us lies in the attitude that our Lord calls for. Our Lord is saying something like this—If we truly believe that God is at the heart of human events, then we can experience life with confidence, knowing that all events have ultimate meaning and purpose within the mind and will of God.” (O’Driscoll, The Word Among Us, Year C vol. 1, p. 15.

Confidence comes from the roots con, meaning “with,” and fides, meaning “faith.” The true meaning of confidence is to live with faith, to have our lives rooted and grounded in faith.

What are these readings saying to us, here in the year 2018?

First, in the midst of one of the most devastating tragedies in history, the Babylonian Captivity, Jeremiah, one of God’s greatest and most courageous prophets, reaches into the heart of God’s life with God’s people and reminds us that God’s promise is always to bring wholeness out of brokenness, life out of death, meaning and purpose out of chaos and confusion. As God’s people, we are called to focus on the light of that hope and to move forward in faith.

Secondly, we learn from St. Paul and the Thessalonians that love is at the center of everything. Grace is a small congregation, but, like the church at Thessalonica, Grace is a congregation where folks love each other and share God’s love with all people. It is easy to take that for granted or to diminish the value of that, but the power of love is beyond our imagining or understanding. Love is a gift from God. a gift to be cherished.

Finally, our Lord is talking to us about the time when he will come to make the creation whole. He calls us to be ready. He also tells us not to try to figure out when that moment will come, but simply to be ready all the time.

When he does come to bring in his shalom, we do not need to be afraid. Yes, he is our King. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Yes, he is mighty. And he is also the One who has said that his kingdom is within us. He is also our Good Shepherd, who knows each of us, weaknesses and strengths, gifts and flaws, and he calls us each by name, and we follow him. Into his kingdom.  Amen.

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Lent 1B  February 18, 2018

Posted on February 18, 2018 by Beth Crane

Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15

In our opening reading for today, God makes a covenant with “every living creature.” Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann writes, “The assurance from God is not only about another flood. It is, rather, a pledge to creation by the Creator, a pledge of fidelity which will keep the world safe from every jeopardy.” (Brueggemann, Texts for Preaching Year B, p. 193.)

The sign of this covenant is the “bow.” I can’t count how many times I have been driving along and suddenly cars are pulling over to the side of the road to look at a rainbow. The rainbow is a sign of God’s grace and protection.  As partners with God in the stewardship of the creation, we are called to work with God and each other to preserve the creation.

In our gospel for today, we are present as Jesus is baptized by his cousin John. The Spirit descends on our Lord, and God identifies Jesus as the beloved in whom God is well pleased. Then the Spirit compels Jesus to go out into the wilderness. Mark does not go into the details of the temptations, but we are told that Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness tempted by Satan. The text tells us that he was with the wild beasts, and that angels waited upon him.

Matthew and Luke provide details about the actual temptations. Mark concentrates on the dangers of being out in the wilderness for forty days. In ancient times, cities and villages were protected, often by walls, and the wilderness was a place of chaos and danger. Wild animals such as wolves, bears, leopards lived in the Judean wilderness at that time, and there could be other dangers as well. Mark points out that Jesus had the protection of angels as he wrestled through the process of discerning who he was and how he would carry out his ministry.

Jesus is in the wilderness for forty days.  Forty is a highly symbolic number in the Bible. After it rained for forty days and forty nights, Noah, his family, and all the animals stayed in the ark for over a year. The people of God wandered in the wilderness for forty years. The prophet Elijah spent forty days in the wilderness after Queen Jezebel said she would have him killed.

The wilderness is also where Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist carried out his ministry. After John is arrested, Jesus comes to Galilee and begins to proclaim the Good News.

Jesus’ ministry began, continued, and ended in struggle with authorities who either could not or chose not to recognize the presence of God. He begins his ministry by saying, “…the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.” Many scholars say that the word translated as “near” could also be translated as “within you.” The kingdom of God is within you.

The First Letter of Peter was written to a community of new Christians in Asia Minor who were finding that it was not easy to follow Jesus. They were surrounded by people who did not share their faith, and they were living in a world that was suspicious of the new faith, a world that tended to persecute Christians.

During Lent, we are following in the footsteps of our Lord. As he wrestled with what God was calling him to do and how he was to do it,  we are called to take time in Lent to discern our own ministries, to acknowledge our sins and failures, to ask God’s forgiveness and grace and to allow God to help us to grow into the persons God calls us to be.

Most of us have been on this journey for quite a bit of time, so it’s more a process of steady growth than a dramatic transformation, but it’s still hard work, and we wouldn’t even be able to begin without God’s love and grace.

Our gospel and epistle for today remind us of something that I find a great comfort, and that is that Jesus went through all of this, and we are simply walking the way that he has already walked.

We may not be going out into the wilderness in a literal sense, but we can identify the things that tempt us to be less than we know God calls us to be.  There are so many misuses of power in this world that it would be easy to say, “Might makes right,” or “The end justifies the means,” and get off track. These abuses of power can also be downright depressing, and we need to remember that our Lord never gave up. He persevered through everything.

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus begins his ministry after his cousin John has been arrested. John was put in jail because he confronted Herod Antipas with his immorality. He was later killed because he had spoken truth to power.

Jesus worked through his process of discernment. He wrestled with his own demons. And he came through it and carried out his ministry in a way that shows us love, courage, and integrity lived in a human life.

Our prayers are with those who died and were injured at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and with their families and friends and all who mourn this terrible loss. May we also seek God’s guidance and take whatever actions our Lord calls us to take in this matter.

Gracious and loving God, lead us and guide us as we follow you this Lent. Amen.


                   

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Lent 1 Year B RCL February 22, 2015

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Beth Crane

Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15

Noah and his family have kept the faith and are saved from the flood to make a new beginning. We have been made children of God and inheritors of the kingdom through the waters of baptism. Now, we begin our Lenten journey in the wilderness with our Lord.

Whenever we take a journey, it is usually helpful to have maps and compasses, guidelines, GPS, something to go by. This year, I thought it might be useful to reflect on the seven root sins and the theological and cardinal virtues. This framework was first suggested to me by David Brown, rector of Christ Church, Montpelier, now retired, who was one of my major mentors.

The Seven Root Sins are pride, wrath, envy, greed, gluttony, lust and sloth. The Theological Virtues are faith, hope, and love. The Cardinal Virtues are prudence, justice, temperance, and fortitude.

Pride. Doing it our own way instead of seeking God’s will. This is not the same thing as feeling pride at a job well done. The sin of pride has nothing to do with healthy self-esteem. Pride is the thing that says, “I’ll do it my way.” Pride does not even ask for God’s help. Pride is the opposite of humility and obedience. Humility is openness. It comes from the root word for humus, good, rich open earth ready for planting.

If we have humility, it does not mean that we are groveling or that we think we are worms in God’s sight. It means that we are open to God’s guidance and grace. It is a really good idea to ask for God’s help often.

Here at Grace, I think all of us sincerely want to seek and do God’s will. But we may not want to “bother” God by asking for help when God has so many huge issues to deal with. Please don’t let that stop you. God wants us to ask for guidance and help. That’s how we strengthen our relationship with God. It is impossible to bother God.

Wrath. Wrath is not the same thing as anger. Anger is a normal, human emotion. Anger happens when something is wrong in a situation, when someone is not treating someone else with respect, when someone is oppressing someone else, or dismissing, or not hearing. Wrath is nursing anger, breeding resentment, focussing on a person or a situation until we are consumed with wrath. It destroys us. It eats us alive. If there is wrong in a situation, we need to take steps to set it right, get help if needed, or, if the situation continues to be unhealthy and it cannot be changed, we need to get out of it.

Envy is the inability to rejoice in the blessings which others receive.

Greed is wanting more than we need. Gluttony is taking more than we need. This is something we in the developed nations need to think about. Lust is using other people. Someone once said, We are called to love people and use things, not to use people and love things.”

Sloth (Acedie) has nothing to do with taking sabbath time, enjoying times of rest and leisure. We need sabbath time to renew our bodies and spirits. Sloth is not caring, giving up. Sloth is not to be confused with depression, which is a clinical lack of energy. When we are severely depressed, we do not have the energy to care, but that is not a sin. It is a clinical condition.

The Theological Virtues—Faith, hope, and love. Faith is trust in God. As we noted earlier, the more we ask for God’s help in doing God’s will, the stronger our faith grows

When we are open to God’s help, when we ask for God’s will and seek to do God’s will, we begin to realize the depth of God’s love. That is, we develop a deeper and deeper relationship with God. We realize more and more that God is always there for us, and this strengthens our faith. Faith is that trust in God which comes out of our relationship with God, that give and take with God that happens on a daily, even a moment-by-moment basis.

Hope is the ability to look at a situation in all its complexity, accurately seeing the darkness and brokenness in that situation, and still perceiving the potential for wholeness in that situation.

Love. The ultimate meaning of love is God’s unconditional love for us. That is what we are aiming for. We will never reach it, but it is a good goal.

Prudence. Kenneth Kirk says that prudence is “The habit of referring all questions to God.” Constant communication with God, seeking God’s will. Dear Lord, what do you want me to do in this situation? What perspective do you want me to have on this situation?

Justice—Giving each person his or her just due. Treating everyone with respect, no matter what their social status, education, wealth, power, or any other consideration.

Temperance—balance, humor, flexibility. Fortitude. Hanging in there on the side of the shalom of God.

Perhaps it is because we are having such a cold winter, but this year, it is important to me that Lent comes from the Middle English word for “Springtime.” During Lent, we examine our lives, confess our sins, and ask God’s forgiveness and grace to move away from the brokenness of sin toward the wholeness of God.

Lent is a time for growth. We are called to grow more and more like our Lord as we follow him to the cross and into new life. He is with us, to lead us and guide us. May we turn to him with all our heart. Amen.

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Lent 1 Year B RCL February 26, 2012

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Beth Crane

Genesis 9: 8-17
Psalm 25: 1-9
1 Peter 3: 18-22
Mark 1: 9-15

 Martin Smith is a priest and a monk, a member of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, a religious community for men in the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. Martin is a member of the community based in Boston. I have long respected his spiritual depth.

In his book of meditations for Lent,  A Season for the Spirit, Martin has a wonderful meditation on the Baptism of Christ. I am going to share this meditation with you because it gives us a perspective I have never heard expressed by any other person. I hope this will be as helpful to you as it has been to me.

Martin Smith writes, “If you were to picture the scene of Jesus’ baptism in your imagination, what would it be like? What feelings would arise? I did not realize how much I had been influenced by the typical representations of the scene in conventional Christian art until I went to a showing of Paolini’s film, The Gospel according to St. Matthew.  I found myself taken by surprise at the scene of Jesus’ baptism by John, and wept. It took a lot of thinking and praying to gain insight about why I had been moved by this scene in particular. In time I realized that hundreds of stained glass windows and paintings depicted only the two figures in the water. But the film shook me into the realization that Jesus’ baptism was  not a private ceremony but a mass affair with hundreds of men and women swarming in the river, and hundreds more waiting on the bank to take their place. Religious pictures had blunted the impact of the gospels’ insistence on the sheer numbers involved. “And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem, and they were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins.”  (Mark 1:5.) Luke repeats the word ‘multitudes’ and paints the picture of a mass baptism. ‘Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized….’  (Luke 3: 21.)

Insight gradually dawned that I had been moved by an intuition of Jesus’ solidarity with ordinary, struggling men and women. John preached a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” It was for the masses of mediocre people whose failures, lukewarmness, and mundane unfaithfulness made the prospect of coming judgment terrible. New converts to Judaism passed through a baptismal rite as part of their initiation. Now everyone needed a fresh start, as radical as the one made by a pagan who was embracing Judaism. John was offering  to the masses of ordinary people a baptism which could give them that new beginning.

Jesus’ reaction to John’s preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins was a crucial turning point. He could have kept his distance, an innocent young man conscious of unbroken faithfulness to God, looking with pity on the thousands of ordinary people who were overwhelmed by the realization of their own moral inadequacy. But instead of looking down on them from afar, secure in his own guiltlessness, Jesus plunged into the waters with them and lost himself in the crowd. He threw away his innocence and separateness to take on the identity of struggling men and women who were reaching out en masse for the lifeline of forgiveness.

It was at that moment when Jesus had thrown away his innocent individuality in exchange for the identity of needy, failed, struggling human beings that ‘the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, as a dove, and a voice came from heaven, “thou art my beloved Son: with thee I am well pleased.”’ (Luke 3: 21, 22.)

God’s pleasure in Jesus can no longer be contained, and it bursts out. God is well-pleased precisely in Jesus’ self-emptying assumption of our identity. The Spirit reveals to Jesus that he is the beloved Son of God at the precise moment when Jesus had taken on the role of the son of Man. The strange idiom which Jesus was to use to refer to himself might be better translated, ‘the Human Being.’ In the muddy river Jesus was taking on the role of representing Humanity, of being its suffering  Heart and Self before God. As soon as Jesus had done that decisively, God flooded him with awareness of his unique relationship as Son and anointed him with the life-giving Breath for his mission.

I had wept because the fleeting images of the film had invited me into the Jordan experience as no static stained-glass window or old master had done. Can you feel and see yourself as part of that crowd of  humanity in the muddy water, as I started to then, and experience the entry of Jesus into our condition, into our needs? He chooses to plunge into it and make it his own. Nothing about me, about us, is foreign to him. He has chosen to be the Self of our selves.

And now, years later, I believe I wept because of the timing of the descent of the Spirit, the coincidence between the moment of Jesus’ solidarity with human beings and the moment of God’s revelation of intimate relationship with Jesus. Never did any event so deserve the name ‘moment of truth.’ The Spirit descended when Jesus embraced the truth of our interconnectedness, our belonging together in God. As soon as Jesus undertook to live that truth to the full, he was suffused with awareness of his own unique origin from and union with God and was filled with God’s Breath. This coincidence reveals the axis on which the gospel turns. The barriers which hold us back from one another in fearful individuality are the identical barriers which block the embrace of God and insulate us from the Spirit. It is one and the same movement of surrender to open ourselves to intimacy and personal union with God in the Spirit, and to open ourselves to compassion and solidarity with our struggling, needy fellow human beings. I was weeping in that Oxford cinema, though I did not understand it at the time, under the impact of this insight. To be open to the Spirit is also to be open to humanity in all its fractured confusion and poverty and its ardent reaching for fulfillment. To be open to the embrace of the Father is necessarily and inevitably to be open to the whole creation which is held in that embrace.”

Martin closes the meditation with this prayer:

“Spirit like a dove descending, in spite of my timidity I am appealing to you to centre my heart on this axis of truth in these forty days. Every small step you enable me to take towards a deeper compassion for my fellow human beings will lead me further into the experience of the Father’s delight in me and care for me. And vice versa. Every step I take in meditation to intensify my awareness of the love of God poured into my heart through the gift of your indwelling, will take me into a deeper identification with the suffering world, ‘groaning in travail together until now.’”

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