lauren laughs

Preached at the Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta 

May 12, 2024: Easter 7 Year B

I love the image in the first Psalm—the one where people who delight in God are like trees planted by streams of water.  It makes me think of all of you, the faithful people of the 7:45 service, one of the most steadfast groups of worshippers in all of Christendom.  

I think about how you are just as consistent as the Rite I prayers we pray together.  

The clergy person changes from week to week, as does the lectionary we preach from.  And you are of course eager to welcome new faces to this sacred space, always extending grace and hospitality.  

These are welcome changes.  These changes are like the words of our opening hymn… now the green blade riseth… love is come again like wheat that springeth green. We celebrate new life and resurrection and growth, of course.  Every week—love is come again.

And yet, I also celebrate in you, not just the green blade rising, but the strong, steady, sturdy trees planted by streams of water.  That is what you are.

I think about how you are planted, firmly, in the same seats of the same pews every week.  Truly, when I picture the beauty of this service, I picture not just your faces, but also where those faces most often sit.  Even when we worshipped outside during Covid, I can picture who would stand on this side of the cloister garden, who would stand on that side of the garden, who would stand on the steps leading up to the doors of the Cathedral.  

You are like trees planted by streams of water.  And this worship we share together, these prayers, this holy feast, the peace that we will soon pass from one pew to the next—all of this is the water that sustains us.  

Our togetherness in Jesus Christ is the very stream of water that allows us to be rooted and grounded even in the face of the constant change of our every-day lives.

Of course, at the end of this service, we do walk out the chapel doors, and then we keep walking into the outside world.  We are firmly planted here, but we are not stuck here.  We are firmly planted here, but we are not hiding here.  Jesus sends us into the world.

Our Gospel text today is a portion of what scholars call the “High Priestly Prayer.”  In its entirety, Jesus prays for himself, then for his disciples, then for the whole world.  The part that we read today is the part dedicated to the disciples—to the faithful followers of Christ.  

And Jesus prays for the protection of his followers because they are not meant to confine themselves to the safety of their own tight-knit group, no.  Jesus sends them into the world.  They do not belong to the world, and yet they are sent into the world.  Because God so loved the world.

I think this is important to remember because when we think of being “in the world but not of the world” or when we think of not belonging to the world, it can be tempting to think that the world is just some broken place we have to endure until we are reunited with Jesus in a more perfect heavenly kingdom.  If we take that stance, we can come to this sacred space and consider it a respite from the crazies outside this place.  We can consider church a place where we can put our guard down, rest a while, and then put our guard back up again in opposition to the evil world outside these walls.

But God so loved the world.  Remember?  God so loves—LOVES—the world.  

We are sent into the world, not to withstand it, but to love it.  We come to church, not to rest, but to fill up on the love of Jesus so that we may pour out that same love into the world.  We come to church, not to put our guard down for a bit, but to learn how to let down our guard and open our hearts outside this place.  We come to church, not to be surrounded by people like us, but to practice passing the peace of Christ with people we disagree with so we can extend that same peace of Christ in the world God loves so much.  

At the end of this service, we’ll say together the words of one of my favorite hymns—written by priest and poet George Herbert.  The final verse declares: Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise thee.  We do not confine our praises to this sacred space, we do not confine our praises to early Sunday mornings.  Seven whole days, not one in seven.  Seven whole days—days spent in the world.  Days at home, at work, at school, on planes, in shops, at appointments, on the phone.  Days in the world that we do not belong to, because we belong to God, but God so loved the world, and God sends us into the world to love it also.

You are meant to be trees.  Not little seedlings in a greenhouse.  But trees—strong, steady, and sturdy.  Trees bearing fruit.  Trees that prosper.  

You are meant to be trees.  Trees outside, where trees thrive.  Trees planted by streams of living water—by the stream, not in the stream.

May this place and these prayers and this feast nourish you, just as your presence nourishes this whole Body of Christ.  May this stream of water fill you up so that you may go forth from this place in the name of Christ ready to love this world God loves so much.

Amen.

Preached at the Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta

April 28, 2024: Easter 5, Year B

When I was a kid, we had a trampoline.  Back then, trampolines were not circular with a silly net surrounding them (do those nets really make a trampoline any safer?).  Instead, our trampoline was a rectangle.  It was our favorite place to hang out.

Our trampoline was tucked on the far side of the backyard where no parents could watch us from the kitchen windows.  And because the trampoline was at the end of our property line, it was surrounded on three sides by wood fencing.  

You know the kind: where the boards are all placed one after the other in vertical position to provide maximum privacy—but with three boards placed horizontally at the bottom, middle, and top to secure the structure.  These horizontal boards were crucial to our play.  We would stand on the horizontal boards half-way up to wait our turn on the trampoline… or climb to the top horizontal board for a very unsafe dismount.  It was a lot of fun.

One of the three sides of fencing backed up to our alley.  The alleys in our neighborhood were like dirt roads running behind all the back yards.  Every few houses down the alley would be a dumpster.  So really, the only reason to visit the alley was to take out the trash.  And because the opening of the dumpster was taller than my head, I rarely ventured back there.

However, our fencing along the alley was… different.  

It all started when my maternal Great-Grandmother, Dorie, told my parents about this wonderful recipe she had for concord grape jam.  To hear her describe it, this jam was the best thing in the world… and oh how she longed to make it.  But she could never get the concord grapes to grow.

My dad, who grew up on the farm, and whose mother had grown several varieties of grapes over the years, decided to grow grapes for my Great-Grandmother Dorie so that we could make her most favorite jam.  

And where did my dad plant these grapes?

In the alley.  Across from the dumpsters.  The only people who knew they were there were the folks taking out their trash.

Now, I remember my dad hanging up wire in a criss-cross pattern on the fencing for the grape vines to climb.  And I remember making the jam with my parents… boiling the grapes with their skins on, squeezing the fruit from the skins, working the fruit through the sieve to separate the meat from the seeds, then adding the skins back into the mix.  And my Great-Grandmother was right.  The concord grape jam was amazing.

But what I remember most about those concord grapes, is standing on the horizontal boards of the fence by the trampoline, reaching over the fence to grab a cluster of grapes, and then popping them one by one into my mouth on the trampoline.  Nothing in this world has ever tasted sweeter.  

The skins could get a little leathery and dusty, so we would often give them a squeeze to pop the fruit into our mouths—just the sweet juicy green meat of the grape.  And on a hot day, oh!  That warm burst of sugar in your mouth was a tiny morsel of heaven.  

I think about that sweet season of life when I hear today’s Gospel reading and Jesus’s declaration: I am the vine.

I think about how my parents used to carefully wrap the vines around the criss-cross wire in the early stages of grape growing—helping the vine to find its way along the wire that would support its growth for years to come.  I think about that delicate circular practice, wrapping the vines around and around.

It’s not unlike the circular language we read in 1 John: “Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God… Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another… God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God.”  

Can you hear it?  With every “beloved”—with every mention of God—with every word of love, it’s as if one is wrapping the vine and its branches around that which holds it up.

I think of that when I think of what it means to abide.  In some places, the vine and its branches are resting on the wire, in other places they cling to it, and in still other places they stretch to the limits trusting the support in place to bolster their reach.

We abide in God so that we can remain alive and healthy—we abide in God so that we can bear much fruit.  But to what end?  Does the fruit just stay on the vine—purely decorative?  No.  The fruit is given away.  The fruit is for sharing.  The only way anyone can know how sweet the fruit is, is to take it and eat it.  

Take.  Eat.  This is my body—this is my fruit—this is my love, given for you.  Whenever you eat it, do this in remembrance of me.

We can’t just look at the fruit, we have to taste it.  We can’t just study the fruit, we have to experience it.  We can’t just look at the good work people are doing in the world to share God’s love, we have to participate in it.  

And we don’t just cultivate gifts of compassion, leadership, wisdom, patience, and joy to experience some kind of inner peace we keep to ourselves.  We cultivate these gifts of God in us to share them—to give them away.  

You’ve got to grow so that you can give yourself away.

You know how the old saying goes: the love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay… love isn’t love until you give it away.

Abide in God—no matter where you are:  It could be someplace as extravagant as the vineyards of Bordeaux, France, or in a place as humble as my Texas alley across from the dumpsters. 

Abide in God—no matter what that looks like for you: Resting in God, clinging to God, or seeing how far you can reach while anchored to God.  

Abide in God so that you can give Godself and loveself and yourself away—knowing there is always more God, more love, more you to come.  

Amen.

Preached at Holy Innocents Episcopal School

Epiphany All-School Chapel: January 11, 2024

I am so excited to be here in this space in this season of Epiphany with all of you today.  I’m excited because communities like this—Episcopal Schools—the students, teachers, chaplains, administration, the learning, the worship, the growing… all of it has had such a profound impact on my life.  And it’s just so fun to be in this room and think about the impact this place is having on all of you and the impact you will all have on the world.

I grew up going to an Episcopal School for 10 years… from 3-yo preschool all the way up through 6^th grade.  Our chapel schedule was a little different from yours.  We had chapel every day!  Morning prayer Monday through Thursday and Holy Eucharist every Friday.  All of it in the gym, which was nowhere near this big.  

Oh, I loved that community. And I loved the prayers we prayed and the hymns we sang together—so much so, that here I am, an Episcopal Priest. Despite growing up in other churches on Sundays, in other wonderful denominations, the Episcopal liturgy of daily chapel services really took hold of my heart.  Interestingly, two other people in my grade school class became priests in the Episcopal Church as well.  That’s 10%.  I think that means the odds are pretty high that someone in this room could be a priest someday… and chances are… it’s not the person you expect.

There’s another reason I’m excited—or maybe the word is honored—to be here today.  And that’s because it’s David’s last Eucharist as a chaplain in this community.  You see, the last time David left one place to be called to another, he was leaving me to come to you!  I was so sad to be losing him as a peer, and St. Luke’s was so sad to be losing him as a priest.  But I was also so excited because I knew that God was calling him to this place, and I could see how God had been preparing him to join all of you in community.  

I have loved watching him grow alongside all of you the past 7 years.  He has been holding space for you to learn and explore.  He has been preparing you to discover the light of Christ in this place and beyond.  He has been preparing you to think for yourself and believe for yourself—because yourself is what God delights in most.  And… you have been preparing him, too.  We rarely know what we are preparing others for, and I doubt you knew you were preparing David to serve another community.  But that is what you have done, and you have done it well.  I want you to feel good about all that you have shared with David, and I want you to know that all of it travels with him in his heart to the next community he is called to serve.

But enough about David.  Let’s talk about this Gospel.

When I talked about Epiphany in the Cathedral Preschool Chapel yesterday, I focused on the star.  And I told them the truth—I told them that each and every one of them is a star.  In the same way that the star in Matthew’s Gospel points to Jesus and helps the wise wanderers find their way, each one of us, when we shine, points to God’s presence in the world.  

And how do we shine?  Do we walk around with a flashlight all the time?  No.  Do we process through our day with candles and torches?  No.  Do we cover our faces in glitter?  No.  At least not every day.  

We shine when we share God’s love.  We shine when we help one another.  We shine when we speak the truth.

And—you want to know when we shine the very most?  

When we are ourselves.  When we are the people God created us to be.

If you try to be someone else, your light might twinkle a little.  

But to really shine, you have to be the fullest expression of yourself.  

Now, I know that some of us might be trying to figure out who we are.  The older we get, the bigger that question becomes.  It’s normal.  And sometimes it’s fun to try on different things and see what fits.  But it can also be hard or exhausting.  

If that’s you, maybe this Epiphany season is less about being a star and more about being one of the wise wanderers.  Maybe this season is about looking at the vast expanse of the heavens above—wow!—and then looking inward where we feel most at home.  Maybe this season is about finding our way, asking questions, discovering new truths.  Maybe, maybe, we’ll stumble upon God being born again, because God is always waiting to be born.

Whether you are a star shining so brightly, pointing to God’s presence in this world, or whether you are wandering around in hopes of discovering something true, you are right where you need to be.  And God loves you exactly as you are.

Amen.