Tuesday, December 20, 2011
THE LAST DAYS OF ADVENT AND APPROACHING THE NATIVITY
I hope that you've all had a good Advent this year. Like many of you, my colleague Wally Jensen (my XO) tells me that Advent is his favorite season of the church year. If I've got it right, to Wally Advent is a season of penitential reflection without all the guilt of Lent.
I get his point. Like Wally, this is one of my favorite seasons. I enjoy the emphasis upon disciplined reflection. One of my disciplines is to read The Anglican Theological Review. I'd be curious to know how many of you subscribe to (in paper or electronic form) the ATR. I find it to be a stimulating alternative to some of what we read that may be passed off as theological writing, when really it is a devotional exercise. Don't get me wrong. I know there is a place for devotional writings. I read them as well. However, I know myself well enough to realize that I need to do ongoing theological integrative work.
In a recent issue (Spring 2011, V. 93, No. 2) I read an article by Jesse Zink about the work of Bishop Stephen Bayne who in 1959 was chosen to be the first Executive Officer of the Anglican Communion. One of his important tasks was to help the Anglican Communion confront their wistful legacy as somewhat ethnocentric missionaries from the west and to shift attention to very real mission challenges that confronted them.
I have a couple of major take-aways from this well written article. The first is that Bishop Bayne was convinced that the Church exists for mission, and not the other way around. In other words, the church did not discover mission. Quite the contrary; because a mission oriented structure or organization was needed, the church was established. Look at the missionary journeys of the Apostle Paul. Congregations grew up around the idea of living out the mission of sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ.
The second take-away is that his words have been largely unheeded, at least until recently. Within the past decade or so it seems that everywhere I look people are talking about reclaiming the mission of the church as the primary reason for the church to exist. As I look at the writings of people who talk about the mission oriented and the emergent church (Brian McClaran, Phyllis Tickle, etc.) it is clear that this theme has a new life with a new urgency. Perhaps there has merely been a time lag between the utterances and taking Bishop Bayne's words to heart. I've often wondered if at times a visionary prophet can only be heard decades after uttering the prophesies. Perhaps we're being motivated to heed this all because we have reached the point of realizing that we are in the midst of a moment of crisis.
The application of these mission oriented approaches to our federal ministry environments is at the very least a significant challenge. Yet, these challenges might well be easily met. For years it has been clear to me that in the federal entities in which you serve there is an ongoing challenge to be, in essence, missionaries. In the tradition of Bishop Jackson Kemper, first missionary bishop of The Episcopal Church (about whom I'll write on another occasion) and the Apostle Paul, your mission is to go to people and places our church and society have forgotten. You do this as members, at best, of the diaspora. Within the organizations where you serve you have little, if any, entitlement and you don't expect to be entitled. Unlike many of the chaplains with whom you work, you understand the dynamics of the Constitution's First Amendment and that you are not entitled to impose the Good News of Jesus on every person whom you meet; that you pray in Jesus' name when you are engaged in worship within the Christian worship community and OUTSIDE of the public square. Yet, you still know of and experience the passion to share and live out the essence of Christ's story with all the people whom you serve. In most of your federal ministry settings the body of Christ will never be formed in the same way it is formed in civilian congregations.
So what differences are there between the ministry environments of civilian and federal cultures? I am aware that this week many of you are in the process of completing your Christmas Eve or Christmas Day sermons - as I am for a sermon I will preach on December 25th at Yongsan Garrison in Korea. How will your sermon differ from a sermon that you would preach to a congregation in your dioceses of canonical residence? What unique words and phrases do your people need to hear from you? How does your hermeneutic differ from one that would be applied within the diocesan congregation? I really would like to know, as would many of your colleagues. On this blog site it would be helpful and informative to read your comments and reflections.
May the blessings of this Advent and the anticipation of the Nativity be with you.
Bishop Jay
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Bishop Magness' Sermon Nov. 13, 2011
Pentecost Season/A
Christ Church Cathedral, Houston, TX (111113)
A Sermon by the Rt. Rev. James B. Magness
Isaiah 42:1-9
Luke 4:14-21
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me!
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind....”
Each November around Veterans Day we engage in a pause as we remember the men and women who have served their country through being Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen. These remembrances began almost a century
ago with the creation of Armistice Day observances when World War I ended in Europe. Today we honor and remember persons who have worn a military uniform and who have served their country; who have blessed us by serving us. Often we describe their actions as patriotism, a term that engenders suspicion in the hearts and minds of some of our fellow Christians. At the root of their suspicion is a foundational concern – a concern of whether or not of people of faith in the risen Lord Jesus can be faithful believers and simultaneously serve their country in a military uniform.
That thorny conundrum begs a question that probes even deeper into who we are and what we do as God’s people.
* What makes a person of faith?
* How are people of faith formed into the persons whom God wants them to be?
* How should people of faith live out their lives?
We have some clues to the question of formation in the reading from the Gospel of Luke about Jesus' formation.
To unpack this question of formation I want to do a moment or two of Bible study with you. In the gospel of Luke there were three formative events in which Jesus was formed. Do you remember how, according to Luke, Jesus started his ministry? Think for a second. Yes, that's right; Jesus went down to the Jordan River to meet up with his cousin John and experienced John's primitive version water baptism. Everyone who saw what had happened knew full well that Jesus was, from that moment on, a marked man; Jesus was one with God his Father. How did they know that? Because when he was baptized the voice of God was heard to say, "You are my beloved Son..." At that moment the spirit of God DESCENDED UPON Jesus. Here Ends Jesus' Preparation Part I.
Do you remember what happened next? Of course you do; Jesus went off on a 40 day wilderness fast and retreat when he was in mortal combat with Satan for his soul. Satan tempts Jesus to take an easier life path; one devoid of sacrifice and suffering. In response to each temptation Jesus kept his focus – a focus on the mission his Father had given Him. In the end the victorious Jesus was FULL of the Spirit. Here Ends Jesus' Preparation Part II.
The next formative event is what we have in the reading we heard this evening. Jesus walks into the temple on the Sabbath, as the text tells us “…as was his custom ," to open a scroll of scripture to read about the power of God, his Father, to bless the poor, the captives and the blind. Considering where Jesus was, in the center of Jewish worship - the temple, and who Jesus was - the son of a common family, you'd have to be a bit crazy to go into the midst of such a potentially hostile crowd and say what Jesus said. Yet, through this act Jesus was filled with the POWER of the Spirit. Here Ends Jesus' Preparation Part III.
You can see the linear progression. The Spirit descends upon Jesus. Jesus is full of the Spirit. Finally, Jesus is filled with the power of the spirit. And it is a good thing, because Jesus’ life is just about to get crazy. From this point on, both friend and foe alike, will never leave him alone. The power of the Spirit has filled Jesus because things are just about to get crazy and mission is about to happen.//
In the 1940s there lived a man by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonheoffer was a German pastor, a theologian, and ultimately a martyr. During that time he was in prison because after a long dark fortnight of the soul, he decided that the ruthless and controlling German leader Adolph Hitler had to be assassinated; and Dietrich decided that he was the one who had to perform this act. However, Dietrich was apprehended and imprisoned before he was able to carry out the deed. While awaiting execution he was critical of the German Christian church. How, he wrote, could the Christian church in Germany allow a man such as Hitler to exist without challenge? In one of his letters from prison he wrote about what he described as “religionless Christianity.” His idea of Religionless Christianity is of a faith that is devoid of all of the outward appearances, trappings and structures of religion; but goes to the actual heart of what it means to be a Christian, especially a Christian servant. The true servant of the risen Lord is a person whose mission flows from the heart. The emerging connection is between servanthood and mission.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught us that there is a cost to being a servant engaged in mission - that through being a missional follower of Christ you could even be called upon to give up your life - for the sake of the lives of others. Over the years I've heard people say that true faith - true religion - is in the heart and can't be seen. Though I am not going to ask for a show of hands, I wonder how many of you believe in such a theory of the invisibility of faith and true religion. You see, I believe that the invisibility of our faith is a comfortable myth of which we've convinced ourselves. I believe that you have to be able to SEE faith in action if it is going to be real.
• Faith is about reaching out to your neighbor / when reaching out to your neighbor may call for you to go through a public baptism.
• Faith is about sacrificing for your neighbor / when there is an easier way that would be far less costly.
• Faith is about responding to your neighbor's needs / when to respond to those needs will place you in a very hostile situation.
It has occurred to me on more than just a few occasions that there are times and places in life when you have to be a little crazy, both as individual believers and groups of believers, to stand up and proclaim your faith in the risen Lord. However, the real "crazy" happens when the actions of your life bear witness to what you believe. This "crazy" is no less than "crazy like Jesus." When the power of the Lord's spirit is upon you, you are willing to walk into potentially hostile environments in the same way that Jesus walked into the temple. When you get crazy like Jesus, the scripture is being fulfilled in your life.
As members of the body of Christ we are called to recognize that our world is marked by "... the reality of sin and the brokenness of the world... (God beckons us to follow) as the Spirit leads... (us) into the world to participate in God’s mission… (We know God’s mission is being accomplished when we hear the) creation itself, ‘…groan inwardly’ as all await release from the bondage of sin .”
Our mission is to take the fullness of God – all God's creative and redemptive energy – to bear upon our world. We are the ambassadors and the emissaries whose work it is to bear witness – often without fanfare and in the midst of horrendous, compromising and complicated settings. Our calling is our mission to all God’s children as together we exercise the power of God – the same power Jesus came to know and use in the temple that day so long ago.
The Episcopal priest/chaplains who represent you within the Armed Services are quite familiar with how and where our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen live out their lives. Your chaplains know that service members are men and women who have learned to embrace the values and virtues of honor, loyalty, courage, integrity and commitment. Your chaplains know that they embody these values in some very hostile environments that some of us can only grasp in the fantasy of our imagination. Yet for them it is no fantasy. It is real and is all tied up with mission – for our chaplains and for many others in uniform, who also are people of faith.
* When a Soldier comes to one of my chaplains in a wounded warrior rehabilitation program at a sprawling Veterans Administration hospital and says, "Chaplain, I think I've lost my soul," I know it is about to get crazy, crazy like Jesus when mission starts to happen.
* When a Navy explosive ordinance disposal officer sitting in an overseas USO passionately tells my wife the story of his inability to stop 4 suicide bombers from killing over 40 people in a packed Roman Catholic Church in Iraq, I know it is about to get crazy, crazy like Jesus when mission starts to happen.
* When one of my chaplains is at the Dover Air Base Mortuary to meet the caskets of returning service members who had been killed in an aircraft crash in Afghanistan, and the wife of the pilot with two small children in tow comes up to him to ask where God was when her husband was killed, I know it is about to get crazy, crazy like Jesus when mission starts to happen.
Such questions and statements bear witness to the incredibly difficult environment in which service members work and with which their families have to cope. Yet, also this is a witness to our call to Christian mission - into the midst of brokenness. Mission, after all, was what Dietrich Bonhoeffer was doing when he decided to end Hitler's life; he engaged in a dilemma wherein the greater good was deemed to require that he break one of the foundational understandings of people of God - that you do not kill. No one ever said that mission was safe, easy and devoid of sacrifice.
Military people have a keen understanding of what it means to embark upon mission and the planning entailed to be successful. They know that to engage in a mission is to enage in sacrifice. Have you ever wondered how so many of the posthumus recipients of the Medal of Honor were able to sacrifice their lives? Though often we say that they did what they did for their country, which may be true, more so I am convinced that their heroic sacrifice was for the sake of their battle-mates whose needs they consiered to be more important than their own.
This is the behavior that exemplifies the heart of Jesus - who gave his life that we might live. There is a certain craziness about having the heart of Jesus. You see, in our culture it is more than just a little countercultural to consider the needs of the other to be more important than your own - to break stride with the mantra, "enough about you, what about me." When you consider the needs of the other to be above your needs, you've opened the door to the possibliity of mission. The mission of gospel proclamation is about to happen, and it is about to get crazy like Jesus. The mission of Jesus is at the heart of a servant.
It gets crazy when the rawness of a person's soul is laid open before you. Do you know what it feels like to be in front of a person who opens her soul up to you? Recently one of my priest/chaplains described a situation when a commander of troops in Bagdad took him to see the wreckage of an armored vehicle that had been destroyed by a roadside bomb, a bomb that killed two of his Soldiers. My chaplain told me about the commander's intense description of what it was like to be at the head of a convoy of vehicles and hear the explosion behind him; knowing full well what would come next. My chaplain told me how very small and weak he felt in the presence of the commander's powerful words. Then he said he knew that the power of the Holy Spirit was in their midst. The chaplain knew that his mission was to stand there and be a physical reminder to the presence of God. The mission at that moment involved very few words and lots of silence. That was the craziness of that moment when he learned the truth of Isaiah's proclamation: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind..."
I am very proud that our franchise of the Christian church has a a serious mission to service members and veterans. Part of that mission involves a significant outpouring of pastoral care for people who hurt, but an even larger component of the mission is our calling to share the redemptive good news of God in Christ. We have this mission because we care about and for God’s children, ALL of God’s children.
As I said earlier, November is the time of the year when we remember the sacrifice of our Veterans. These are men and women who have served and sacrificed for us - often for the sake of their faith. Many of these men and women felt compelled to address the dilemma between faith and military service. In the end, the men and women who chose to wear the uniform knew that for them the responsible action was to serve.
The mission of our church, through your military chaplains, goes where our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen go. In time of war and in time of peace, we care for the service members who serve and have served us; service members who give and have given much; some gave all they had and, as vividly we are learning today, some gave even more than that.
I will conclude with stanzas from Laurence Binyon's 1914 poetic remembrance, For the Fallen, ultimately used for the first Armistice Day. I offer this as a tribute to those who wore the uniform of their country, whose lives were given for us and whose sacrifice is known only to God:
They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound, Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
May their souls and the souls of all the righteous rest in Christ. AMEN.
Bishop Magness' Sermon Nov. 13 2011
Pentecost Season/A
Christ Church Cathedral, Houston, TX (111113)
A Sermon by the Rt. Rev. James B. Magness
Isaiah 42:1-9
Luke 4:14-21
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me!
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind....”
Each November around Veterans Day we engage in a pause as we remember the men and women who have served their country through being Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen. These remembrances began almost a century
ago with the creation of Armistice Day observances when World War I ended in Europe. Today we honor and remember persons who have worn a military uniform and who have served their country; who have blessed us by serving us. Often we describe their actions as patriotism, a term that engenders suspicion in the hearts and minds of some of our fellow Christians. At the root of their suspicion is a foundational concern – a concern of whether or not of people of faith in the risen Lord Jesus can be faithful believers and simultaneously serve their country in a military uniform.
That thorny conundrum begs a question that probes even deeper into who we are and what we do as God’s people.
* What makes a person of faith?
* How are people of faith formed into the persons whom God wants them to be?
* How should people of faith live out their lives?
We have some clues to the question of formation in the reading from the Gospel of Luke about Jesus' formation.
To unpack this question of formation I want to do a moment or two of Bible study with you. In the gospel of Luke there were three formative events in which Jesus was formed. Do you remember how, according to Luke, Jesus started his ministry? Think for a second. Yes, that's right; Jesus went down to the Jordan River to meet up with his cousin John and experienced John's primitive version water baptism. Everyone who saw what had happened knew full well that Jesus was, from that moment on, a marked man; Jesus was one with God his Father. How did they know that? Because when he was baptized the voice of God was heard to say, "You are my beloved Son..." At that moment the spirit of God DESCENDED UPON Jesus. Here Ends Jesus' Preparation Part I.
Do you remember what happened next? Of course you do; Jesus went off on a 40 day wilderness fast and retreat when he was in mortal combat with Satan for his soul. Satan tempts Jesus to take an easier life path; one devoid of sacrifice and suffering. In response to each temptation Jesus kept his focus – a focus on the mission his Father had given Him. In the end the victorious Jesus was FULL of the Spirit. Here Ends Jesus' Preparation Part II.
The next formative event is what we have in the reading we heard this evening. Jesus walks into the temple on the Sabbath, as the text tells us “…as was his custom ," to open a scroll of scripture to read about the power of God, his Father, to bless the poor, the captives and the blind. Considering where Jesus was, in the center of Jewish worship - the temple, and who Jesus was - the son of a common family, you'd have to be a bit crazy to go into the midst of such a potentially hostile crowd and say what Jesus said. Yet, through this act Jesus was filled with the POWER of the Spirit. Here Ends Jesus' Preparation Part III.
You can see the linear progression. The Spirit descends upon Jesus. Jesus is full of the Spirit. Finally, Jesus is filled with the power of the spirit. And it is a good thing, because Jesus’ life is just about to get crazy. From this point on, both friend and foe alike, will never leave him alone. The power of the Spirit has filled Jesus because things are just about to get crazy and mission is about to happen.//
In the 1940s there lived a man by the name of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonheoffer was a German pastor, a theologian, and ultimately a martyr. During that time he was in prison because after a long dark fortnight of the soul, he decided that the ruthless and controlling German leader Adolph Hitler had to be assassinated; and Dietrich decided that he was the one who had to perform this act. However, Dietrich was apprehended and imprisoned before he was able to carry out the deed. While awaiting execution he was critical of the German Christian church. How, he wrote, could the Christian church in Germany allow a man such as Hitler to exist without challenge? In one of his letters from prison he wrote about what he described as “religionless Christianity.” His idea of Religionless Christianity is of a faith that is devoid of all of the outward appearances, trappings and structures of religion; but goes to the actual heart of what it means to be a Christian, especially a Christian servant. The true servant of the risen Lord is a person whose mission flows from the heart. The emerging connection is between servanthood and mission.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer taught us that there is a cost to being a servant engaged in mission - that through being a missional follower of Christ you could even be called upon to give up your life - for the sake of the lives of others. Over the years I've heard people say that true faith - true religion - is in the heart and can't be seen. Though I am not going to ask for a show of hands, I wonder how many of you believe in such a theory of the invisibility of faith and true religion. You see, I believe that the invisibility of our faith is a comfortable myth of which we've convinced ourselves. I believe that you have to be able to SEE faith in action if it is going to be real.
• Faith is about reaching out to your neighbor / when reaching out to your neighbor may call for you to go through a public baptism.
• Faith is about sacrificing for your neighbor / when there is an easier way that would be far less costly.
• Faith is about responding to your neighbor's needs / when to respond to those needs will place you in a very hostile situation.
It has occurred to me on more than just a few occasions that there are times and places in life when you have to be a little crazy, both as individual believers and groups of believers, to stand up and proclaim your faith in the risen Lord. However, the real "crazy" happens when the actions of your life bear witness to what you believe. This "crazy" is no less than "crazy like Jesus." When the power of the Lord's spirit is upon you, you are willing to walk into potentially hostile environments in the same way that Jesus walked into the temple. When you get crazy like Jesus, the scripture is being fulfilled in your life.
As members of the body of Christ we are called to recognize that our world is marked by "... the reality of sin and the brokenness of the world... (God beckons us to follow) as the Spirit leads... (us) into the world to participate in God’s mission… (We know God’s mission is being accomplished when we hear the) creation itself, ‘…groan inwardly’ as all await release from the bondage of sin .”
Our mission is to take the fullness of God – all God's creative and redemptive energy – to bear upon our world. We are the ambassadors and the emissaries whose work it is to bear witness – often without fanfare and in the midst of horrendous, compromising and complicated settings. Our calling is our mission to all God’s children as together we exercise the power of God – the same power Jesus came to know and use in the temple that day so long ago.
The Episcopal priest/chaplains who represent you within the Armed Services are quite familiar with how and where our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen live out their lives. Your chaplains know that service members are men and women who have learned to embrace the values and virtues of honor, loyalty, courage, integrity and commitment. Your chaplains know that they embody these values in some very hostile environments that some of us can only grasp in the fantasy of our imagination. Yet for them it is no fantasy. It is real and is all tied up with mission – for our chaplains and for many others in uniform, who also are people of faith.
* When a Soldier comes to one of my chaplains in a wounded warrior rehabilitation program at a sprawling Veterans Administration hospital and says, "Chaplain, I think I've lost my soul," I know it is about to get crazy, crazy like Jesus when mission starts to happen.
* When a Navy explosive ordinance disposal officer sitting in an overseas USO passionately tells my wife the story of his inability to stop 4 suicide bombers from killing over 40 people in a packed Roman Catholic Church in Iraq, I know it is about to get crazy, crazy like Jesus when mission starts to happen.
* When one of my chaplains is at the Dover Air Base Mortuary to meet the caskets of returning service members who had been killed in an aircraft crash in Afghanistan, and the wife of the pilot with two small children in tow comes up to him to ask where God was when her husband was killed, I know it is about to get crazy, crazy like Jesus when mission starts to happen.
Such questions and statements bear witness to the incredibly difficult environment in which service members work and with which their families have to cope. Yet, also this is a witness to our call to Christian mission - into the midst of brokenness. Mission, after all, was what Dietrich Bonhoeffer was doing when he decided to end Hitler's life; he engaged in a dilemma wherein the greater good was deemed to require that he break one of the foundational understandings of people of God - that you do not kill. No one ever said that mission was safe, easy and devoid of sacrifice.
Military people have a keen understanding of what it means to embark upon mission and the planning entailed to be successful. They know that to engage in a mission is to enage in sacrifice. Have you ever wondered how so many of the posthumus recipients of the Medal of Honor were able to sacrifice their lives? Though often we say that they did what they did for their country, which may be true, more so I am convinced that their heroic sacrifice was for the sake of their battle-mates whose needs they consiered to be more important than their own.
This is the behavior that exemplifies the heart of Jesus - who gave his life that we might live. There is a certain craziness about having the heart of Jesus. You see, in our culture it is more than just a little countercultural to consider the needs of the other to be more important than your own - to break stride with the mantra, "enough about you, what about me." When you consider the needs of the other to be above your needs, you've opened the door to the possibliity of mission. The mission of gospel proclamation is about to happen, and it is about to get crazy like Jesus. The mission of Jesus is at the heart of a servant.
It gets crazy when the rawness of a person's soul is laid open before you. Do you know what it feels like to be in front of a person who opens her soul up to you? Recently one of my priest/chaplains described a situation when a commander of troops in Bagdad took him to see the wreckage of an armored vehicle that had been destroyed by a roadside bomb, a bomb that killed two of his Soldiers. My chaplain told me about the commander's intense description of what it was like to be at the head of a convoy of vehicles and hear the explosion behind him; knowing full well what would come next. My chaplain told me how very small and weak he felt in the presence of the commander's powerful words. Then he said he knew that the power of the Holy Spirit was in their midst. The chaplain knew that his mission was to stand there and be a physical reminder to the presence of God. The mission at that moment involved very few words and lots of silence. That was the craziness of that moment when he learned the truth of Isaiah's proclamation: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind..."
I am very proud that our franchise of the Christian church has a a serious mission to service members and veterans. Part of that mission involves a significant outpouring of pastoral care for people who hurt, but an even larger component of the mission is our calling to share the redemptive good news of God in Christ. We have this mission because we care about and for God’s children, ALL of God’s children.
As I said earlier, November is the time of the year when we remember the sacrifice of our Veterans. These are men and women who have served and sacrificed for us - often for the sake of their faith. Many of these men and women felt compelled to address the dilemma between faith and military service. In the end, the men and women who chose to wear the uniform knew that for them the responsible action was to serve.
The mission of our church, through your military chaplains, goes where our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen go. In time of war and in time of peace, we care for the service members who serve and have served us; service members who give and have given much; some gave all they had and, as vividly we are learning today, some gave even more than that.
I will conclude with stanzas from Laurence Binyon's 1914 poetic remembrance, For the Fallen, ultimately used for the first Armistice Day. I offer this as a tribute to those who wore the uniform of their country, whose lives were given for us and whose sacrifice is known only to God:
They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound, Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain;
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
May their souls and the souls of all the righteous rest in Christ. AMEN.
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Bishop Magness' Veterans Day Article for The Huffington Post
Veterans: A New Era of Serving God and Country
For many people of my generation who came of age through rites of passage in the 1960s, military service most often was looked upon as THE least preferred life choice. Even amongst those of us who joined the military service through our own choice - often to avoid the Selective Service which, we reasoned, surely would have resulted in Vietnam duty - it was fashionable, and at times expected, that we would let it be known to anyone who would listen that we detested military authority and wearing a uniform. Those of us who grew up with a religious dimension as a part of our lives knew that we would receive little if any support for our choice to serve from our faith communities. Within the communities of worship in America attitudes about military service were often angrily expressed. In fact, for those of us who were spiritually formed in the main-line religious traditions, the only support we could expect was if we had chosen to become conscientious objectors. Today the social and religious landscape of America is changing. While seeking the status of being a Conscientious Objector may be an honorable choice, there are other honorable choices as well. During that era I chose to be one of the draft-avoiders and joined the Navy. Though by that time I had a mostly dormant faith in God, even I knew that I need not expect much support from people in the pews - and perhaps not even from the clergy who led the congregations.
For those and other reasons many of us today struggle to understand why young men and women, frequently people of faith, are so eager to line up at Armed Forces Recruiting Offices to join up, be administered the oath of office and take the roller coaster-like ride of basic training or boot camp. The Marine Corps, the military service with the highest expectations and most demanding standards, has so many requests to join that an applicant may have to wait 6 months or more to go to boot camp. Considering that we have just completed 10 years of a brutal and ongoing war, and that there is no requirement for compulsory military service, something is happening that most of us may have missed.
My observation is that a new ethos is emerging about military service. Even though far less than one percent of our citizens of our country serve in any branch of the military, as a society we have become very connected with men and women in the military services. A significant part of this positive connectedness in no small part has come as a result of all the National Guard and Reserve members from our communities who serve alongside their active-duty counterparts. It is very possible today for a soldier, sailor, marine, or airman to be in Afghanistan one week and then the very next week be back at home working in the office and sitting beside you in the pew of your synagogue, church or mosque.
I recognize that any war, by the very nature of what people who are engaged in armed conflict do to one another, will always be viewed through the lens of moral questions. Some of these questions will be faith based. It is always possible that military service will result in periods of being immersed in the moral tension of war. As a follower of Jesus Christ I hope we will never cease to view the actions of our military within the context of the scriptures and teachings of the church. Though the wars of the current era are no exception, our military leaders and actors impress me as having an incredibly high standard of moral and legal requirements that must be met before engaging in doing personal harm to our enemies. Accordingly, I think it is certainly very possible that people of faith can honorably serve in our country's Armed Services.
Within my own Christian tradition I am reminded that Jesus viewed the service of others and self-sacrifice as one of the superior virtues (Matthew 23.11-12). To those of you who are in some way related to a service member, thanks for supporting your loved one in uniform. The life of a service member is not easy, nor is it easy for you to be connected to her or him. I hope that on Veterans Day this year, you will be able to suspend your fears and anxieties, even if only for the day, and simply be proud that you are related to a person who is serving her or his country, and who may be serving as an expression of faith
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Report on the House of Bishops Meeting
September 21, 2011
St. Matthew the Evangelist
Dear colleagues and friends,
As I write this I am aboard a flight from Miami returning to Washington, DC. Early this morning Carolyn and I left Quito, Ecuador where for the last seven days I've been attending the Fall House of Bishops meeting. The 9000+ feet altitude takes a little bit of getting used to. However, we found Quito to be a charming Latin American city. Perhaps the most impressive attribute of the city is the people who live there. We found them to be gracious in ways that far exceeded any of our expectations.
There are many things I could tell you about our HOB meeting. Since I am aware that you can get the most of this information from the Episcopal News Service where Ms. Neva Rae Fox, our Public Affairs Officer has posted daily stories, I'll limit myself in this brief missive to a description of three particular things.
Some of you may be wondering why in the world we decided to meet in Ecuador. Quite honestly, I found myself asking the same question. What I have come to realize, some of which I already knew, is that in going to Quito we never left the confines of The Episcopal Church (TEC). Quito is in Province IX of TEC and consists of these dioceses: Ecuador Central, Ecuador Litoral, Columbia, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. On occasion I hear some of my colleagues refer to TEC as the "national church." Quite literally, because our church borders stretch far beyond the confines of the continental United States, it has been ages since TEC has been a "national church." If anything, we are we are an international communion of Anglican provinces and dioceses in the Americas, and not the "national church."
One of the most significant benefits of being in Quito was to have an opportunity to be a witness to the mission of the Diocese of Ecuador Central. Last Saturday Carolyn and I, and many other bishops and spouses, boarded a bus early in the morning and took a day trip to the town of Tulcan on the Ecuadorian-Columbian border. While there we learned that for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the ongoing armed civil conflict in Columbia, the refugee population moving from Columbia to Ecuador is one of the largest in the world. On that Saturday the bishops and spouses gathered on the bridge that connects Ecuador to Columbia and engaged in prayers for the people who were literally leaving all they had, sometimes to include beloved family members, to escape the instability and violence of Columbia. Later in the day we spent time at the border Episcopal mission congregation people as they bore witness to the Good News of Jesus Christ. The work of our Episcopal mission is to use word and deed to tell the refugees how important they are in the sight of God.
My final observation has to do with a speech I made on your behalf to the entire HOB. I made a request to work with bishops diocesan when a chaplain from another Christian faith tradition wants to become an Episcopal priest and a chaplain of this church. Currently there at least five chaplains, in five different dioceses, who are engaged in discernment about becoming a priest of this church. I spoke to the bishops about our efforts to recruit women and men to become chaplains in each of the three federal entities of this episcopacy. I told my colleagues that in order to become a federal chaplain the applicant needs to be agile, flexible, healthy, smart and missionally committed. In other words, we are looking for the best of the best. Finally, I issued a request for invitations to the diocesan councils and conventions of TEC in order to bear witness to the excellent work you will do. It is greatly important to me that the people of our church know what you do for the women and men whom you serve. Upon leaving I had numerous invitations. Though I estimate that it will take four to five years to visit the majority of our dioceses, I am committed to making these visits for one very simple reason: my pride in who you are and what you do. Sisters and brothers, you are some of the hardest working and most dedicated front-line missionaries of this church working in the most difficult settings that anyone could ever imagine.
Be faithful and know that I pray for all of you each day.
+Jay
Friday, September 9, 2011
Article from Episcopal News Service
Following 9/11, Episcopal chaplains made room for sacred space
By Val Hymes, September 08, 2011
[Episcopal News Service] "I realized we had to do something. We've got to step into the vacuum, step into the breach, either lean in or run away. We are chaplains. We know how to do chaplain's work."
George Packard, then Episcopal Church bishop suffragan of chaplaincies, had gone alone to the still-smoking Ground Zero, where terrorist attacks had destroyed the Twin Towers in New York. With those words, he pushed back his grief and fear and moved to rally forces and launch what became a 100-day mission of support to those at the site and in nearby communities.
It began the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when someone entered the chapel at the Episcopal Church Center in New York to tell announce that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center.
"I happened to be leading morning prayer that morning," said the Rev. Gerald Blackburn, director of federal chaplaincies and executive officer to the bishop suffragan. "We soon realized it was not a small plane off course. After the service, we gathered around a television set and watched in numbness and shock as the second tower was struck."
Packard recalled, "We went outside to smell burning rubber and electrical-fire fumes. The wind was blowing smoke and debris. People were streaming up the avenue with their clothes covered in ash. The sirens started to wail, they closed down all the avenues. It was just chaos. We started to make an assessment of what we had to do."
Said Blackburn, "The whole city was in shock."
Earlier that morning, at the Pentagon across the Potomac River from the nation's capital, Senior Chaplain Jay Magness, now Episcopal Church bishop suffragan for the Armed Services and federal ministries, had sat down to a meeting of senior chaplains. Thirty-five minutes after the second tower was hit in New York, alarms sounded, ordering evacuation at the Pentagon.
Magness and his colleagues went outside to see billowing smoke and flames. A plane had flown into the building about two wings away. They quickly broke into teams of three and re-entered the building to help rescue survivors.
"It looked like nothing I've ever seen," he said. "I saw the absolute horror in people's eyes. Acrid smoke filled our nostrils. We tore up T-shirts for masks."
Magness worked with two other chaplains and helped carry out the injured and dying, comforted other survivors and called families for them. His own wife, Carolyn, did not hear that he was safe until hours later.
"We had absolutely no first-aid equipment," Magness said. A senior Air Force officer dragged out a medical cabinet and broke it open with a chair. With no ambulances there yet, "we were using minivans," he said. "I will never forget seeing a woman who ran out of her shoes and kept running."
'We were needed'
In New York, church center staff members, including the Rev. Jackie Means, the Rev. Melford "Bud" Holland, UMC minister David Henritzy and the Rev. Canon Brian Grieves, left to find a way to help people.
"I knew we were needed somewhere," said Means.
Some went to a hospital to comfort families waiting for survivors who never came; others went to an emergency rallying point on Manhattan's lower West Side to help counsel the shocked and grieving evacuees and workers.
"Every New Yorker of every stripe and kind came bringing blankets and water jugs on their shoulders," said Packard. "It was New Yorkers at their best, wearing both tattoos and suits.
"We didn't know the extent of anything," said Packard, "so we hunkered down to assess what we could do." He and Magness each had fought in Vietnam. They did not know if there would be another attack.
In his first trip to Ground Zero, using his military identification to get through the barriers, Packard found a "silt-like ash covering everything. Lights were on the lattice-grid, the shell of a tower about three stories tall.
"It was eerie, with smoke and steam and secondary explosions. Fire hoses snaked around all over the place. The only thing left was a hill of debris. It was awful."
Recalled Means, "It looked like World War II, with everything bombed out. Nothing is around, but the church is there." While a dozen buildings around the Twin Towers were demolished or badly damaged, she said, St. Paul's Episcopal Chapel did not have even a cracked window.
When Packard got to St. Paul's, he found the Rev. Lyndon Harris, priest-in-charge, putting water out on a table and inviting in exhausted firefighters and EMS crews. Soon the chapel became a haven and the heart of the ministry to the workers, providing food prepared by the chefs of New York's restaurants, medical treatment, pastoral counseling and the services of a podiatrist and a chiropractor.
"This is what the church is about," said Means. "One woman's ministry was to bring fresh flowers to the chapel every day."
Added Packard, "Lyndon Harris is the real hero of this story. He brought things together. It was a unique luminary, a unique moment of the church happening there at St. Paul's."
"For three or four days the Episcopal church and a Catholic priest were the only presence there," said Packard. "The Diocese of New York asked us to be the clearinghouse for chaplains at Ground Zero, so we set up a rotation of chaplains to be on site 24-7."
When they arrived at Ground Zero, Blackburn said, he and Packard found National Guardsmen, firefighters and emergency workers hungering for a blessing or a prayer. "One big old policeman wrapped his arms around me," Blackburn said.
When they took water to the workers at the debris "pile," Means said, "one said he needed a hug. I gave him one. It was the simple things that were needed."
"We helped set up a field morgue on the site," said Packard. "They would bring us remains the size of a lunch box or a toaster. We would say prayers and see that they were given proper care. It was awful."
While working at Ground Zero, he simultaneously was acting as liaison with the Pentagon and the 13 affected dioceses and trying to minister to all Episcopal military, health-care and prison chaplains. "It was pretty exhausting," he said.
He declared "100 days of Mission Support." It included satellite programs to minister to those in surrounding communities whose loved ones did not come home from work after 9/11.
"The shock effect was not only at Ground Zero," he said. "There were cars never claimed in parking lots in the suburbs. Every community had some part of the trauma."
Field teams worked with people in the churches in the tri-state area. Psychologist David Knowlton from the Diocese of New Jersey "brought his vision and expertise to that mission," Packard said.
Many of the clergy pressed into service as chaplains continued ministering day and night at Ground Zero even after the Red Cross took over that role. Families of the chaplains became involved.
"I love this city," said Brook Packard, the bishop's wife. "The people are grieving. I feel so much for them." She went to the site at 3 a.m. to offer water and comfort to the workers working under floodlights.
The Seamen's Church Institute on Water Street also became a respite site for first responders and was served by Episcopal chaplains, prompting Packard to refer to the "Episcopal bookends" of Ground Zero. Bishop Christopher Epting, one of the clergy drafted for chaplain service there, advocated for "patient and wise conversations with the Islamic community," said Packard.
Magness said 9/11 was the third mass casualty event he had dealt with in his life. As chaplain, he had worked with the families of the victims of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and of the bomb that damaged the USS Cole in 2000.
"All three were inspired by or committed by Islamic terrorists. It began for me two years of spiritual calibration," he said. That included defending a Muslim chaplain at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo, on the island of Cuba, and pressing for a military message after 9/11 of nonretaliation against Muslims in the service, saying, "They are Americans and part of our team."
"I questioned why people who embrace the same God can do something like that," Magness said. "I gradually came to realize that we need to affirm others whose faith differs from ours. If we don't find a way to do that, we stand a chance of killing every man, woman and child on the face of this earth."
Packard said he did not know if he could have done things differently. "I do know," he said, that in giving last rites to the remains of victims over and over at Ground Zero, "I had a definite sense of God's grace.
"I knew," he said, "that we had to make room for sacred space for the holiness that was there."
-- Val Hymes is a member of the Diocese of Maryland and editor of www.PrisMinNet.org.
By Val Hymes, September 08, 2011
[Episcopal News Service] "I realized we had to do something. We've got to step into the vacuum, step into the breach, either lean in or run away. We are chaplains. We know how to do chaplain's work."
George Packard, then Episcopal Church bishop suffragan of chaplaincies, had gone alone to the still-smoking Ground Zero, where terrorist attacks had destroyed the Twin Towers in New York. With those words, he pushed back his grief and fear and moved to rally forces and launch what became a 100-day mission of support to those at the site and in nearby communities.
It began the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when someone entered the chapel at the Episcopal Church Center in New York to tell announce that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center.
"I happened to be leading morning prayer that morning," said the Rev. Gerald Blackburn, director of federal chaplaincies and executive officer to the bishop suffragan. "We soon realized it was not a small plane off course. After the service, we gathered around a television set and watched in numbness and shock as the second tower was struck."
Packard recalled, "We went outside to smell burning rubber and electrical-fire fumes. The wind was blowing smoke and debris. People were streaming up the avenue with their clothes covered in ash. The sirens started to wail, they closed down all the avenues. It was just chaos. We started to make an assessment of what we had to do."
Said Blackburn, "The whole city was in shock."
Earlier that morning, at the Pentagon across the Potomac River from the nation's capital, Senior Chaplain Jay Magness, now Episcopal Church bishop suffragan for the Armed Services and federal ministries, had sat down to a meeting of senior chaplains. Thirty-five minutes after the second tower was hit in New York, alarms sounded, ordering evacuation at the Pentagon.
Magness and his colleagues went outside to see billowing smoke and flames. A plane had flown into the building about two wings away. They quickly broke into teams of three and re-entered the building to help rescue survivors.
"It looked like nothing I've ever seen," he said. "I saw the absolute horror in people's eyes. Acrid smoke filled our nostrils. We tore up T-shirts for masks."
Magness worked with two other chaplains and helped carry out the injured and dying, comforted other survivors and called families for them. His own wife, Carolyn, did not hear that he was safe until hours later.
"We had absolutely no first-aid equipment," Magness said. A senior Air Force officer dragged out a medical cabinet and broke it open with a chair. With no ambulances there yet, "we were using minivans," he said. "I will never forget seeing a woman who ran out of her shoes and kept running."
'We were needed'
In New York, church center staff members, including the Rev. Jackie Means, the Rev. Melford "Bud" Holland, UMC minister David Henritzy and the Rev. Canon Brian Grieves, left to find a way to help people.
"I knew we were needed somewhere," said Means.
Some went to a hospital to comfort families waiting for survivors who never came; others went to an emergency rallying point on Manhattan's lower West Side to help counsel the shocked and grieving evacuees and workers.
"Every New Yorker of every stripe and kind came bringing blankets and water jugs on their shoulders," said Packard. "It was New Yorkers at their best, wearing both tattoos and suits.
"We didn't know the extent of anything," said Packard, "so we hunkered down to assess what we could do." He and Magness each had fought in Vietnam. They did not know if there would be another attack.
In his first trip to Ground Zero, using his military identification to get through the barriers, Packard found a "silt-like ash covering everything. Lights were on the lattice-grid, the shell of a tower about three stories tall.
"It was eerie, with smoke and steam and secondary explosions. Fire hoses snaked around all over the place. The only thing left was a hill of debris. It was awful."
Recalled Means, "It looked like World War II, with everything bombed out. Nothing is around, but the church is there." While a dozen buildings around the Twin Towers were demolished or badly damaged, she said, St. Paul's Episcopal Chapel did not have even a cracked window.
When Packard got to St. Paul's, he found the Rev. Lyndon Harris, priest-in-charge, putting water out on a table and inviting in exhausted firefighters and EMS crews. Soon the chapel became a haven and the heart of the ministry to the workers, providing food prepared by the chefs of New York's restaurants, medical treatment, pastoral counseling and the services of a podiatrist and a chiropractor.
"This is what the church is about," said Means. "One woman's ministry was to bring fresh flowers to the chapel every day."
Added Packard, "Lyndon Harris is the real hero of this story. He brought things together. It was a unique luminary, a unique moment of the church happening there at St. Paul's."
"For three or four days the Episcopal church and a Catholic priest were the only presence there," said Packard. "The Diocese of New York asked us to be the clearinghouse for chaplains at Ground Zero, so we set up a rotation of chaplains to be on site 24-7."
When they arrived at Ground Zero, Blackburn said, he and Packard found National Guardsmen, firefighters and emergency workers hungering for a blessing or a prayer. "One big old policeman wrapped his arms around me," Blackburn said.
When they took water to the workers at the debris "pile," Means said, "one said he needed a hug. I gave him one. It was the simple things that were needed."
"We helped set up a field morgue on the site," said Packard. "They would bring us remains the size of a lunch box or a toaster. We would say prayers and see that they were given proper care. It was awful."
While working at Ground Zero, he simultaneously was acting as liaison with the Pentagon and the 13 affected dioceses and trying to minister to all Episcopal military, health-care and prison chaplains. "It was pretty exhausting," he said.
He declared "100 days of Mission Support." It included satellite programs to minister to those in surrounding communities whose loved ones did not come home from work after 9/11.
"The shock effect was not only at Ground Zero," he said. "There were cars never claimed in parking lots in the suburbs. Every community had some part of the trauma."
Field teams worked with people in the churches in the tri-state area. Psychologist David Knowlton from the Diocese of New Jersey "brought his vision and expertise to that mission," Packard said.
Many of the clergy pressed into service as chaplains continued ministering day and night at Ground Zero even after the Red Cross took over that role. Families of the chaplains became involved.
"I love this city," said Brook Packard, the bishop's wife. "The people are grieving. I feel so much for them." She went to the site at 3 a.m. to offer water and comfort to the workers working under floodlights.
The Seamen's Church Institute on Water Street also became a respite site for first responders and was served by Episcopal chaplains, prompting Packard to refer to the "Episcopal bookends" of Ground Zero. Bishop Christopher Epting, one of the clergy drafted for chaplain service there, advocated for "patient and wise conversations with the Islamic community," said Packard.
Magness said 9/11 was the third mass casualty event he had dealt with in his life. As chaplain, he had worked with the families of the victims of the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut and of the bomb that damaged the USS Cole in 2000.
"All three were inspired by or committed by Islamic terrorists. It began for me two years of spiritual calibration," he said. That included defending a Muslim chaplain at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo, on the island of Cuba, and pressing for a military message after 9/11 of nonretaliation against Muslims in the service, saying, "They are Americans and part of our team."
"I questioned why people who embrace the same God can do something like that," Magness said. "I gradually came to realize that we need to affirm others whose faith differs from ours. If we don't find a way to do that, we stand a chance of killing every man, woman and child on the face of this earth."
Packard said he did not know if he could have done things differently. "I do know," he said, that in giving last rites to the remains of victims over and over at Ground Zero, "I had a definite sense of God's grace.
"I knew," he said, "that we had to make room for sacred space for the holiness that was there."
-- Val Hymes is a member of the Diocese of Maryland and editor of www.PrisMinNet.org.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Seating of the Canon
Many have asked and perhaps several are wondering about the seating of Bishop Magness as a Canon at the Washington National Cathedral.
What is a canon and how does a canon function? An ecclesiastical person (Latin Canonicus), a member of a chapter or body of clerics living according to rule and presided over by one of their number. In this case, Bishop Magness, who is one of three Bishops Suffragan (Assistant Bishops) to the Presiding Bishop, will be seated as the Presiding Bishop’s Canon at the Washington National Cathedral.
Bishop Magness is the Bishop Suffragan for Armed Services and Federal Ministries of the Episcopal Church. Have you ever wondered to whom he serves as Suffragan? The answer is that he the Bishop Suffragan to the Presiding Bishop and is responsible to her for the ecclesiastical oversight of all Federal Ministries engaged in by The Episcopal Church.
You may or may not be aware of the fact that the Presiding Bishop has a chair (cathedra) at the Washington National Cathedral. The Presiding Bishop will seat (install) Bishop Magness as her Canon to function on her behalf at Services and events involving Federal Ministries. Bishop Magness will be involved in Services such as the annual United States Marine Corps Anniversary held at evensong on the Sunday closest to November 10. If there should be a national funeral for a dignitary or if an event is scheduled to be held at the Washington National Cathedral related to Federal Ministries, Bishop Magness will be asked to participate on behalf of the Presiding Bishop.
What you may be gathering from this blog is that Bishop Magness will not be the “Dean” of the cathedral nor will he be on the staff of either the cathedral or the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. While this position will require a minimum amount of time it will produce the added benefit of connecting all of our military, V.A., and Federal Bureau of Prison chaplains more closely to the Presiding Bishop, Washington National Cathedral, and to The Episcopal Church.
What is a canon and how does a canon function? An ecclesiastical person (Latin Canonicus), a member of a chapter or body of clerics living according to rule and presided over by one of their number. In this case, Bishop Magness, who is one of three Bishops Suffragan (Assistant Bishops) to the Presiding Bishop, will be seated as the Presiding Bishop’s Canon at the Washington National Cathedral.
Bishop Magness is the Bishop Suffragan for Armed Services and Federal Ministries of the Episcopal Church. Have you ever wondered to whom he serves as Suffragan? The answer is that he the Bishop Suffragan to the Presiding Bishop and is responsible to her for the ecclesiastical oversight of all Federal Ministries engaged in by The Episcopal Church.
You may or may not be aware of the fact that the Presiding Bishop has a chair (cathedra) at the Washington National Cathedral. The Presiding Bishop will seat (install) Bishop Magness as her Canon to function on her behalf at Services and events involving Federal Ministries. Bishop Magness will be involved in Services such as the annual United States Marine Corps Anniversary held at evensong on the Sunday closest to November 10. If there should be a national funeral for a dignitary or if an event is scheduled to be held at the Washington National Cathedral related to Federal Ministries, Bishop Magness will be asked to participate on behalf of the Presiding Bishop.
What you may be gathering from this blog is that Bishop Magness will not be the “Dean” of the cathedral nor will he be on the staff of either the cathedral or the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. While this position will require a minimum amount of time it will produce the added benefit of connecting all of our military, V.A., and Federal Bureau of Prison chaplains more closely to the Presiding Bishop, Washington National Cathedral, and to The Episcopal Church.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Spirituality Forged in Smoke and Fire: A 9/11 Retrospective
[Note: This article was written by Bishop Magness for publication in The Huffington Post.]
As the senior military chaplain for U.S. Joint Forces Command, I was in Arlington, Virginia with my colleagues for an annual meeting of the senior Armed Forces chaplains assigned to the command staffs of our nation's Joint, or unified commands. On the morning of Tuesday, the 11th of September, we were riding in a small bus going down the hill from our hotel to the Pentagon where our meeting would be held in an E-ring conference room near the Pentagon Athletic Center entrance. As stated in the opening sentence of the 9/11 Commission Report, the day “…dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States (p. 1).” Driving past Arlington National Cemetery I recall thinking how placid a place that was. Then I came back into reality and remembered the funerals I had done there as a Navy chaplain who had worked next door in the Navy Annex (to the Pentagon) a couple of years earlier.
We were a few minutes late getting to our meeting because our driver, a man with Middle Eastern features, had missed the turnoff to the Pentagon. We had to go into the District of Columbia, turn around and come back for the correct turn into the Pentagon parking lot.
All in all, it was a pretty normal morning - until American Airlines flight #77 that was still almost full of fuel came in over the northern horizon and slammed into the side of the building. It was only after we had been evacuated from the building that my life began to change. After being sequestered for a few minutes near the Potomac River, it was apparent that what some of us at first thought was an emergency drill had actually been a sizable explosion on the far side of the building. Collectively we knew that the explosion called for a response. We had been called to action. Through the leadership of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chaplain we were organized into small teams headed by the senior medical officer present. Since all of us had been trained in immediate first aid, we were eager to use our combined medical training and pastoral skills to give aid to the injured and comfort to the dying.
As we worked to rescue the injured service members and civilians to give rudimentary medical assistance, simultaneously we worked to find the ambulances of necessity: a small fleet of mini-vans that belonged to persons who worked in the Pentagon.
After an hour or two, it was clear that all the "easy" rescues had already been made. It was time to re-enter the building and get down to the tougher work of the day. Walking through a maze of circuitous routes our team worked our way back down the corridor and into the Pentagon center courtyard. By this time we had almost forgotten about the acrid smoke we had been breathing and even pulled down our make-shift undershirt material face masks. At about 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. it became evident that our work of lifesaving had run its course. There were no more persons to be removed from the rubble. We all agreed that it was time for us to leave and let the fire and rescue people take over. Upon leaving and walking back up the hill to our hotel I remember thinking that my 9/11 work was complete. Goodness, but how wrong could a person could be?
For days on end I contemplated how people of faith, people who affirmed the Abrahamic faith which Jews, Christians, and Muslims embraced, could do such a horrible thing. Now, I'm not necessarily naive about people who do bad things. After all, when I was younger I spent the better part of a year in Vietnam being best friends with an M-16 rifle and a 50 caliber machine gun. I learned plenty about the bad things people, me included, can and will do.
But somehow this was different. I wondered if maybe President Bush could be wrong, and we were in a religious war.
Something was happening in my psyche and in my soul. It was as though I was two persons: light and darkness. I was trapped in my own dualism where two competing opposites held me in tension. This was a type of dualism that had captured many Americans. Back in those days right after 9/11 the smart money was for the darkness to win.
As a priest of The Episcopal Church and a Navy chaplain, I knew that my vocation was to embody, to incarnate God’s grace and forgiveness. Out of the light that was in me, I could affirm such divinely inspired and generous thoughts. However, there was also darkness. There is a ponderable and somewhat strange quotation of Jesus in the Christian Gospel of St. Matthew. Instructing His disciples about their mission, Jesus said "...whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven." (Matthew 18.18, NRSV). From the dark side of my being I wanted to bind those folk and those who sent the aviators-for-a-day to kill; bind them over to hell. I began to wonder if the Islamic people with whom I was familiar were engaged in a coordinated sham to deceive us; that somehow they were all behind everything we had experienced on 9/11.
Out of my darkness I wanted to get even. I wanted to make "those persons" pay for the pain they had caused us. In one of my darker moments, I even contemplated the idea that our wayward bus driver was a part of the scheme. You can believe me that it took a pretty vibrant imagination to entertain the bus driver plot. Actually I learned that when you are living in a world that is dominated by darkness that it's not such a fantastic reach after all.
Instinctively I knew that I had to break out of this dark funk, but how? I prayed the Daily Office of Morning Prayer from my Episcopal prayer book each morning. That didn't do it. I led and attended public worship services. That didn't do it. I talked with a therapist and with my closest friends. Even that didn't do it. What could I do?
Desperately I needed a change of heart. Yet I found that the change would not come easily or quickly. For months I grappled with what had by then become a spiritual dilemma in my life. Then without warning I got a jolt to my soul that awakened me to a new vista; a new way to move into a greater understanding and grasp of God. In my role as a leader of Navy chaplains I was visiting the military chaplains assigned to our new Joint Task Force detention facility at the Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ever since the facility opened we had assigned a Muslim military chaplain to be on staff and work with the detainees, suspected terrorists of whom almost all embraced the Muslim faith. Upon arrival I was told that there was significant conflict between the commander of the detention facility and my Muslim chaplain. Though to this day I am still not clear about precisely what caused the conflict, I was very aware that in the end a significant part of the problem was based in the commander’s distrust of a Muslim chaplain. On my second day I ended up standing between, quite literally, the commander and my chaplain. Instinctively I knew that as a leader I had to stand up for the person for whom I was responsible. Well, that was it! At that moment the darkness in my life began to ebb away, the light began to shine.
But why? How? The change began when I was able and willing to sacrifice some of my own safety and security, and stand up for a chaplain for whom I was responsible but with whom I had religious differences. That day God had led me to the point at which I had the opportunity to sacrifice my comfortable, condescending, and divisive views about all Muslims. I learned that day that once I could affirm my chaplain, my Muslim chaplain that I could begin to be transformed so that in my soul I could see more light than darkness.
That day I began my journey of learning that at times I have to sacrifice my needs in order to affirm and care for the other. I began learning that the affirmation of our spiritual differences is the only vehicle through which we can build the framework for common ground. That day when I practiced the affirmation of my Muslim chaplain I learned that I could affirm his spiritual needs when I didn't even understand or share those needs. I began to learn that to do anything less, and to try to base our relationship entirely upon our a quest for common ground ends up being little more than a self-fulfilling utilitarian quest in which I have regard for the other only when I can get what I want.
Some of my fellow Christians may believe that an unrestricted affirmation of the other’s spirituality will diminish a believer’s faith and belief. I can only respond that in my own life experience I have experienced something quite to the contrary. Not only does such affirmation and recognition not diminish my Christian faith; if anything it has enhanced my faith. As I guard and stand up for the other, the one who believes differently than me, my own faith grows.
Now it is starting to dawn upon me that two thousand years ago when Jesus was telling his people that whatever they bound on earth would be bound in heaven, He was talking about the work of being aware of the evil in our midst and in our own hearts, and to behave in such a way as to bind it from spreading and multiplying. Day in and day out the federal chaplains whom I serve in the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Federal Bureau of Prisons are doing the work of binding darkness and being ambassadors of light. Though I can only hope and pray that their work and ministry will hasten the reign of the Lord God in our midst, I know for certain that as they become light in the midst of extreme darkness God’s light has begun to shine.
As the senior military chaplain for U.S. Joint Forces Command, I was in Arlington, Virginia with my colleagues for an annual meeting of the senior Armed Forces chaplains assigned to the command staffs of our nation's Joint, or unified commands. On the morning of Tuesday, the 11th of September, we were riding in a small bus going down the hill from our hotel to the Pentagon where our meeting would be held in an E-ring conference room near the Pentagon Athletic Center entrance. As stated in the opening sentence of the 9/11 Commission Report, the day “…dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States (p. 1).” Driving past Arlington National Cemetery I recall thinking how placid a place that was. Then I came back into reality and remembered the funerals I had done there as a Navy chaplain who had worked next door in the Navy Annex (to the Pentagon) a couple of years earlier.
We were a few minutes late getting to our meeting because our driver, a man with Middle Eastern features, had missed the turnoff to the Pentagon. We had to go into the District of Columbia, turn around and come back for the correct turn into the Pentagon parking lot.
All in all, it was a pretty normal morning - until American Airlines flight #77 that was still almost full of fuel came in over the northern horizon and slammed into the side of the building. It was only after we had been evacuated from the building that my life began to change. After being sequestered for a few minutes near the Potomac River, it was apparent that what some of us at first thought was an emergency drill had actually been a sizable explosion on the far side of the building. Collectively we knew that the explosion called for a response. We had been called to action. Through the leadership of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chaplain we were organized into small teams headed by the senior medical officer present. Since all of us had been trained in immediate first aid, we were eager to use our combined medical training and pastoral skills to give aid to the injured and comfort to the dying.
As we worked to rescue the injured service members and civilians to give rudimentary medical assistance, simultaneously we worked to find the ambulances of necessity: a small fleet of mini-vans that belonged to persons who worked in the Pentagon.
After an hour or two, it was clear that all the "easy" rescues had already been made. It was time to re-enter the building and get down to the tougher work of the day. Walking through a maze of circuitous routes our team worked our way back down the corridor and into the Pentagon center courtyard. By this time we had almost forgotten about the acrid smoke we had been breathing and even pulled down our make-shift undershirt material face masks. At about 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. it became evident that our work of lifesaving had run its course. There were no more persons to be removed from the rubble. We all agreed that it was time for us to leave and let the fire and rescue people take over. Upon leaving and walking back up the hill to our hotel I remember thinking that my 9/11 work was complete. Goodness, but how wrong could a person could be?
For days on end I contemplated how people of faith, people who affirmed the Abrahamic faith which Jews, Christians, and Muslims embraced, could do such a horrible thing. Now, I'm not necessarily naive about people who do bad things. After all, when I was younger I spent the better part of a year in Vietnam being best friends with an M-16 rifle and a 50 caliber machine gun. I learned plenty about the bad things people, me included, can and will do.
But somehow this was different. I wondered if maybe President Bush could be wrong, and we were in a religious war.
Something was happening in my psyche and in my soul. It was as though I was two persons: light and darkness. I was trapped in my own dualism where two competing opposites held me in tension. This was a type of dualism that had captured many Americans. Back in those days right after 9/11 the smart money was for the darkness to win.
As a priest of The Episcopal Church and a Navy chaplain, I knew that my vocation was to embody, to incarnate God’s grace and forgiveness. Out of the light that was in me, I could affirm such divinely inspired and generous thoughts. However, there was also darkness. There is a ponderable and somewhat strange quotation of Jesus in the Christian Gospel of St. Matthew. Instructing His disciples about their mission, Jesus said "...whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven." (Matthew 18.18, NRSV). From the dark side of my being I wanted to bind those folk and those who sent the aviators-for-a-day to kill; bind them over to hell. I began to wonder if the Islamic people with whom I was familiar were engaged in a coordinated sham to deceive us; that somehow they were all behind everything we had experienced on 9/11.
Out of my darkness I wanted to get even. I wanted to make "those persons" pay for the pain they had caused us. In one of my darker moments, I even contemplated the idea that our wayward bus driver was a part of the scheme. You can believe me that it took a pretty vibrant imagination to entertain the bus driver plot. Actually I learned that when you are living in a world that is dominated by darkness that it's not such a fantastic reach after all.
Instinctively I knew that I had to break out of this dark funk, but how? I prayed the Daily Office of Morning Prayer from my Episcopal prayer book each morning. That didn't do it. I led and attended public worship services. That didn't do it. I talked with a therapist and with my closest friends. Even that didn't do it. What could I do?
Desperately I needed a change of heart. Yet I found that the change would not come easily or quickly. For months I grappled with what had by then become a spiritual dilemma in my life. Then without warning I got a jolt to my soul that awakened me to a new vista; a new way to move into a greater understanding and grasp of God. In my role as a leader of Navy chaplains I was visiting the military chaplains assigned to our new Joint Task Force detention facility at the Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ever since the facility opened we had assigned a Muslim military chaplain to be on staff and work with the detainees, suspected terrorists of whom almost all embraced the Muslim faith. Upon arrival I was told that there was significant conflict between the commander of the detention facility and my Muslim chaplain. Though to this day I am still not clear about precisely what caused the conflict, I was very aware that in the end a significant part of the problem was based in the commander’s distrust of a Muslim chaplain. On my second day I ended up standing between, quite literally, the commander and my chaplain. Instinctively I knew that as a leader I had to stand up for the person for whom I was responsible. Well, that was it! At that moment the darkness in my life began to ebb away, the light began to shine.
But why? How? The change began when I was able and willing to sacrifice some of my own safety and security, and stand up for a chaplain for whom I was responsible but with whom I had religious differences. That day God had led me to the point at which I had the opportunity to sacrifice my comfortable, condescending, and divisive views about all Muslims. I learned that day that once I could affirm my chaplain, my Muslim chaplain that I could begin to be transformed so that in my soul I could see more light than darkness.
That day I began my journey of learning that at times I have to sacrifice my needs in order to affirm and care for the other. I began learning that the affirmation of our spiritual differences is the only vehicle through which we can build the framework for common ground. That day when I practiced the affirmation of my Muslim chaplain I learned that I could affirm his spiritual needs when I didn't even understand or share those needs. I began to learn that to do anything less, and to try to base our relationship entirely upon our a quest for common ground ends up being little more than a self-fulfilling utilitarian quest in which I have regard for the other only when I can get what I want.
Some of my fellow Christians may believe that an unrestricted affirmation of the other’s spirituality will diminish a believer’s faith and belief. I can only respond that in my own life experience I have experienced something quite to the contrary. Not only does such affirmation and recognition not diminish my Christian faith; if anything it has enhanced my faith. As I guard and stand up for the other, the one who believes differently than me, my own faith grows.
Now it is starting to dawn upon me that two thousand years ago when Jesus was telling his people that whatever they bound on earth would be bound in heaven, He was talking about the work of being aware of the evil in our midst and in our own hearts, and to behave in such a way as to bind it from spreading and multiplying. Day in and day out the federal chaplains whom I serve in the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, and Federal Bureau of Prisons are doing the work of binding darkness and being ambassadors of light. Though I can only hope and pray that their work and ministry will hasten the reign of the Lord God in our midst, I know for certain that as they become light in the midst of extreme darkness God’s light has begun to shine.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Prayer for the 30 who died in Afghanistan
August 7, 2011
Those of us who serve and care for the men and women of the Armed Services have heavy hearts today as we mourn the loss of 30 U.S and NATO special operations service members who died in an aircraft crash yesterday in Afghanistan. The words of the Psalmist in the Old Testament speak for us: "Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also." (Psalm 31.9) Please join me in prayer for the their souls, for their families and for those who served with them.
+Jay
Those of us who serve and care for the men and women of the Armed Services have heavy hearts today as we mourn the loss of 30 U.S and NATO special operations service members who died in an aircraft crash yesterday in Afghanistan. The words of the Psalmist in the Old Testament speak for us: "Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also." (Psalm 31.9) Please join me in prayer for the their souls, for their families and for those who served with them.
+Jay
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Former Army Chaplain Devoted to Helping Vets
[This article appeared in the San Diego Union Tribune. Bishop Magness was interviewed for the article.]
Nobody was as ardent a champion of veterans as the Rev. William Mahedy Jr. An Army chaplain in Vietnam from 1970 to 1973, he knew intimately how war could haunt its survivors, and he forged a career serving them.
“I still carry something in my soul that is unresolved,” he said during a 1991 interview with the San Diego Union.
Rev. Mahedy wrote extensively on peace in the nuclear age and co-authored the program that led to the establishment of Vet Centers nationwide. He also helped found the predecessor of Veterans Village of San Diego.
Rev. Mahedy died of cancer July 20 at the VA San Diego Medical Center in La Jolla. The Clairemont resident was 75.
As a VA benefits counselor in Los Angeles in 1977, he teamed with another counselor, Shad Meshad, to design the Vietnam Veterans Outreach Program. It provided the blueprint for the storefront Vet Centers that offered counseling and readjustment services.
“Bill was called the ‘High Priest,’ and I was the ‘Street Priest,’ ” Meshad said of their odd-couple partnership when they introduced their program to officials in Washington, D.C. “Bill was fluent and elegant and looked like VA in his polyester suit. I looked horrific with this Afro and beard and my street talk.”
Rev. Mahedy worked a year at the Vet Center in Van Nuys before coming to San Diego as team leader. He left two years later to create a uniquely local vets group.
“We started a rap group (at the Vet Center), and out of that he challenged us to start the Vietnam Veterans of San Diego, now Veterans Village of San Diego,” said Jack Lyon, co-founder of VVSD. “He said, ‘Why don’t you do something purposeful with your energy and your rage?’ ”
Rev. Mahedy was a guiding force for numerous VVSD programs, including job placement, drug and alcohol recovery, getting homeless vets off the streets and, in 1988, Stand Down.
“What he gave us kindled a little flicker of hope in us when we felt hopeless,” Lyon said. “He gave us confidence, and he loved us when we really didn’t know how to do that so well.”
William Peter Mahedy Jr. was born June 30, 1936, in San Diego, the oldest of four to William Mahedy Sr. and Loretta Engler Mahedy. He attended St. Augustine High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Villanova University in 1959. In the 1960s and 1970s, he obtained three master’s degrees: in marriage, family and child counseling from Chapman University; in philosophy from Villanova; and in religious education from Augustinian College.
Ordained a Catholic priest in 1963, Rev. Mahedy left the priesthood to marry and became an Episcopal priest in 1976. In the ’80s and ’90s, he served as a priest and campus minister at UCSD and SDSU, and worked as a VVSD therapist, a VA Medical Center chaplain, and a member of the medical center’s PTSD Clinical Team.
Rev. Mahedy is survived by his wife, the former Carol Rice of Clairemont; sister Mary Shier of San Diego; brothers Thomas of Des Moines, Iowa, and John of Portland, Ore.; son Michael of Tracy; daughter Marie Lockton of San Diego; and three grandchildren.
A funeral will be held at 10 a.m. today at Good Samaritan Episcopal Church. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Rev. Mahedy’s memory to St. David’s Episcopal Church, 5050 Milton St., San Diego, CA 92110.
caroline.dipping@uniontrib.com (619) 293-2823
Written by
Caroline Dipping /h5>
Nobody was as ardent a champion of veterans as the Rev. William Mahedy Jr. An Army chaplain in Vietnam from 1970 to 1973, he knew intimately how war could haunt its survivors, and he forged a career serving them.
“I still carry something in my soul that is unresolved,” he said during a 1991 interview with the San Diego Union.
Rev. Mahedy wrote extensively on peace in the nuclear age and co-authored the program that led to the establishment of Vet Centers nationwide. He also helped found the predecessor of Veterans Village of San Diego.
Rev. Mahedy died of cancer July 20 at the VA San Diego Medical Center in La Jolla. The Clairemont resident was 75.
As a VA benefits counselor in Los Angeles in 1977, he teamed with another counselor, Shad Meshad, to design the Vietnam Veterans Outreach Program. It provided the blueprint for the storefront Vet Centers that offered counseling and readjustment services.
“Bill was called the ‘High Priest,’ and I was the ‘Street Priest,’ ” Meshad said of their odd-couple partnership when they introduced their program to officials in Washington, D.C. “Bill was fluent and elegant and looked like VA in his polyester suit. I looked horrific with this Afro and beard and my street talk.”
Rev. Mahedy worked a year at the Vet Center in Van Nuys before coming to San Diego as team leader. He left two years later to create a uniquely local vets group.
“We started a rap group (at the Vet Center), and out of that he challenged us to start the Vietnam Veterans of San Diego, now Veterans Village of San Diego,” said Jack Lyon, co-founder of VVSD. “He said, ‘Why don’t you do something purposeful with your energy and your rage?’ ”
Rev. Mahedy was a guiding force for numerous VVSD programs, including job placement, drug and alcohol recovery, getting homeless vets off the streets and, in 1988, Stand Down.
“What he gave us kindled a little flicker of hope in us when we felt hopeless,” Lyon said. “He gave us confidence, and he loved us when we really didn’t know how to do that so well.”
William Peter Mahedy Jr. was born June 30, 1936, in San Diego, the oldest of four to William Mahedy Sr. and Loretta Engler Mahedy. He attended St. Augustine High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Villanova University in 1959. In the 1960s and 1970s, he obtained three master’s degrees: in marriage, family and child counseling from Chapman University; in philosophy from Villanova; and in religious education from Augustinian College.
Ordained a Catholic priest in 1963, Rev. Mahedy left the priesthood to marry and became an Episcopal priest in 1976. In the ’80s and ’90s, he served as a priest and campus minister at UCSD and SDSU, and worked as a VVSD therapist, a VA Medical Center chaplain, and a member of the medical center’s PTSD Clinical Team.
Rev. Mahedy is survived by his wife, the former Carol Rice of Clairemont; sister Mary Shier of San Diego; brothers Thomas of Des Moines, Iowa, and John of Portland, Ore.; son Michael of Tracy; daughter Marie Lockton of San Diego; and three grandchildren.
A funeral will be held at 10 a.m. today at Good Samaritan Episcopal Church. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Rev. Mahedy’s memory to St. David’s Episcopal Church, 5050 Milton St., San Diego, CA 92110.
caroline.dipping@uniontrib.com (619) 293-2823
Written by
Caroline Dipping /h5>
Monday, July 25, 2011
Rector Position Available in Northern Virginia
Dear Friends,
Our beloved rector, The Rev. Scott Dillard, will retire this May after 18 years of service at Wicomico Parish Church. We are grateful to him for our joyful worship services, for helping us find Christian purpose in our lives, for parish stability and growth, and for our prayerful awareness of who we are and where we are headed.
As such, we will be seeking a new rector. Most importantly, we want a spiritual leader who is able to preach and make scripture relevant to our daily lives. We have little interest in evangelism or church politics, are traditional in many ways, and respect the variety of understandings and interpretations that exist among us. We are most comfortable with an informal style and an outgoing, communicative and self-confident manner, and we also appreciate a sense of humor.
We recognize the need for a pastor to counsel and guide us in times of spiritual and personal crisis. More specifically, we seek one who is comfortable dealing with the fears and uncertainties of the aging and elderly while appreciating their wealth of experience and depth of understanding regarding life’s joys and sorrows.
Wicomico Parish Church is a small country church founded in 1645, and located in the Northern Neck of Virginia. We enjoy almost 200 miles of waterfront, open fields, forests, and small towns as well as many social and cultural activities and facilities. Those who live here embrace our rural setting and slower pace of life.
The members of our church number approximately 200, the majority of whom are married, retired, well educated, active, over 60 years of age and from diverse backgrounds. We are known for our warmth and friendliness as well as our commitment to outreach. There is nothing stuffy about us.
Sunday worship services are held at 8 AM and 10 AM, and the average attendance at both is around 50 parishioners. The early service is briefer and more informal than the later one. Each service involves lay volunteers who read the scripture, lead the prayers and serve as chalice bearers. The 10 AM service also includes our choir, acolytes and ushers.
Parishioners at Wicomico Parish Church feel a strong sense of community, both in our parish life and in our efforts to care for those beyond our walls. Volunteers are willingly involved in many efforts and events throughout the year for both fellowship and to support outreach projects.
Our church building is the kind found on postcards, with a parish hall connected by a breezeway, a thrift shop, a cemetery and a columbarium. Our rectory, “Wicomico House,” is over 150 years old but has been recently renovated.
Please visit www.wicomicoparishchurch.com and contact us at any time.
Point of contact is Marshall Waterman, Chairperson of our Search Committee whose email is:
marshallwaterman@gmail.com
Our beloved rector, The Rev. Scott Dillard, will retire this May after 18 years of service at Wicomico Parish Church. We are grateful to him for our joyful worship services, for helping us find Christian purpose in our lives, for parish stability and growth, and for our prayerful awareness of who we are and where we are headed.
As such, we will be seeking a new rector. Most importantly, we want a spiritual leader who is able to preach and make scripture relevant to our daily lives. We have little interest in evangelism or church politics, are traditional in many ways, and respect the variety of understandings and interpretations that exist among us. We are most comfortable with an informal style and an outgoing, communicative and self-confident manner, and we also appreciate a sense of humor.
We recognize the need for a pastor to counsel and guide us in times of spiritual and personal crisis. More specifically, we seek one who is comfortable dealing with the fears and uncertainties of the aging and elderly while appreciating their wealth of experience and depth of understanding regarding life’s joys and sorrows.
Wicomico Parish Church is a small country church founded in 1645, and located in the Northern Neck of Virginia. We enjoy almost 200 miles of waterfront, open fields, forests, and small towns as well as many social and cultural activities and facilities. Those who live here embrace our rural setting and slower pace of life.
The members of our church number approximately 200, the majority of whom are married, retired, well educated, active, over 60 years of age and from diverse backgrounds. We are known for our warmth and friendliness as well as our commitment to outreach. There is nothing stuffy about us.
Sunday worship services are held at 8 AM and 10 AM, and the average attendance at both is around 50 parishioners. The early service is briefer and more informal than the later one. Each service involves lay volunteers who read the scripture, lead the prayers and serve as chalice bearers. The 10 AM service also includes our choir, acolytes and ushers.
Parishioners at Wicomico Parish Church feel a strong sense of community, both in our parish life and in our efforts to care for those beyond our walls. Volunteers are willingly involved in many efforts and events throughout the year for both fellowship and to support outreach projects.
Our church building is the kind found on postcards, with a parish hall connected by a breezeway, a thrift shop, a cemetery and a columbarium. Our rectory, “Wicomico House,” is over 150 years old but has been recently renovated.
Please visit www.wicomicoparishchurch.com and contact us at any time.
Point of contact is Marshall Waterman, Chairperson of our Search Committee whose email is:
marshallwaterman@gmail.com
Funeral for Bill Mahedy
The funeral for Bill Mahedy will be July 30th at 10AM at Good Samaritan Episcopal Church in La Jolla. The address is:
4321 Eastgate Mall
San Diego, CA 92121-2102
There will be a reception at the church immediately after. Internment will be at the National Cemetery at a later time.
4321 Eastgate Mall
San Diego, CA 92121-2102
There will be a reception at the church immediately after. Internment will be at the National Cemetery at a later time.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Death of the Reverend Bill Mahedy
I write with a combination of human sadness and resurrection joy to inform you that the Reverend Bill Mahedy, who for many years was a member of this episcopacy, has died. After a long and ultimately debilitating illness, Bill died yesterday, July 20th, at the V.A Medical Center in San Diego. Plans for scheduling The Burial Rite are still pending.
I last spoke with Bill on the afternoon before he died. As I told his son Mike, in our final conversation Bill continued to be lucid and took solace in the opportunities he had to care for "vets." It is no small coincidence that roughly at the time of his dying, within the community of faith that meets for the weekly Eucharist in the Chapel of the Pentagon, we prayed for Bill.
Bill was a friend and mentor to many of us, me included. During the almost 20 years I knew him, I found Bill to be the type of man whom you could immediately identify as a person of quiet and immense significance. I consider Bill to have been the “dean” of wisdom on the subject of the spiritual components of post traumatic stress in military veterans. During his nearly two decades as a Roman Catholic priest he was an Army chaplain for three years, one year of which was spent in Vietnam. For some time Bill had been developing a sense of affection and appreciation for veterans, and his Vietnam chaplaincy experience served to heighten and sharpen that sense. It was during the 1970s that Bill married Carol and also became an Episcopal priest. Simultaneously, Bill went to work for the VA and was instrumental in the establishment of the Vietnam Vet Centers that for years were the storefront connections with wounded warriors from the Vietnam War.
Right up to the time of his death Bill continued to be engaged and was current enough on the subject of the care of combat veterans to be asked by Navy leaders to work in their wounded warrior program. The author of several books, I consider his 1986 volume, Out of the Night: The Spiritual Journey of Vietnam Veterans, to be his seminal work. I approached this book with a “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” mentality. As a fellow Vietnam veteran. I am keenly aware that those who want to provide effective spiritual care for wounded warriors are well advised to understand what Bill teaches readers of this book.
Please join me in offering prayers the repose of Bill’s soul, and for his wife, Carol and family.
Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Bill Mahedy. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of our own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. AMEN (Commendation prayer of Burial Rite II, The Book of Common Prayer: BCP, p. 499).
+Jay
I last spoke with Bill on the afternoon before he died. As I told his son Mike, in our final conversation Bill continued to be lucid and took solace in the opportunities he had to care for "vets." It is no small coincidence that roughly at the time of his dying, within the community of faith that meets for the weekly Eucharist in the Chapel of the Pentagon, we prayed for Bill.
Bill was a friend and mentor to many of us, me included. During the almost 20 years I knew him, I found Bill to be the type of man whom you could immediately identify as a person of quiet and immense significance. I consider Bill to have been the “dean” of wisdom on the subject of the spiritual components of post traumatic stress in military veterans. During his nearly two decades as a Roman Catholic priest he was an Army chaplain for three years, one year of which was spent in Vietnam. For some time Bill had been developing a sense of affection and appreciation for veterans, and his Vietnam chaplaincy experience served to heighten and sharpen that sense. It was during the 1970s that Bill married Carol and also became an Episcopal priest. Simultaneously, Bill went to work for the VA and was instrumental in the establishment of the Vietnam Vet Centers that for years were the storefront connections with wounded warriors from the Vietnam War.
Right up to the time of his death Bill continued to be engaged and was current enough on the subject of the care of combat veterans to be asked by Navy leaders to work in their wounded warrior program. The author of several books, I consider his 1986 volume, Out of the Night: The Spiritual Journey of Vietnam Veterans, to be his seminal work. I approached this book with a “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” mentality. As a fellow Vietnam veteran. I am keenly aware that those who want to provide effective spiritual care for wounded warriors are well advised to understand what Bill teaches readers of this book.
Please join me in offering prayers the repose of Bill’s soul, and for his wife, Carol and family.
Into your hands, O merciful Savior, we commend your servant Bill Mahedy. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech you, a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of our own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming. Receive him into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. AMEN (Commendation prayer of Burial Rite II, The Book of Common Prayer: BCP, p. 499).
+Jay
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
NEW ARMED SERVICES AND FEDERAL MINISTRIES WEB SITE
Following 12 months of research, frustration, collection of data, and the formation of an IT strategy, I can now let you know that we are on a fast-track leading to the development of an enhanced system for both internal and external communications. We are working with a respected web development firm to create, establish, and maintain a new web site that will have the capability to communicate both public and private information to those seeking an ecclesiastical endorsement from this office and those who are holding a current ecclesiastical endorsement.
Though the specific details for our new web site are still under development, I can tell you that the new site will have a page that is open to everyone including those who are seeking basic information regarding chaplaincy in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Defense. The process of application for my ecclesiastical endorsement to serve in these agencies as an Episcopal chaplain will be accessible on this page. There will also be a password-protected section of the new web site that will be accessible only to those who have a current ecclesiastical endorsement from me.
As soon as we have a release date for the new site my Executive Officer, the Rev. Dr. Wally Jensen, will make an announcement to that effect, and passwords will be issued to those who qualify as ecclesiastically endorsed Episcopal Chaplains. Though I regret that it is taking so long to establish an effective communications medium, I believe that you will be pleased with our new web site and the resources that will be made available to you.
+Jay Magness
Though the specific details for our new web site are still under development, I can tell you that the new site will have a page that is open to everyone including those who are seeking basic information regarding chaplaincy in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Defense. The process of application for my ecclesiastical endorsement to serve in these agencies as an Episcopal chaplain will be accessible on this page. There will also be a password-protected section of the new web site that will be accessible only to those who have a current ecclesiastical endorsement from me.
As soon as we have a release date for the new site my Executive Officer, the Rev. Dr. Wally Jensen, will make an announcement to that effect, and passwords will be issued to those who qualify as ecclesiastically endorsed Episcopal Chaplains. Though I regret that it is taking so long to establish an effective communications medium, I believe that you will be pleased with our new web site and the resources that will be made available to you.
+Jay Magness
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Laura Adelia's Ordination
On the 2nd of July we ordained Air National Guard chaplain Laura Adelia to the sacred order of priests, the first ordination of a priest in this episcopacy since I became Bishop for the Armed Services and Federal Ministries. The ordination was celebrated at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church in Sedona, AZ. The Rt. Rev. Kirk Smith, Bishop Diocesan of Arizona, was the ordaining bishop. Bishop Smith graciously invited me to assist him with the ordination.
Laura, a chaplain (Lieutenant Colonel) in the ANG, had been an ordained clergy person of the United Church of Christ. Most recently Laura completed a deployment with the ANG to Antarctica and achieved the distinction of being the first female chaplain to have wintered over in Antarctica. This past May, in anticipation of her impending ordination to the priesthood, Laura attended our annual Episcopal Federal Chaplains Training Conference in Roslyn, VA, where many of us had the opportunity to meet Laura for the first time.
Laura is currently completing a Clinical Pastoral Education unit at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto, CA. Upon completion of this phase of her clinical training she will split her time between her ANG chaplaincy and serving as a college chaplain in the Diocese of Arizona.
We welcome Laura into our community of federal chaplains!
Bishop Jay
The Rt. Rev. James B. "Jay" Magness, D.Min.
Bishop Suffragan for the Armed Services and Federal Ministries
Laura, a chaplain (Lieutenant Colonel) in the ANG, had been an ordained clergy person of the United Church of Christ. Most recently Laura completed a deployment with the ANG to Antarctica and achieved the distinction of being the first female chaplain to have wintered over in Antarctica. This past May, in anticipation of her impending ordination to the priesthood, Laura attended our annual Episcopal Federal Chaplains Training Conference in Roslyn, VA, where many of us had the opportunity to meet Laura for the first time.
Laura is currently completing a Clinical Pastoral Education unit at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto, CA. Upon completion of this phase of her clinical training she will split her time between her ANG chaplaincy and serving as a college chaplain in the Diocese of Arizona.
We welcome Laura into our community of federal chaplains!
Bishop Jay
The Rt. Rev. James B. "Jay" Magness, D.Min.
Bishop Suffragan for the Armed Services and Federal Ministries
Friday, July 1, 2011
A Religious Reflection for Independence Day, 2011
As we celebrate the 235th anniversary of our existence as a nation, we have many things for which to celebrate and be thankful. One of the bedrocks for our country which I most appreciate is the way we have maintained our sense of religious freedom and kept to the tenets of the 1st Amendment to the Constitution. Through life experience I have learned that our commitment to religious freedom requires renewal with each successive generation. Never can we can take for granted that all of our citizens will understand and appreciate this crucial component of our history.
In the current era of expanding religious diversity and pluralism a striking number of our fellow citizens are voicing their opinion that we are an exclusively Christian nation with little room for other faith traditions. I have often wondered if there is something more to this attitude than a simple quest for religious purity. Scott Bader-Saye partially addresses this question for me in his book Following Jesus in a Culture of FEAR (Brazos Press, Grand Rapids: 2007). Bader-Saye raises for me the question of whether such Christian exclusivity could be built upon a foundation of fear, a fear that other religions will push Christianity from the center of the public square. As I read Bader-Saye’s book I wonder if such ways of thinking are symptoms of the ever-present fears of life in a post 9/11 world. It seems to me that we may be at a societal crossroads at which we are faced with a choice between the embrace of religious diversity or the development of a Constantine-like city-state that is governed by the tenets of the scriptures. Yes, I recognize that life will never be as simple as an either/or decision, but the implications of these decisions are significant for me.
During the early years of my professional career as a Navy chaplain I learned a very important lesson about religious diversity. In 1980 when I was a young lieutenant chaplain I was asked to participate in a retirement ceremony for a Navy captain. Without thinking very much about my constituents at the ceremony, I offered a prayer with a closing something like: "In the name of Christ our Lord." Afterward the newly-minted retiree came up to me and calmly said that though he was thankful that I had participated, he was a practicing Jew who did not appreciate my prayers for him that were concluded in Jesus' name. That day I became aware of how much I had offended one of God's children. Through this experience I learned that the context of ministry for a military chaplain, who in this case happened to be a priest of The Episcopal Church, was radically different than that of the parishes I had served in preceding years.
During the next 24 additional years of my active service to the men and women of the Armed Services I became mindful that my vocation was to be a religious leader called to care for all uniformed men and women, regardless of their religious affiliation, or lack of same. As a practicing Christian chaplain I learned to be very judicious to distinguish between prayers offered in public government and military command functions from prayers offered for my own Christian faith community.
When I took the commissioning oath as a Navy Chaplain Corps officer I began to realize that I had made a commitment to care for the religious needs of all those committed to my care, not just the Christians. Over time I learned to ensure that my people always had access to appropriate religious support and simultaneously could be protected from inappropriate religious incursions. I learned that the religious needs of each Marine, Sailor, Coast Guardsman, Soldier, and Airman always took precedence over my own needs. Though on occasion, I have offered prayers that would not include the name of Jesus, this by no means implied that I had any less of a commitment to the Lordship of Jesus in my life. It only meant that I was mindful of the diversity of religious traditions of others for whom my prayers were offered.
Within the public square, whether it is in the local city hall or in an Army battalion formation, I have come to believe that the religious needs of the person or persons to whom I offer ministry are of higher importance than my own religious needs. Prior to granting my ecclesiastical endorsement to Episcopal clergy who seek to serve as military chaplains, they must affirm for me that they are so well formed and mature in their Christian beliefs that they are not threatened by those whose beliefs may be different from theirs. This part of their Christian formation includes an understanding that they are not overwhelmed by a need to impose their beliefs upon another person within the military service.
Frequently I hear the supporters of religious diversity calling for tolerance and coexistence. I have concluded that in our country the demands of dynamic pluralism render religious tolerance and coexistence as inadequate. If our country is to continue to be the celebrated nation many of us have come to cherish, I realize that we may want to take our attitudes about religious diversity to the next level. That next level is the embrace of religious respect and intentional inclusion. With an appreciation of American history, there are plenty of reasons to believe that through the exercise of religious respect and inclusion that we will be a stronger and more united country.
I recognize that the tension between religious diversity and Christian exclusivity can at times be difficult. My best hope is that this tension will be marked by a spirit of creativity. I believe that as long as we ensure that there is an honored place at the table of civic life for all persons of all faiths, we will fulfill our responsibility to continue to make our great country a place where all citizens are valued and appreciated.
In the current era of expanding religious diversity and pluralism a striking number of our fellow citizens are voicing their opinion that we are an exclusively Christian nation with little room for other faith traditions. I have often wondered if there is something more to this attitude than a simple quest for religious purity. Scott Bader-Saye partially addresses this question for me in his book Following Jesus in a Culture of FEAR (Brazos Press, Grand Rapids: 2007). Bader-Saye raises for me the question of whether such Christian exclusivity could be built upon a foundation of fear, a fear that other religions will push Christianity from the center of the public square. As I read Bader-Saye’s book I wonder if such ways of thinking are symptoms of the ever-present fears of life in a post 9/11 world. It seems to me that we may be at a societal crossroads at which we are faced with a choice between the embrace of religious diversity or the development of a Constantine-like city-state that is governed by the tenets of the scriptures. Yes, I recognize that life will never be as simple as an either/or decision, but the implications of these decisions are significant for me.
During the early years of my professional career as a Navy chaplain I learned a very important lesson about religious diversity. In 1980 when I was a young lieutenant chaplain I was asked to participate in a retirement ceremony for a Navy captain. Without thinking very much about my constituents at the ceremony, I offered a prayer with a closing something like: "In the name of Christ our Lord." Afterward the newly-minted retiree came up to me and calmly said that though he was thankful that I had participated, he was a practicing Jew who did not appreciate my prayers for him that were concluded in Jesus' name. That day I became aware of how much I had offended one of God's children. Through this experience I learned that the context of ministry for a military chaplain, who in this case happened to be a priest of The Episcopal Church, was radically different than that of the parishes I had served in preceding years.
During the next 24 additional years of my active service to the men and women of the Armed Services I became mindful that my vocation was to be a religious leader called to care for all uniformed men and women, regardless of their religious affiliation, or lack of same. As a practicing Christian chaplain I learned to be very judicious to distinguish between prayers offered in public government and military command functions from prayers offered for my own Christian faith community.
When I took the commissioning oath as a Navy Chaplain Corps officer I began to realize that I had made a commitment to care for the religious needs of all those committed to my care, not just the Christians. Over time I learned to ensure that my people always had access to appropriate religious support and simultaneously could be protected from inappropriate religious incursions. I learned that the religious needs of each Marine, Sailor, Coast Guardsman, Soldier, and Airman always took precedence over my own needs. Though on occasion, I have offered prayers that would not include the name of Jesus, this by no means implied that I had any less of a commitment to the Lordship of Jesus in my life. It only meant that I was mindful of the diversity of religious traditions of others for whom my prayers were offered.
Within the public square, whether it is in the local city hall or in an Army battalion formation, I have come to believe that the religious needs of the person or persons to whom I offer ministry are of higher importance than my own religious needs. Prior to granting my ecclesiastical endorsement to Episcopal clergy who seek to serve as military chaplains, they must affirm for me that they are so well formed and mature in their Christian beliefs that they are not threatened by those whose beliefs may be different from theirs. This part of their Christian formation includes an understanding that they are not overwhelmed by a need to impose their beliefs upon another person within the military service.
Frequently I hear the supporters of religious diversity calling for tolerance and coexistence. I have concluded that in our country the demands of dynamic pluralism render religious tolerance and coexistence as inadequate. If our country is to continue to be the celebrated nation many of us have come to cherish, I realize that we may want to take our attitudes about religious diversity to the next level. That next level is the embrace of religious respect and intentional inclusion. With an appreciation of American history, there are plenty of reasons to believe that through the exercise of religious respect and inclusion that we will be a stronger and more united country.
I recognize that the tension between religious diversity and Christian exclusivity can at times be difficult. My best hope is that this tension will be marked by a spirit of creativity. I believe that as long as we ensure that there is an honored place at the table of civic life for all persons of all faiths, we will fulfill our responsibility to continue to make our great country a place where all citizens are valued and appreciated.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
A sermon by the Rt. Rev. James B. Magness, D.Min.
June 22, 2011 at 12:30 p.m.
Pentagon Chapel – Episcopal Community
The Commemoration of St. Alban
First Martyr of Britain
1 John 3:13-16
Psalm 34:1-8
Matthew 10:34-42
Psalm 34.8
“Taste and see that the LORD is good; *
happy are they who trust in him!”
As a boy growing up in Western North Carolina I would occasionally hear my elders talk about a person or persons who perhaps consumed a bit too much alcohol. About those persons it would be said: “For some people, once they get a taste of it, that’s all it takes. It’ll never let you go, and you’ll never let it go.”
Apparently, when it came to Jesus, that is all it took for Alban, thought to be the first recorded martyr of Britain. Alban lived in Britain during the 2nd and 3rd century Roman persecution in that land. He first appears in the annals of history as a soldier, something Alban has in common with many of you. It is written that Alban the soldier befriended a fleeing Christian priest in his home. After a time of conversation with this priest, we don’t know how long, Alban decided to take the Christian faith as his own and be a follower of Jesus. But alas, Alban was only able to live out his newfound Christian vocation for a short time because before long Roman authorities came knocking at his door in search of the priest. As a way of protecting the priest, Alban dressed himself in the garments of the priest. It is not too difficult to imagine the rest of the story. However, there was a memorable twist to this story. According to the Venerable Bede, ecclesiastical historian, at the trial there was quite a conversation between the judge and Alban:
Judge: “What is your family and your race?”
Alban: “How does my family concern you? If you wish to know the truth about my religion, know that I am a Christian and am ready to do a Christian’s duty. I worship and adore the living and true God, who created all things.”
The end of the story is predictable. Alban was tortured and executed in place of priest.
The story of Alban is a story about cost-counting: what does it cost you today to be a Christ-follower?
In the book of I John, from which we have a reading today, there is found a pointed directive, if you will, a commandment to us: “Believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another (3.23).” In that same book and chapter we also read about what pleases God: “(that we will engage in)… laying down our lives for one another (3.16).”
That’s what it means to be Christian. No more, no less.
Our world is in desperate need of Christians who put love into action and make it real. Like customers looking for a good slice of apple pie or a simple, solid, small car, there are people all around us who are searching desperately for a community of people who actually practice what they preach.
Over 100 years ago, the Danish Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard made the point that Jesus was looking for followers, not admirers — he wanted people who would walk with him, do his work, and serve in his name – even to the point of personal sacrifice!
One of Kierkegaard’s own parables told of a man who was walking down a city street when he saw a big sign in a window that said, “Pants pressed here.” Delighted to see the sign, he went home and gathered up all of his wrinkled laundry. He carried it into the shop and put it on the counter.
“What are you doing?” the shopkeeper demanded.
“I brought my clothes here to be pressed,” said the man, “just like your sign said.”
“Oh, you’ve got it all wrong,” the owner said. “We’re in the business of making signs, and that is a sample of our work. We don’t actually do that here.” We don’t do these things, he was saying. We just talk about them.
And that, said Søren Kierkegaard, is often the problem with people of faith. We affirm to others that we want to show Christ’s love and do Christ’s work. But often when people come to us looking for real love and real Christian action, they don’t see it. “Oh, no, we don’t love people... We just talk about loving people here.”
Being Christian, taking that name upon ourselves and living out our baptismal vows, is to do what Jesus wants us to do and to do it incredibly well. This means helping a sister or brother in need, and loving one another in truth and in action. Being Christian is to be focused upon actions that really show the love of God to people who might be feeling quite unloved and unlovable. Just as business leaders today need to get back in touch with the true value that they offer their customers, Christ-followers need to reconnect with the valuable gifts that we can offer the world around us.
“Taste and see that the LORD is good; *
happy are they who trust in him!” (Psalm 34.8)
For some people, once they get a taste of it, that’s all it takes. It’ll never let you go, and you’ll never let it go. AMEN.
Pentagon Chapel – Episcopal Community
The Commemoration of St. Alban
First Martyr of Britain
1 John 3:13-16
Psalm 34:1-8
Matthew 10:34-42
Psalm 34.8
“Taste and see that the LORD is good; *
happy are they who trust in him!”
As a boy growing up in Western North Carolina I would occasionally hear my elders talk about a person or persons who perhaps consumed a bit too much alcohol. About those persons it would be said: “For some people, once they get a taste of it, that’s all it takes. It’ll never let you go, and you’ll never let it go.”
Apparently, when it came to Jesus, that is all it took for Alban, thought to be the first recorded martyr of Britain. Alban lived in Britain during the 2nd and 3rd century Roman persecution in that land. He first appears in the annals of history as a soldier, something Alban has in common with many of you. It is written that Alban the soldier befriended a fleeing Christian priest in his home. After a time of conversation with this priest, we don’t know how long, Alban decided to take the Christian faith as his own and be a follower of Jesus. But alas, Alban was only able to live out his newfound Christian vocation for a short time because before long Roman authorities came knocking at his door in search of the priest. As a way of protecting the priest, Alban dressed himself in the garments of the priest. It is not too difficult to imagine the rest of the story. However, there was a memorable twist to this story. According to the Venerable Bede, ecclesiastical historian, at the trial there was quite a conversation between the judge and Alban:
Judge: “What is your family and your race?”
Alban: “How does my family concern you? If you wish to know the truth about my religion, know that I am a Christian and am ready to do a Christian’s duty. I worship and adore the living and true God, who created all things.”
The end of the story is predictable. Alban was tortured and executed in place of priest.
The story of Alban is a story about cost-counting: what does it cost you today to be a Christ-follower?
In the book of I John, from which we have a reading today, there is found a pointed directive, if you will, a commandment to us: “Believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another (3.23).” In that same book and chapter we also read about what pleases God: “(that we will engage in)… laying down our lives for one another (3.16).”
That’s what it means to be Christian. No more, no less.
Our world is in desperate need of Christians who put love into action and make it real. Like customers looking for a good slice of apple pie or a simple, solid, small car, there are people all around us who are searching desperately for a community of people who actually practice what they preach.
Over 100 years ago, the Danish Christian philosopher Søren Kierkegaard made the point that Jesus was looking for followers, not admirers — he wanted people who would walk with him, do his work, and serve in his name – even to the point of personal sacrifice!
One of Kierkegaard’s own parables told of a man who was walking down a city street when he saw a big sign in a window that said, “Pants pressed here.” Delighted to see the sign, he went home and gathered up all of his wrinkled laundry. He carried it into the shop and put it on the counter.
“What are you doing?” the shopkeeper demanded.
“I brought my clothes here to be pressed,” said the man, “just like your sign said.”
“Oh, you’ve got it all wrong,” the owner said. “We’re in the business of making signs, and that is a sample of our work. We don’t actually do that here.” We don’t do these things, he was saying. We just talk about them.
And that, said Søren Kierkegaard, is often the problem with people of faith. We affirm to others that we want to show Christ’s love and do Christ’s work. But often when people come to us looking for real love and real Christian action, they don’t see it. “Oh, no, we don’t love people... We just talk about loving people here.”
Being Christian, taking that name upon ourselves and living out our baptismal vows, is to do what Jesus wants us to do and to do it incredibly well. This means helping a sister or brother in need, and loving one another in truth and in action. Being Christian is to be focused upon actions that really show the love of God to people who might be feeling quite unloved and unlovable. Just as business leaders today need to get back in touch with the true value that they offer their customers, Christ-followers need to reconnect with the valuable gifts that we can offer the world around us.
“Taste and see that the LORD is good; *
happy are they who trust in him!” (Psalm 34.8)
For some people, once they get a taste of it, that’s all it takes. It’ll never let you go, and you’ll never let it go. AMEN.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Major Daniel J. Knaup receives the Bronze Star Medal
Major Knaup received the Bronze Star for service from July 10, 2010 to June 1, 2011, “for exceptionally meritorious service while serving as the 643rd Regional Support Group and the Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan Base Chaplain in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. His dedication to duty and selfless service enhanced operational support and ensured mission accomplishment during the unit’s support of combat operations in Afghanistan. His actions are in keeping with the finest traditions of military service and reflect distinct credit upon himself, the Joint Sustainment Command – Afghanistan and the United States Army.”
Major Knaup was also awarded the Non-Article 5 NATO Medal for service with NATO in relation to the ISAF Operation, and the Combat Action Badge for being “personally present and actively engaging or being engaged by the enemy.”
Major Knaup was also awarded the Non-Article 5 NATO Medal for service with NATO in relation to the ISAF Operation, and the Combat Action Badge for being “personally present and actively engaging or being engaged by the enemy.”
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Summer Guest Period Accommodations at Kanuga Conferences in North Carolina
Through the gracious generosity of the Kanuga Conferences Director and Board of Directors the chaplains and families of this episcopacy have been offered no-cost accommodations during the Summer Guest Week periods (http://www.kanuga.org/guestperiods/index.asp). Kanuga Conferences is an Episcopal conference and camp center in the mountains of Western North Carolina just outside of Hendersonville, NC. Currently there are accommodations available for the weeks of August 13-20 and August 20-26. The accommodations will include lodging and meals for families or individuals. Though preference will be given to chaplains who have returned from overseas deployments within the last 12 months, the remainder of the bookings will be on a first-come-first-serve basis. If you need assistance with transportation to and from Kanuga, please let me know so that provisions can be made. I hope that many of you are able to take advantage of this marvelous offering from Kanuga.
Please email mmount@episcopalchurch.org or call the office at 202-459-9998 if you are interested.
Bishop Jay
Please email mmount@episcopalchurch.org or call the office at 202-459-9998 if you are interested.
Bishop Jay
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Pastoral Guidance from the Bishop Suffragan for the Armed Services and Federal Ministries
DADT Implementation Guidance for Clergy of The Episcopal Church Serving as Chaplains Within the Armed Services and Federal Ministries Episcopacy
May 9, 2011
From the perspective of our ministry to the men and women of the Armed Services, I recognize that as the military components of the Department of Defense commence the repeal of existing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, there will be questions that relate to my expectations for the clergy of this episcopacy. I believe that some of these questions will have application to the other federal entities you serve: the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Therefore, I offer the following guidance in hope that it will assist you as you exercise the cure of souls within the context of your understanding of the Christian Gospel and of your ordination vows.
1. It is my expectation that all service members and their entitled family members will be treated with respect and dignity, and will be given excellent pastoral care by the clergy of this episcopacy. In any instance when for some reason a chaplain of this episcopacy cannot provide pastoral care for a service member and/or entitled members of the service member’s family, that chaplain is strongly encouraged to identify another chaplain or other appropriate resource to meet their needs.
2. At this time The Episcopal Church does not endorse or provide liturgical resources for marriage between persons of the same gender. However, should a chaplain of this episcopacy choose to bless the union of same gender persons, that liturgical action will be a matter of conscience for the chaplain. I neither expect our chaplains to bless nor refuse to bless a same gender union. Once again, that is a matter of the chaplain’s conscience. In those cases when out of conscience a chaplain of this episcopacy should choose not to offer such a blessing, I expect that chaplain will exercise reasonable effort to find a suitable alternative for the service member and/or entitled members of the service member’s family.
4. If a chaplain of this episcopacy at any time feels pressured to either perform or refuse to perform personal services for gay or lesbian service members and/or entitled members of the service member’s family, the chaplain should get in touch with me as soon as possible for pastoral advice.
I am committed to support and maintain your acts of conscience as you care for the men and women for whom you are responsible. My daily prayer for you is that the living Lord whom we worship will sustain you as we make this crucial transition to repeal DADT policy. Furthermore, I am assured that the contributions of your excellent spiritual leadership will continue to make a positive difference in the lives of the people you serve.
+ The Rt. Rev. James B. Magness, D.Min.
Bishop Suffragan for the Armed Services and Federal Ministries
May 9, 2011
From the perspective of our ministry to the men and women of the Armed Services, I recognize that as the military components of the Department of Defense commence the repeal of existing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, there will be questions that relate to my expectations for the clergy of this episcopacy. I believe that some of these questions will have application to the other federal entities you serve: the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Therefore, I offer the following guidance in hope that it will assist you as you exercise the cure of souls within the context of your understanding of the Christian Gospel and of your ordination vows.
1. It is my expectation that all service members and their entitled family members will be treated with respect and dignity, and will be given excellent pastoral care by the clergy of this episcopacy. In any instance when for some reason a chaplain of this episcopacy cannot provide pastoral care for a service member and/or entitled members of the service member’s family, that chaplain is strongly encouraged to identify another chaplain or other appropriate resource to meet their needs.
2. At this time The Episcopal Church does not endorse or provide liturgical resources for marriage between persons of the same gender. However, should a chaplain of this episcopacy choose to bless the union of same gender persons, that liturgical action will be a matter of conscience for the chaplain. I neither expect our chaplains to bless nor refuse to bless a same gender union. Once again, that is a matter of the chaplain’s conscience. In those cases when out of conscience a chaplain of this episcopacy should choose not to offer such a blessing, I expect that chaplain will exercise reasonable effort to find a suitable alternative for the service member and/or entitled members of the service member’s family.
4. If a chaplain of this episcopacy at any time feels pressured to either perform or refuse to perform personal services for gay or lesbian service members and/or entitled members of the service member’s family, the chaplain should get in touch with me as soon as possible for pastoral advice.
I am committed to support and maintain your acts of conscience as you care for the men and women for whom you are responsible. My daily prayer for you is that the living Lord whom we worship will sustain you as we make this crucial transition to repeal DADT policy. Furthermore, I am assured that the contributions of your excellent spiritual leadership will continue to make a positive difference in the lives of the people you serve.
+ The Rt. Rev. James B. Magness, D.Min.
Bishop Suffragan for the Armed Services and Federal Ministries
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
A Good Friday Pastoral Meditation
To the Federal Ministries Episcopacy of
The Episcopal Church
April 22, 2011
The Rt. Rev. James B. Magness
As we hear the old story of our Lord’s death upon a cross, we are challenged to enter into the journey with Jesus that will enable us to experience the richness of a background story of contrasts, both in the 1st Century and in the 21st Century.
Good Friday is set in the middle of the Triduum Sacrum between Maundy Thursday and Easter. Good Friday is the anchor that gives substance to our faith. There is a seamless transition from the barrenness and impending sadness of Maundy Thursday to the desolation and depression of Good Friday. According to the late Richard John Neuhaus, Good Friday “…is the drama of love by which our every day is sustained by the events of the first century.”
Good Friday, in earlier times known as God’s Friday or as Good bye Friday, is the short season of a journey onto which we are all bid to go. The faithful journeyers are challenged to say good-bye to their Lord and enter into the mysteries of God’s gift for us in the cross. Yet, our human temptation is to either hang back in the subdued glories of Maundy Thursday or to race ahead to the festival glories of Easter. Tarry, pause and linger with the events and experiences of this second day.
Good Friday may best be understood as a pilgrim’s journey into which we allow ourselves to be drawn. In the journey the pilgrim has all the possibilities of coming face-to-face with the mystery and wonder of our Lord Jesus’ sacrifice.
A primary component of the journey is that of loss. What do Jesus’ death and the story of Good Friday have to do with me? How do these events relate to, if at all, our own struggle with life and death? The old and often forgotten proverb, “You never know what you have until you risk losing it,” is nowhere more true than with Jesus and his church on Good Friday. Not too many days ago my heart was intentionally stopped for nearly an hour during open heart surgery. Of course I was under the effects of general anesthesia and did know when or how this heart stoppage occurred. Yet, during my recovery my thoughts frequently have gone back to the thought that had my heart not been successfully re-started, my life, as I had known it for over 60 years, could have come to an end. On Good Friday we are challenged to know what the implications are for the loss of what we have in life.
In company with the idea of loss, the 1st Century Good Friday story is beset with contrasts: contrasts between those who had political power, money, and influence with those who did not. The contrasts of Good Friday are between those who have religious power and those who have authentic spiritual depth. The religious leaders, chief priests, scribes, and elders, are determined that their religious power will not be undermined. After a not-so-kosher Jewish trial under the cover of darkness that flouted Jewish law, through an execution fit for the most despicable persons of society, Jesus’ life, as he had known it, was brought to a violent end. Yet even then, many began to realize that something was different about this Jesus; that he was not just another revolutionary religious leader. Jesus, speaking out of the spiritual depth that grew out of His deep ties and connections with his heavenly father, merely exclaimed, “‘…Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’”
Jesus bears witness to a different measure of a person’s life. Jesus measures greatness not by power or influence, but by service and sacrifice. Jesus, you will remember, is the one who identified with the weakness of a child and with a poor woman who gives him a cold cup of water. These people are not, in our way of thinking powerful. As a matter of fact, they are vulnerable.
So, in the end who will win: the rich or the poor? the powerful or weak? the Christian, Jew, Muslim or Hindu? The Good Friday message calls the pilgrim on a journey to start with a new answer to the question. None of these actually can win. The striking irony of Good Friday is that through God’s willingness to sacrifice his Son for us, God’s love has won. Today LOVE WINS!
The Episcopal Church
April 22, 2011
The Rt. Rev. James B. Magness
As we hear the old story of our Lord’s death upon a cross, we are challenged to enter into the journey with Jesus that will enable us to experience the richness of a background story of contrasts, both in the 1st Century and in the 21st Century.
Good Friday is set in the middle of the Triduum Sacrum between Maundy Thursday and Easter. Good Friday is the anchor that gives substance to our faith. There is a seamless transition from the barrenness and impending sadness of Maundy Thursday to the desolation and depression of Good Friday. According to the late Richard John Neuhaus, Good Friday “…is the drama of love by which our every day is sustained by the events of the first century.”
Good Friday, in earlier times known as God’s Friday or as Good bye Friday, is the short season of a journey onto which we are all bid to go. The faithful journeyers are challenged to say good-bye to their Lord and enter into the mysteries of God’s gift for us in the cross. Yet, our human temptation is to either hang back in the subdued glories of Maundy Thursday or to race ahead to the festival glories of Easter. Tarry, pause and linger with the events and experiences of this second day.
Good Friday may best be understood as a pilgrim’s journey into which we allow ourselves to be drawn. In the journey the pilgrim has all the possibilities of coming face-to-face with the mystery and wonder of our Lord Jesus’ sacrifice.
A primary component of the journey is that of loss. What do Jesus’ death and the story of Good Friday have to do with me? How do these events relate to, if at all, our own struggle with life and death? The old and often forgotten proverb, “You never know what you have until you risk losing it,” is nowhere more true than with Jesus and his church on Good Friday. Not too many days ago my heart was intentionally stopped for nearly an hour during open heart surgery. Of course I was under the effects of general anesthesia and did know when or how this heart stoppage occurred. Yet, during my recovery my thoughts frequently have gone back to the thought that had my heart not been successfully re-started, my life, as I had known it for over 60 years, could have come to an end. On Good Friday we are challenged to know what the implications are for the loss of what we have in life.
In company with the idea of loss, the 1st Century Good Friday story is beset with contrasts: contrasts between those who had political power, money, and influence with those who did not. The contrasts of Good Friday are between those who have religious power and those who have authentic spiritual depth. The religious leaders, chief priests, scribes, and elders, are determined that their religious power will not be undermined. After a not-so-kosher Jewish trial under the cover of darkness that flouted Jewish law, through an execution fit for the most despicable persons of society, Jesus’ life, as he had known it, was brought to a violent end. Yet even then, many began to realize that something was different about this Jesus; that he was not just another revolutionary religious leader. Jesus, speaking out of the spiritual depth that grew out of His deep ties and connections with his heavenly father, merely exclaimed, “‘…Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’”
Jesus bears witness to a different measure of a person’s life. Jesus measures greatness not by power or influence, but by service and sacrifice. Jesus, you will remember, is the one who identified with the weakness of a child and with a poor woman who gives him a cold cup of water. These people are not, in our way of thinking powerful. As a matter of fact, they are vulnerable.
So, in the end who will win: the rich or the poor? the powerful or weak? the Christian, Jew, Muslim or Hindu? The Good Friday message calls the pilgrim on a journey to start with a new answer to the question. None of these actually can win. The striking irony of Good Friday is that through God’s willingness to sacrifice his Son for us, God’s love has won. Today LOVE WINS!
Friday, April 15, 2011
DEADLINE EXTENDED FOR CHAPLAINS CONFERENCE REGISTRATION
If you haven't yet registered for the Chaplains' Conference May 2-6 at the Roslyn Center in Richmond VA, there is one more week to do so. Please visit our webpage at www.episcopalchurch.org/federalministries or go to https://www.signup4.net/Public/ap.aspx?EID=FEDE26E. Please call the office if you have any questions or need assistance.
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Military Family Appreciation Week: Serving Those Who Stand And Wait
Posted: 04/13/11 06:50 PM ET
The English poet, John Milton, in a poem entitled, "On His Blindness," says, "They also serve who only stand and wait." It is no stretch to think of the families of military service personnel standing, waiting, and serving. The service of military family members, their sacrifices and service on behalf of the nation however, is seldom seen and little acknowledged.
Having served a full military career as a U.S. Navy Chaplain, I have seen, served and cared for those who stand and wait for loved ones. I have seen spouses, children, parents, grand-parents, siblings and other family members standing on cold piers in the early morning hours to bid farewell to Sailors and Marines departing for a protracted deployment, and my own family has been among those waving teary-eyed goodbyes as our ship left port. The families of Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Coast Guardsmen have all stood and waited while their service members did the hard work of defending the nation and protecting the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The stress and strain of the current operational tempo of our military service members has exacted a high cost from our military families. Multiple deployments into harm's way; regular cycles of changes in duty stations; and lack of outside employment opportunities have pushed military families to, and in some instances beyond, the breaking point.
The United States Army has created specific programs to deal with these stresses. Family Life Chaplains are given two years of study and 500 hours of counseling with families to train and equip them to help families deal constructively with the pressures of today's military life. Parenting skills, marriage enrichment and healthy family lifestyles are just some of the areas of emphasis provided under a $160 million program entitled, "Strong Bonds Program" sponsored by the Army Chief of Chaplains.
A current active duty military chaplain told me in a recent conversation, "There is nothing mysterious about caring for military families. All you have to do is love them." Another chaplain said, "Pastoral Care is not rocket science, but it is intentional." Military families are well cared for by military chaplains working side-by-side with health care professionals, social service experts, command sponsored Family Readiness Support Assistants and others.
The recently announced White House initiative, "Joining Forces," to honor military families and to provide much needed support in the areas of education, health, employment and business is a welcome expression of caring for military families and is being well received by them.
We would all do well to remember Milton's words as we think of our military families, "They also serve who only stand and wait."
This story is part of Military Families Week, an effort by HuffPost and AOL to put a spotlight on issues affecting America's families who serve. Find more at jobs.aol.com/militaryfamilies and aol.com.
The English poet, John Milton, in a poem entitled, "On His Blindness," says, "They also serve who only stand and wait." It is no stretch to think of the families of military service personnel standing, waiting, and serving. The service of military family members, their sacrifices and service on behalf of the nation however, is seldom seen and little acknowledged.
Having served a full military career as a U.S. Navy Chaplain, I have seen, served and cared for those who stand and wait for loved ones. I have seen spouses, children, parents, grand-parents, siblings and other family members standing on cold piers in the early morning hours to bid farewell to Sailors and Marines departing for a protracted deployment, and my own family has been among those waving teary-eyed goodbyes as our ship left port. The families of Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, Airmen and Coast Guardsmen have all stood and waited while their service members did the hard work of defending the nation and protecting the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The stress and strain of the current operational tempo of our military service members has exacted a high cost from our military families. Multiple deployments into harm's way; regular cycles of changes in duty stations; and lack of outside employment opportunities have pushed military families to, and in some instances beyond, the breaking point.
The United States Army has created specific programs to deal with these stresses. Family Life Chaplains are given two years of study and 500 hours of counseling with families to train and equip them to help families deal constructively with the pressures of today's military life. Parenting skills, marriage enrichment and healthy family lifestyles are just some of the areas of emphasis provided under a $160 million program entitled, "Strong Bonds Program" sponsored by the Army Chief of Chaplains.
A current active duty military chaplain told me in a recent conversation, "There is nothing mysterious about caring for military families. All you have to do is love them." Another chaplain said, "Pastoral Care is not rocket science, but it is intentional." Military families are well cared for by military chaplains working side-by-side with health care professionals, social service experts, command sponsored Family Readiness Support Assistants and others.
The recently announced White House initiative, "Joining Forces," to honor military families and to provide much needed support in the areas of education, health, employment and business is a welcome expression of caring for military families and is being well received by them.
We would all do well to remember Milton's words as we think of our military families, "They also serve who only stand and wait."
This story is part of Military Families Week, an effort by HuffPost and AOL to put a spotlight on issues affecting America's families who serve. Find more at jobs.aol.com/militaryfamilies and aol.com.
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