Author: Gayle Catinella

I have been thinking a lot about safety. We just had a big meeting to examine all aspects of safety in our church. The speaker, who was great, said that we cannot hide behind thinking that nothing bad would ever happen. We have all seen fires and natural disasters and tragic loss of life happen, in churches and elsewhere. He said we cannot hide behind thinking that God will protect us.  And he helped us think about where we can do better, which was what we wanted. We want to do everything we can to be prepared, and live in hope that we will never need to use any of it.

I believe that God is active in our lives, constantly creating with us the Kingdom of God now. I believe that God has the power to do anything. And that God could avert disaster. But I also know that God gave me freedom, and in exchange for that, I have to live with the consequences of sin in the world, mine and everyone else’s. I know that God grieves our sin and works unrelentingly to help us be free of it as much as we possibly can.

God gives us guidelines to live by. God gives us prophets and martyrs. God gave us Jesus to show with stunning clarity how to incorporate those rules in a way that lives them from the heart and not the head. And now God gives us each other, a church filled with courageous and faithful people working to be holy. God gives us what we need to become all that God created us to be.

So it isn’t that God will not spare us, that God will not take an active role. God is calling us constantly to goodness. And it isn’t that God wants bad things to happen. God grieves every tragedy in ways that only unconditional love can grieve.  God is always with us and always loving us.

So what is safety? I think the plans we are putting into place make us prepared and prudent, and are a good thing. For me, safety is people, being surrounded by community. It is being loved. It is spending time with people I trust and who value me in return. There is no safety in isolation, no safety in hiding away. And there is no safety in physical power. There will always be a stronger person, a more powerful weapon. There is safety in love and trust and care. There is safety in building a better world for all people. And so even as I work on the list of how we can do better, I will feed people, and talk to people, and believe in the innate goodness of all people. That is our ultimate safety in my experience.

Yesterday I stalked out of the church in frustration. I was working on a computer thing, and I am not good at that. I was looking for trouble when a car came flying down the exit ramp, circled the parking lot and parked abruptly. Coming into the parking lot down the exit lane makes me nuts—so dangerous! So, I was going to give this driver a piece of my mind, and tell her students couldn’t park in the lot. I cooled off fast when I saw she was a social worker I know, who works with kids, who is just great, and who made a mistake. We ended up laughing.

And my need to blame, someone for something, evaporated. Blaming is a lot harder in Christian community. When you look someone in the eye, see their goodness, hear their story, so much of the anger and frustration disappears, and compassion fills the gap.

But it is easy to blame God.  You can’t see God. God does not defend Godself. God is an easy target. And there is a lot of potential material for daily blaming. School shootings, unjust detention, every 5 minutes in Washington, natural disasters—take your pick. God certainly has a lot of explaining to do. I am often singing the lyrics to “Calling All Angels” by Train.  I need a sign to let me know You’re here…

Except that none of those things are God’s fault much less God’s desire. God grieves about tragedy more deeply than we could ever imagine. Most of the failings of our world are failings of relationship-and God is always offering that. Each of the people involved in hate and violence, someone, me, someone should have loved them. Love casts out hate and fear.

What we don’t want to think about too heavily is our own freedom. We want God to take care of things, but we do not want to give up the freedom in which we have been created. We do not want to be Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest post-lobotomy. If we accept freedom then we accept responsibility, and we each carry our own responsibility for making this world holy. We are all called to this every day.

The reality is that this seemingly impossible work is just easier when we do it together. We need an ever deepening connection to God in prayer, and an ever strengthened connection to each other. I can’t do it by myself. I need you. I am asking you to help me, to stand with me, to encourage me, to occasionally push me along. I will lovingly offer you the same support. And God will be greatly pleased and bless us. Hard work. But the sweetest possible reality in a harsh and sinful world.

When I contemplate my time in the Holy Land, there were many things that comforted me.  Seeing places that I only had heard of, the feeling of being somewhere that significant things happened, millennia of history to learn from—there was a lot that was good.

But this really got to me. One night at dinner in our guesthouse in Jerusalem, one of the staff members asked us to buy a raffle ticket. They were raising money for the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. And this is the story of why.

The hospital, run by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, is the only one in Gaza. They have cancer detection technology there. I remember that they told us 18,000 people are diagnosed every year and that the top three cancers are breast, lung and colon. I might be wrong on the number of cases, but it seemed big. So you get a cancer diagnosis and what do you do?

Well, if you are in Gaza, you can’t leave without a permit. And only 38% of the people who apply to go to the hospital in Jerusalem or Amman, Jordan, get the permits. The other 62%…they just die. I thought of my mother. How afraid we all were when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But she had options, and she was cured. What would it be like to find out you could not get any treatment?

So, the hospital is teaming up with the MD Anderson Hospital in Houston. They have the money to purchase equipment for cancer treatment. But they need money for all of the details surrounding that. I want to raise money for doctors to come to the US and get trained in the use of the treatment equipment. I can’t change the political situation in Gaza, but I can help someone else’s mother get the treatment she needs to survive cancer.

So I am asking for anyone so moved to send a check to St John’s with cancer treatment in the memo.  I will collect money until Lent (Feb 14). The National Cathedral is going to be the conduit for any money collected. If you could help, it would be a blessing.  Thank you.

I like groups of 3—very Trinitarian. So we have 3 resolutions: practice offering yourself in love, commit to adult formation learning more about God and your faith, and the final one, hopefully the easiest, come to church.

We need you here. The Body of Christ is not complete without you.

I realize it is a new world. I realize life is complicated. I realize there are other commitments and obligations that vie for your time. I realize sometimes you just need a day to sleep in. I realize that the world is crazy and it seems that we have lost touch with God. Me too.

We need you here. The Body of Christ is not complete without you.

I could mention that many people that work so hard to make church lovely and meaningful. We work all week to prepare music and readings, practice and make sure we have help, print bulletins. We want everyone who comes to feel welcome and have an easy time participating and understanding. I think we do a good job, and I want to thank the ushers, the altar guild, the chalice bearers, the choir, the acolytes, the staff, people who clean and decorate, the properties committee—everyone who offers themselves to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

We need you here. The Body of Christ is not complete without you.

I could also mention that we keep statistics measuring Average Sunday Attendance, which we report to the diocese and national church every year. Our growth and health is measured this way and makes a difference in funding and support. Our church attendance needs to keep growing. People pay attention.

We need you here. The Body of Christ is not complete without you.

But all of these things aside, we need to be a part of a worshiping community to be a whole, healthy, holy person. We need each other. We need to worship. Need it, deeply. We are drawn to God like a magnet, and we know God best when we are together doing God’s work, living into our baptismal vows, celebrating our blessings and praying for our needs, getting motivated with carry the love of Jesus into the world.

We need you here. The Body of Christ is not complete without you.

Please make a commitment of regular attendance to church on Sunday in 2018.

I like lists. So there will be a short list of resolutions. And the second one is adult education. I would like the parish adults to be more active and intentional about learning more about God and the church. Studies show that churches whose adults care about growing in their faith are more successful, more likely to grow. We need to bump up our efforts.

And luckily I have a plan. The diocese has offered us a free year trial of an online adult education program. This will supplement the wonderful work that Rev. David Hill does on Sunday morning, and maybe even overlap!

In order to help us make the best use of this, the diocese has also given us money to hire The Rev. Joshua Caler to help us kick this off. Many of you met Rev. Caler when he took the services when I was in the Holy Land. He is going to study the program, introduce it to the parish, and hopefully present to us an online study option for Lent. Expect him to pick your brains about what you need and the best way to help you to learn.

Our hearts are filled with a deep desire for God. We are pulled toward God like a magnet. God wants us to know God more, to pursue God. We do that through prayer, reading the Bible, knowing the saints and the history of the church, and teasing out theological concepts. Follow your impulse to God, and we will find ways to know more together.

Happy New Year everyone! This is the time of year to look ahead and try to do better, to assess and plan. So I will be offering the church 3 resolutions to ponder, 3 ways to do a little better in 2018. St. John’s is doing great, but God is always moving us to more. So the first resolution is: to do better at offering ourselves as a living sacrifice. Let’s start big and bold!!

I spent most of last week with my family. My boys are always competing with each other, and wanting to hear that they are special. And of course they are, each with their own gifts and goodness. It was the grandchildren that really captivated my attention though. They are little- 3, 2, and 1. And you can just see them figuring out how to navigate the world, experimenting with relationships and behavior to learn how they want to be.

Life for my grandkids is a marvelous science project. They tried out sharing, dancing, putting toys down the sink. They continually looked back at their parents to see the reaction to whatever it was they were trying out. Sometimes they needed affirmation, and sometimes not. Learning to share, take turns, say sorry—it is hard work! Constant hugs and high fives were necessary to reinforce good behavior. We adults need to make civil and loving behavior worth it, both by demonstrating it and by valuing it.

Church is in many ways the same. We come to church trying out how to be our best selves, how to be good, how God might want us to be. And we don’t expect that there might be conflict, that people might not behave or cooperate the way we want them to, that we might be frustrated. Thankfully that doesn’t happen all the time. But it does happen. Lesson #1 is that everyone, everyone has challenges and hard times, even when it seems like it is only me who struggles.

Because there is so much happening, and because we all care so much about God and this church, disagreement and competing priorities are inevitable. So how do we respond to that? Most of the time, great. We respond in love, we are kind, we forgive. But sometimes it isn’t that easy. And that is when we have to offer ourselves. That is when we have to give up being right or getting our way. That is when we have to put aside our needs and serve someone else. That is when we offer love, kindness, compassion and/or understanding.

We have an opportunity to use church as a grand experiment, and then take the learnings from that into the world. If we can get it right at church, the compassion and kindness and sacrifice, then we can practice it in our lives during the week. But we have to be intentional. We have to believe it is possible. And we have to look for situations in which we feel frustrated and can offer ourselves into that moment as an offering of love. Not by brute force, but by the simple acknowledgement that we will not always get our way, and that is just fine.

So, for our first new year’s resolution, I propose that we get better at loving one another. It seems the best place to begin.

I am in that between space. I have one foot in Israel. I am getting posts from our pilgrim group. I am walking by the icons and art that I bought there to remind me of the trip. I still have vivid images of sights and sounds. A piece of my heart is there. And frankly, I am still a little exhausted.

And yet here I am, another tremendous Christmas celebration in the books, my grandson playing trains in my family room, the remains of the roast a soup cooking on the stove. My house is clean, and I am getting ready to go to Chicago and Indy to see the rest of my family. Life keeps hurdling forward at breakneck speed, and I want to be present to all of it.

How do I stay connected to the Holy Land? How do I pray? How do I hold on to the mystery and awe, the heartbreak and the urgency? Because this was not another continuing ed workshop that got me through a few sermons and thoughts of some new programming. This was a past and a present struggling for a future. Part of it my past, who I am and what I believe. Jerusalem is now mine, along with millions of others.

I don’t know the answer. Life doesn’t stop. So a new question is, how will I be changed and what will that mean in my life? That seems a worthy thing to pray about for now.

I am back from my pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I wanted to blog with you while I was gone, kind of an accompaniment to the trip. But truly every time I tried to write something I had technical difficulties, which led me to believe that maybe God was saying to slow down and pay attention, to just be. I will be unpacking the events and emotions of this trip for a long time to come. Here is my first reflection.

I spent some time last night when I got home, and again this morning, unpacking stuff. I confess I bought a lot of stuff.  But here is how it went, we would get off the massive tour bus to go somewhere, and our guide, Iyad, would say, here are some of my cousins, they have good things at good prices, it would be great if you would help them. We all knew by the end that most of the people who were there certainly knew Iyad, but probably weren’t related.

But at the end, just as we were getting ready to get off the bus, after he had told us what to do and where to go, the time we were supposed to be back, or whatever was important, he would add almost under his breath, help them if you can, it might be all they have for their supper tonight.

It was the off season (the weather was great, cool and sunny), and there were not many tourists around (everything was cheaper). For us that meant no lines, quick service, great prices, and no heat exhaustion. For the venders, many of whom handcrafted their items, many of whom lived in isolated places, that meant there were fewer people to sell to, less chance of making enough money to feed their families.

So we bought things. My family and friends will have a good Christmas this year. We bought because the items were beautiful and represented the Holy Land. We bought because we imagined having to return home to hungry children. We bought knowing that was our role, to stimulate the economy for people in need. I wonder in this holiday season, when tourists are at home and travelers are few, what will happen to Iyad’s cousins and their families. Because in my Christian life, they are my cousins too.  It is just one of the many things I will be praying about this Christmas season.

I think I am re-entering normal life with some dignity after my pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  My laundry is done, my bills are sent, my kitchen is cleaned. I am reasonably ready for Christmas, with most details taken care of. And while I am not over jet lag, I don’t think it is dangerous for me to be behind the wheel of a car.

I wrote my Christmas morning sermon this morning. Not a bad effort, filled with a good mix of archeology and hope and personal responsibility. You know, it’s Christmas. You want to be peaceful and hopeful and celebratory. So I tried to write something to that effect.

But I am haunted by something that I chose not to mention. Bethlehem. The scene of the birth of our Savior, of the shepherds in the field and away in the manger is surrounded by a wall. It is a wall built for political reasons, and keeps the people of that town essentially in prison. There is a house that is surrounded on 3 sides by the wall. To enter or leave the city you have to pass through a checkpoint, and armed soldiers determine if you go or not.

You see, the thing I am not ready to preach about yet is occupation. There are people in Israel who are not free. And if anything helped me to understand better the life of Jesus and the disciples, it was this experience of occupation, listening to the voices of those who are not free but long for freedom, who are not treated fairly but long for justice.

I do not live that way. I am reasonably free. I can mostly say what I want. I can come and go without restraint in my own country. But Jesus could not. And neither can the people of Bethlehem. I am not yet sure what to do with that, how I will preach it, or what will come of my efforts. But I had to say it, to acknowledge the fact. Bethlehem is surrounded by a wall, and this reality changed me.

I have been wondering lately if hope is a privileged emotion.  I came to that question through an interracial dialogue with our campus ministry students. The question which was to wrap up a rich and honest session of sharing was “where do you find hope”? The white students all had answers, perky hopefulness. The African American students were silent.

Hope is a spiritual discipline that is rooted in action. So I stand with the prophet Isaiah, who we hear in the first reading today—“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains will quake at your presence!” I want to engage that mighty God who “works for those who wait for him.” I want God to fix our broken world.

And yet I know that the possibility of hope for all people comes in my “staying awake”, as Jesus provokes us in the Gospel of Mark. I have to be present to opportunities for justice, for actions that make hope possible for all. Hope is not just for Christians, just for white people, just for me. And I can’t be careless or cavalier about it. I have to be responsible for the hope I can generate.

And…I can’t function without hope. I need it in order to get up every morning. So I am not willing to let it go. Instead, I pray to be worthy of it, and to do the work for hope that God gives me to do.