Monthly Archives: May 2021

Over the last fifteen months the American people have been masked, muffled, silenced, frightened, bullied, manipulated, and cancelled. We have died a thousand deaths, deaths to freedom, to faith, to family, to children, to the aged, to human dignity and the sanctity of life. We have been publicly shamed and privately imprisoned. We have been ordered to stop singing, stop speaking, stop shaking hands. We have watched loved ones die alone. We have been ordered to abandon funeral gatherings to mourn together and comfort one another. We have been banned from church and temple. We have been prodded and pushed and pricked, catalogued and analyzed and researched. We have been turned into numbers for data, both real and unreal, both true and false. We have been lied to by leaders we trust and our trust is broken along with our hearts. We have been used, and the users should be ashamed.

We have not fought and died in a war, as heroes did in Europe and Guam, but we have stood our ground. We have survived one of the greatest attacks on Western Civilization in history. We have watched our cities burn and our businesses vandalized. We have been denied police protection. We have been called names unrepeatable in civilized society, judged irredeemable and deplorable. We have been derided and defamed by Machiavellian might, by elites, corporations, tech, media, academia, and the deep state. We are American heroes.

We have done all this, survived all this, in the name of freedom, freedom we can still see in the distance, a light flickering but not put out, and we pray that we are nearing the end of the darkness that has fallen over our land of the free. We are American patriots.

Power has been usurped by elites in the name of public health and safety, as a virulent virus traveled the face of the Earth, seeking to devour. Mandates grew and multiplied, to feed a frenzied and fraudulent election, to skew and deceive, to win at all costs the Presidency. Hatred fueled hatred, dividing Americans into tribes at war with one another. The hatred rose like a river of hot lava against our sitting President, Donald Trump. The haters schemed, by any means, to remove this American hero, one who rarely slept and gave himself to his beloved American people, one who brokered Middle East peace, high employment for all, border protection, law and order, oil independence, protection guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights – protection of our freedoms, free speech, freedom to worship as we choose. He made America safe and strong, unified not divided, proud of our light on the hill and our history of heroes like him.

And so, this weekend we remember the members of our nation who protected freedom with their lives. We see the flags flying, red-white-blue, alongside the white crosses in a grassy field of dreams against a windblown blueness that only a loving God could provide in this time of sorrow and joy.

We are reminded that sorrow and joy go together, as do suffering and love. They are intertwined, for they tell the truth about the human condition, the common experience of mankind – life and death and life again. The flag reminds us of our country and all that freedom means. The white cross reminds us that the hand of God is upon us and we need not be afraid. The Son of God, the humble preacher from Nazareth, who suffered and died, rose to life, for us. These fallen heroes who protected us, kept our country and way of life safe and sacred, today sing praises to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, before his throne, before the glassy sea, alongside the River of Life. They glance to Earth and see us mourn. They see our love. They say, no more tears. We are saved by the white cross washed by the blood of the Lamb of God. We are singing, Holy Holy Holy, Lord God of Hosts!

We remember them in song and prayer and ceremony. We celebrate the Holy Trinity as we are lifted into love.

We look around us for more heroes born into our own time, born into this time of challenge. We look for heroes to protect our nation – and the world – from this tyranny. We look to those who will speak, who refuse to be silenced, who stand to be counted, not cancelled. We look to those who revere our history, protect our heroes of the past as well as the present, and learn from our mistakes to make a more just future.

We attended St. Joseph’s Chapel in Berkeley this morning for the first time in fifteen months. It was good to be home again. It was good to sing with others, to be part of a joyous corporate worship. The singing rose to the vault and soared out the high clerestory windows. We thanked God that we were able to join together once again. We thanked God for his three persons, the Holy Trinity, and his care for us, his great love. For we know our freedom comes from him.

And we thanked God for our nation and those who died for her, those who fought for her. My father was a Chaplain in the Navy in the South Pacific in World War II. He led men in prayer over caskets draped in the stars and stripes. He wouldn’t talk of those years, although he was one of the survivors. Instead he led others to Christ, protecting them from the darkness, until the spirit of the age of doubt engulfed him, darkened his vision. But I am proud of his service, both to our nation and our Church. He made a difference on board the U.S.S. Phoenix. He made a difference in the pulpit, in Bible study, in youth groups, in camps. He made a difference.

May we never forget to remember, to free our world with Christ, to celebrate the Holy Trinity in the fields of grass, marked by the white crosses and American flags. May our memories carry the past into the present on this Memorial Day. May God bless America.

I have lived beyond my three score and ten years on Earth and yet I found myself desiring to refresh my education with an online course offered free from Hillsdale College: “The Great American Story: Land of Hope.” I have, of course, read numerous books over the years chronicling the American story and foundations, but it was probably in the 1960’s that I last took a class in American History. With all the talk today of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Founding Fathers, and freedom itself, this online course caught my eye. I wondered if I was up to it.

And I have to say, I am thoroughly enjoying it.

I also was drawn to this course because it is taught by Wilfred McClay, using his text. I had read the text and mentioned it in these pages (Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story; Encounter Books, 2019). Highly readable, the text reads like a story, the story of our nation, told honestly, the good and the bad, and why, when, who, and where. There was no apology or grievance, but a thoughtful discussion of what happened to create this great American experiment in democracy.

The book didn’t urge me to riot, or vandalize, or topple statues. It didn’t portray victims but heroes of every skin color. It made me hopeful. It made me proud.

And it sounded a few alarms for today: can we hold onto our great American story? Is the American experiment in democracy nearing its end?

In addition, I had a personal association with the soft-spoken Dr. McClay who has taught in the past at our Berkeley seminary, St. Joseph of Arimathea Theological College. His son at the time was a Cal student in Classics and a member of our chapel parish. When it came last spring 2020 to consider endorsements for the jacket of my novel, Angel Mountain (Wipf and Stock, 2020), which considered the importance of history, our violent cancel culture, and threats to free speech, he was kind enough to endorse it:

“In Angel Mountain, Christine Sunderland has created a gripping and theologically rich novel, in which four remarkable people make their way through a shifting cultural landscape ringed with apocalyptic fire, revolutionary politics, and end-times expectancy.”

So when I saw that Dr. McClay was giving the twenty-five, twenty-minute lectures, I signed up. The course is part of a massive online effort by Hillsdale to educate the American people (yes, that’s you and I). The most recent course is on Dante. I look forward to the twenty minutes, the simple quiz, the supplementary materials provided, and the entertaining and colorful images adding drama and interest to the presentation. One doesn’t have to purchase the book (or anything else). You merely sign up and learn at your own pace.

And they say that it’s good to keep your brain active as you move into the last decades of life.  So I am trying!

I’m one-third through the lectures, in the 1830’s, and what has struck me is the drama and passion of our heritage, the vigorous debates, the efforts to form this more perfect union of disparate colonies founded for varied reasons. The effort and courage required to break off from Britain was immense: to fight this war of revolution and to forge a document to protect the fragile future, one that would prevent tyranny and ensure the voice of the people. (Just like today.) Both George Washington and Alexander de Tocqueville (Democracy in America) called it an experiment, for such a republic had never been formed before. The Founders looked to the Classical world for models, looking to the past in order to move into the future.

I thought how our current American troubles were placed in perspective. For today we need these same kind of leaders, leaders who lead, with passion and sacrifice, as did Washington, Jefferson, and many others. We have the same issues at stake – our freedoms threatened by tyranny once again, the experiment in democracy seemingly breathing its last. The control of our major institutions – government, economy, and media – by a single party should raise concern among all of us. Balance of power, a key element of the American experiment and forged into the Constitution, is clearly under siege.

I particularly appreciated the chapter on Andrew Jackson, a hero in the War of 1812, elected in spite of his rougher qualities. His victory against the British at New Orleans helped him gain the Presidency in 1824. He championed the average citizen, regardless of education and class, saying they have practical wisdom and should be allowed to vote, hence the term “Jacksonian democracy.” Many compared Donald Trump to Jackson, and I can see why. One could also compare Dwight Eisenhower to Jackson, since the general was elected after his leadership in World War II. And did you know that “The Star Spangled Banner” was written in the War of 1812, as Francis Scott Keys glimpsed from his ship the flag of victory raised over Fort McHenry, Maryland, after the fort was bombarded by the British? (seen in the painting above)

Our country is comparatively young, and yet we can see this river of reason and rights running from the first colonies into our present troubled sea. We reason that we have our rights listed clearly in our founding documents. We seek the truth. We seek freedom to speak, to assemble, to worship. We seek to be counted when we cast our votes, rooting out all fraud.

There is no other country in the world like America. She is the last great hope of civilized and civil civilization. 

And so today is Whitsunday or Pentecost, the great celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in Jerusalem. The disciples were troubled too, their Lord having ascended to Heaven. But on this day the fire of the Holy Spirit, like a rushing wind, came upon them, giving them the ability to speak in many languages, to witness to the many ethnicities in Jerusalem at that time, to tell of the marvelous works of God in Christ, the salvation of mankind.

This Holy Spirit has never left us. This third person of God continues to breathe upon us, through sacraments, prayer, and scripture. He leads us where we must go, gives us the words we must say, lifts us up when we fall. He listens to our complaints, to our fears, in our darkest moments. He is the comforter, the strengthener. He guided the Founding Fathers in the creation of this more perfect union, establishing a new country, unique in the history of Man. He guides us today, as we seek to hold on to the good in our history and learn from the bad, celebrate the successes and mourn the mistakes.

Come, Holy Spirit, breathe upon America, re-awaken her spirit of freedom, her spirit of hope. Rekindle the spark that makes her a shining light upon the hill, a beacon to the world.

 

The mystery of life is the mystery of death and life again. We cannot live a life of meaning without facing our own death. Someone once said that our death begins with our birth, or one could say more accurately, with our conception. We grow but we also decline, and all of time is held in our palm, or perhaps God’s palm. Can we hold on to time? For how long?

It is a curious thing, this mystery of time, for time only matters if it is our own, if we live it, in it, through it. As I have journeyed in this world of time (toward my own death and new life) I have increasingly perceived through the veil of life, the thin film enshrouding us, the thin linen hiding, and perhaps protecting, the glories of Heaven. I perceive and I pierce the shroud through prayer, through the Eucharist, through love. And on the other side is glory, seen through a veil, through a dark glass, as St. Paul says.

Most of us, even agnostics and atheists, sense there is more to our own lives than the bodies that house our selves, the flesh incarnating our spirits. Unbelievers say that imagination or art or thought itself is something housed, a separate entity from the body. Beauty, truth, music, love, all reflect the spiritual side of Man. We recognize personality, that no two individuals are alike, that even twins are different in their own lives housed by flesh. Believers marvel at this extravagant and exquisite mystery, this infinite complexity of genes and cells and organisms, an ongoing festival of life borne by birth into the future, until the Second Coming of Christ and the end of time.

As a grateful Christian, I look forward to my new life, a better and more perfect life, the life meant for each one of us to live. Death is only for the body, a rebirth, an ascension. And in Heaven, in the New Jerusalem, we will be given new bodies, as promised.

I thought of these things as I visited our virtual Eucharists this morning – in Illinois, Arizona, and California. I celebrated the Ascension of Christ, with him, ascending into the light of Heaven. The last forty days I have walked with him on Earth, having risen with him on Easter morning, having left behind Joseph of Arimathea’s empty tomb, the linen cloths folded neatly. We were crucified that Friday, Christ and his creation, and the veil of the temple tore in two, the curtain lifting between Man and God. Since that historic day, 2,021 years ago, our chancels and altars are open to the faithful, the partition gone, the Holy of Holies no longer hidden, the sacrament housed in a tabernacle on an altar aflame with candles and bedecked with roses. Since that day we are able to see better, to pierce the veil between Heaven and Earth.

In Western Christianity, we take this openness, this vision, for granted. The Eastern Orthodox have retained the partition, as a wall of gleaming icons. I recall visiting the Basilica of St. Mark in Venice, today Roman Catholic, but retaining the Eastern iconostasis, the wall of icons. We could not see the action of the Mass, for the chancel was walled off from the congregation. We peered through a central open doorway to mysterious movement beyond. We could see and hear choirs high above on either side, not hidden by the iconostasis. The liturgy seemed to separate us from God, as though we were observers, tourists (which we were), visiting a hidden, private Holy One. It was more of a performance, and indeed, the music soared through the five gilded vaults, ethereal light glancing off the mosaic-tiled walls like fluttering angel wings.

There are as many ways of worship, I suppose, as there are believers, another wonder-full miraculous mystery. And so we gather together with those of similar aesthetic sense and, in some cases, similar theology. We gather to sing praises and partake of the body and blood of the Crucified One, today resurrected and ascended, each one accepting the invitation to the wedding feast, wearing our best garments, honoring Host and Creator. As members of the Church, his body, we are also his bride, and this is our wedding feast too. We are glad to be invited and we are happy to sit anywhere at his table and glimpse any or all of his glory. And so the Body of Christ over all Earth and possibly beyond is made up of unique individuals, yet who are claim membership in the Family of God.

Individuals being part of a group is an American foundation. America was founded on Judeo-Christian assumptions, this anachronistic teetering between individuals and groups, between freedom and common rule. She is built upon Christian precepts. The question today is whether the precepts, this delicate and vital balance between tribe and member, tribe and nation, can effect a peaceful society without Judeo-Christian belief. Put another way, can freedom and common consent survive without assent to outside authority, i.e. in this case, the Judeo-Christian God? Can human dignity and the sanctity of human life be protected without belief in the Creator?

The answer is not known, but many fear that the answer is “no.” Still, we work through the maze of these months and years, watching and praying as we are told to do, holding fast to love, to freedom, to faith, and to family.

We are Christians. We live on the rim of Earth, the edge of Eternity, the horizon of the heart of God. Each second, minute, hour, day, is a mystifying gift, an invitation from Christ to the festival of life. In the mean-time, we the Church wait for Christ’s next great gift, the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Today we ascend from Earth to Heaven with Our Lord. Next Sunday the Holy Spirit descends from Heaven to Earth to seize our hearts and minds with his fire.

We have been given so much, such treasure, such bounty, such joy. Our cups overflow with goodness and mercy and we live in the House of the Lord forever, now and in Eternity, on Earth and in Heaven.

Rogation means asking and Rogation Sunday was traditionally a time when folks asked for God to bless their harvest. The seeds were in the ground and sprouting. By the end of summer, crops would be ripe for harvesting. So too, a mother gives birth to life at the end of a time of protected gestation, pregnancy, within her body, fed by her blood. So we ask God’s blessing on mothers today, an especially poignant timing, a time when Rogation coincides with Mother’s Day. 

Mothers sometimes do not want their children, sometimes kill the baby in the womb. Mothers are not always good, but those who accept this great gift, the chance to nurture life, are especially blessed. Like all of God’s gifts, children can be challenges. But also, like all of God’s gifts, children can be a great joy.

We celebrate today the mothers who said yes to God’s gift of life, just as Our Lady the Virgin Mary said yes to Angel Gabriel with her fiat, “Be it unto me according to your word.” In our frail humanity, we look to Mary to see how to mother, how to love, how to nurture, how to guide the glorious flowering of a child into an adult. It is a delicate balance, freedom and righteousness, freedom and boundaries, freedom and duty.

We celebrate all mothers who rise to the challenge, who say yes to God. For those who say no to new life, we pray they repent and embrace the joy of this gift.

There are mothers who say yes and mothers who say no. But there are also those who mother children not their own, children who become theirs. We see this especially in the life of the parish where all women are called to be mothers to all children and all men are called to be fathers.

In January 1977 I was a single parent with a four-year old son, a rambunctious towhead holding onto my skirts and peering around them in both fear and fascination with his world. We arrived on the steps of St. Peter’s Anglican Church in Oakland, California and ventured inside. The beauty, the incense, the candles, the chants, the joyous hymns all called me to stay and we did. Over the years the women of the parish mothered my son and the men mentored him. I shall always recall those times, times of great difficulty, yet times of great love, love born in this parish. My son grew up to become a fine father to his own son and daughter, and now it was my turn to mother the children that arrived on the steps of the church. I taught Sunday School, some of the most delightful moments of my life.

And so I sing praises to mothers who mother everywhere in all times and seasons.

And we ask for God’s blessing on the crops, on the seeds and the newborn, those who were chosen and given life. We ask that God forgive our nation and its great apostasy in the killing of the unborn, the seed denied a chance to mature and live. It is a great evil, a great lie, that this is somehow freedom. For such denial of life is slavery, slavery to self, slavery to desire.

We ask God to turn our hearts and minds to honor mothers and those who mother. We ask God to save our country from this infant genocide. We beseech Our Lady, so full of grace, so blessed among women, so blessed to bear the fruit of her womb, Jesus: Dear Holy Mother, pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Pray for us, Holy Mother of God, that we may be worthy of the promises of Christ, worthy of Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost.

Rogation Sunday marks the final days of Eastertide, culminated in Christ’s Ascension this Thursday. The next three days are traditionally days of fasting and prayer, and we offer all in the name of life. For Easter is the gift of eternal life, the gift of God the Son and his conquering death to give us life. We pray through these days, the culmination of fifty days, arriving at Christ’s Ascension to Heaven. He tells the disciples that He must go to the Father so that they may receive the Holy Spirit, the third person of God, on Pentecost, ten days after the Ascension.

It is such a rich, colorful time, these days of greenness and growth, these days of planting and prayer, these days of soaring under a sun lengthening the days, lightening our lives, these days of Mary’s month of May.

For the mystery of Christ is the mystery of God’s immense love for us. The mystery of the Holy Trinity, the three persons of God, is the mystery of God’s great bounty and his plan for each of us. In God the Father, He creates us and gives us life; in God the Son, He walks among us and shares his life with ours, dying and rising, so we can live with him now and forever; in God the Spirit, He enters our hearts and souls and minds, molding, nurturing, inspiring, leading. In all of these persons of God, we see an intelligence and a love beyond measure.

And so we pray our praises and our thanksgivings for the gift of life itself, and for all those mothers who mother.

It is as though the natural world were waking to spring, after a long slumber. The oaks are full and rustling in the breeze outside my window. It is as though they were saying “shush…” slowly and sleepily, listening to the breath of life blowing over the land. The branches dance and wave gently, their leaves absorbing the sun, raised open to the light. 

The world is waking up.

So too, we humans sense the change. We yearn for the light, for something greater than we are, for the good, the true, and the beautiful.

We are told to watch and wait for the second coming of Christ. Is it soon? The disorder in the world cries for order, for a loving order, one which frees us to fly. But the wars and the rumors of wars, the false prophets, the flippant lies told without care – all these things point to Christ’s coming. In our lifetimes? Perhaps. Perhaps not. We do not know and perhaps it is best we do not know but must be ready.

The borders of our nation are porous and illegals and the unvetted pour in. Prisoners convicted of violent crimes roam and threaten California communities. The borders of our lives, of our safety, are no longer holding.

Our children are taught to hate our country, to welcome its destruction, to agree silently to the silencers, to be afraid to be free, to speak.

And yet the breeze of life blows over our land. Parents organize. Truth-tellers publish. Freedom, so fragile, catches its breath in fits and starts as we the people awake to our imprisonment.

Pastors and priests preach truth once again, bolstering flocks with Christ. They feed souls with Scripture, Sacraments, and creeds. They heal minds with meaning, with the whys and wherefores, building strong arks of peace in our souls before the floodwaters rise.

And so, as we tuned into our virtual liturgies in Illinois (1), Arizona (1), and California (4), we were flooded by God, by his power, by His voice, by the song He sings to us.

We sang our thanksgivings for life itself, for the natural world awake around us, the planet that spins in a galaxy finetuned second by second to nurture and keep us safe. We marveled at the stunning nature of nature, its infinite complexity. We plunged into the sea of understanding that gives order to our daily crises. We were called to recall who we were, are, and ever shall be, uniquely loved by our Creator, individually and as a living part of Christ’s Body.

For a few hours this fourth Sunday in Eastertide, we considered the words of St. James: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” We learn that God made us by speaking a word upon the cosmos. We hear that we trust this Creator who is our Father and who is light, who is ever faithful in His care for us. We see that we are to “receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.”

It is all true, we think. It is truly true, that as members of the Body of Christ we are part of His vine, His taproot into life. We grow in this life eternal as the word is grafted onto us. We must be meek to receive; we must repent; we must love. We must listen to our holy ones who are true and good and be deaf to the unholy who are false and evil. The engrafted word in Scripture and Sacraments enlivens us to face the roaring lions eager to devour.

We wake to this Spirit that moves among and within us. There will always be troubles in the world, always be plague and heartache. We are the blessed ones, to understand what it all means, to choose a path through a forest of danger and doubt. The Lord is our Shepherd. We fear no evil. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our lives, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

We sang with all our hearts the recessional hymn in the Berkeley chapel:

Praise, my soul, the King of heaven;

To his feet thy tribute bring;

Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,

Evermore is praises sing: 

Alleluia! Alleluia! 

Praise the everlasting King.

Praise him for his grace and favor

To our fathers in distress;

Praise him still the same as ever,

Slow to chide, and swift to bless:

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Glorious in his faithfulness

Father-like he tends and spares us;

Well our feeble frame he knows;

In his hand he gently bears us,

Rescues us from all our foes.

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Widely yet his mercy flows.

Angels, help us to adore him;

Ye behold him face to face;

Sun and moon, bow down before him, 

Dwellers all in time and space.

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Praise with us the God of grace!

(H.F. Lyte, 1834, based on Psalm 103)