Author Archives: Christine Sunderland

“I want my daughter to grow up hearing a pipe organ,” the visitor said, nodding with appreciation, holding his baby girl in his arms.

That’s not something you hear every day. The young man was visiting our parish church this morning and noticed the organ high in the loft. I wondered about what he said.

Did I take this huge instrument for granted? I knew it was a costly one.

I Googled pipe organ and learned that the pipe organ’s supply of wind from the pedal-board allows it to sustain notes much longer than a piano, giving the rich multi-textured timbre, which I fear we take for granted as we sing our hymns in the pews below. I also learned that for a time the pipe organ was the most complex manmade device, until the invention of the telephone exchange in the late nineteenth century (thank you, Wikipedia).

I know from parish experience that organs are becoming obsolete, largely because they are large, and cumbersome, but also because they are very expensive to maintain. Our parish accountant can attest to that, as well as our organist who at present is somehow playing with only a partial keyboard… until the next overhaul is sanctioned by our vestry and our limited budget.

So the words of the young man resonated… we have a unique experience at St. Peter’s, Oakland. Maybe I should pay more attention.

It was one of those curious coincidences (or angels flitting around in my life) that strike you all of a sudden. For I had just mailed some children’s books to a friend this last week who ordered through our church publishing house, the American Church Union (I help in the office from time to time). I knew Josephine but didn’t realize she was an organist until I Googled her name. But she is so petite! I thought, amazed. Very pretty and sweet and charming, but very petite. How does she reach those pedals?

The pipe organ. I thought how I love singing the robust hymns of the nineteenth century, often powerful words put to Bach and Handel and medieval tunes, sometimes songs going back to first monasteries and psalm-singing. They are glorious and fill our nave with a sound that is truly indescribable.

All because of our pipe organ.

I began to think of the other parts of our service – the Elizabethan language of our Book of Common Prayer, the psalmody from the ancient monastic “hours” going back to the fourth century, the creed, the Our Father given to us by Our Lord himself, the Scripture readings, the sacrifice of the Mass – the offertory, consecration, communion. In fact, all of the pieces of our Anglican liturgy, like the Roman Catholic liturgy, are rooted in these two thousand years of praise and offering and celebration. We sing into these past years, and we sing into the present year as well, dancing the Church seasons into the future, following a path that our ancestors followed, a path making sense of that historic moment when the tomb was empty. That first Easter Day.

The immensity of what happens in that single hour of Sunday morning worship struck me forcibly this morning. We have a pipe organ because it produces big immense music. We want big notes, magnificent melody, glorious song, because we are expressing a big and glorious and immense and magnificent truth: the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God.

The Gospel today was the account of the Canaanite woman who begs Jesus to heal her daughter. Jesus (oddly, one thinks at first) replies, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and to cast it to dogs.” Our preacher explained that until this moment in time God had invited only his Chosen People, the Jews, the People of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Israel), to his table. But with Christ, the invitation is extended to the rest of us – gentiles like this Canaanite woman. The woman countered his rebuke that even dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the master’s table. Jesus heals her daughter. (Matthew 15:21+) She is happy for the crumbs. I, too, am happy for the crumbs.

From the time of Christ the history of the world changed course. Indeed we use that dating still, B.C. or before Christ, and A.D. or Anno Domini after the year of Our Lord. Like the tip of a fulcrum, things shifted. Today we are in that time, that second half, Anno Domini. We are in the Apocalypse now.

Our organ booms. We think it an immense sound for we believe in an immense God. In the time and space of all Creation it is probably a tinkle. But I think, that since Christ, since Anno Domini, our God of immense love welcomes our song filling his nave and sanctuary. God hears our voices, our prayers, our joys, our sorrows. Christ carries them in his body, heavenward, for we have been invited to his Father’s table.

This week we began the penitential season of Lent. We mark these forty days with Ash Wednesday, a day in which we recall our bodily mortality. So this last Wednesday I knelt with my fellow parishioners and raised my forehead to the priest, who marked me with a cross of ashes, saying, “Remember o man, that dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.” (God’s words to Adam and Eve, Genesis 3:19)

This is a powerful liturgical action and within this ritual lies the story of man – his birth, life, death, and resurrection.

Stories are satisfying accounts of life. We listen as children at bedtime, we listen around the campfire, we listen in conversation, always hoping to hear a story emerge. “Tell me a story…” “I’ve got this story to tell you…” “Have you heard the one about…” Stories explain the mysteries of life.

Stories are different from sentences strung together. Speech doesn’t always contain stories but stories usually lie behind the words, sometimes hidden.

It is said that we pass our culture to the next generation through our stories, for good or for ill. We want them to learn from our mistakes so we tell them about the dangers of speeding, the rewards of hard work, the joys and sufferings of love.

Sometimes we create stories without words, using rituals and traditions – family dinners at holidays, Fourth of July picnics, Graduations. These stories may be simple ones, but nevertheless vital to all of us: we gather, we share, we honor and celebrate, we un-gather. The movement, the gathering, becomes a story and in the celebration we find stories within the story. We announce our beliefs about ourselves through these rituals and traditions.

Stories have beginnings, middles, and ends, and their very structure satisfies something within us. For we too have beginnings, middles, and ends. We travel through time in a linear direction. We are born, we live, and we die. We are familiar with the birthing and the living, but it is the last – the dying – that perplexes and confuses us most. How does the story end? Or more importantly, how does my story end?

So it was particularly striking this first week in Lent the three Old Testament readings appointed by our Book of Common Prayer for Morning Prayer on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the days immediately following our ashen Wednesday. As a preview, Evening Prayer on Wednesday told the story of Jonah and the whale, that tale of running away from God. Jonah runs, is thrown overboard and swallowed by the whale, repents, is spit out, and obeys God’s commands.

But we wake to Thursday morning and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Two angels in the form of handsome men visit Lot and his family to rescue them from the destruction soon to come. The angels arrive, escort Lot’s family across the plain to the mountains, and the cities are destroyed in a rain of fire and brimstone. (Earlier in the passage, Lot’s brother Abraham had bargained with God, crying what if there were fifty good men, shouldn’t they be saved…. finally negotiating to ten good men, shouldn’t they be saved… but that is another story, one of many Old Testament negotiations with God.)

Friday we wake to Abraham banning his concubine Hagar and their son Ishmael to the desert. Hagar cries to God and a well appears. The boy is saved, to become the father of a great nation.

And finally on Saturday God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. An Angel intervenes, a ram appears to be sacrificed, and Abraham has proved his love and obedience to God. He will be the father of a great nation, from which will come the savior of the world.

Beginnings, middles, and ends. These endings answer the question we long to ask, what is my end? For our world is full of fire and brimstone, full of estrangements and deserts, and full of moments of crucial choice, of life and death.

The good news for Christians is that our God of love is the ending of our story. God rescues us from the burning cities and leads us to the mountains, he gives us living water in the desert, and he provides himself as the sacrificial ram-offering.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. My body, made from the earth, will indeed return to the earth. The ashen cross on my forehead contains my salvific certainty, that Christ will lead me to heaven, my true end.

It is January in the year 2013. Time passes. My oldest granddaughter turned twenty-five yesterday. My mother turns ninety-three next week. Christmas is over and the cold stillness of January surrounds us. I have put away the Christmas things… except for a candle to light at suppertime. Time passes, falling through the years like a waterfall, a river of light.

Most of these new year days have been filled with tapping my keyboard and developing small callouses on the tips of my fingers. I am typing and editingThe Life of Raymond Raynes by Nicholas Mosley (1961). Last year I edited Father Raynes’ retreat addresses given in Denver in 1957, called The Faith, Instructions on the Christian Faith. His words express the truth and joy of Christianity in a way I could understand, in a way, for that matter, most of us could understand. He speaks practically, reasonably, at times reminding me of C. S. Lewis, another Anglican apologist. Recently, Nicholas Mosley (Lord Ravensdale) gave our church publishing group, The American Church Union, permission to reprint the biography (thank you, Lord Ravensdale!), and now as my eyes capture the letters and words on the yellowing pages and I tap them onto the keyboard and into the document file and they mysteriously appear on the screen, I feel as though I have fallen into another world, the world of Mirfield in the north of England, home of the Community of the Resurrection. Yesterday I began a chapter set in South Africa and now I move through the dust and poverty of Sophiatown where the Community of the Resurrection established missions, schools, clinics.

Father Raynes was indeed a missionary. He brought the light of Epiphany, the manifestation of God on earth, into the homes of folks in the English countryside. He brought Epiphany into the hovels of Sophiatown in South Africa. He himself carried this light of Christ in his body, in his words, in his daily deeds. He glowed, he was embodied with Christ. I wish I had known him, yet I have been blessed to spend time with his biography, to shift these words from page to computer screen. Some of the words are his own, taken down in quotations, some of the words are his biographer’s, Nicholas Mosley. But the words move from the page into my mind and heart just as they move from the page through my fingers onto this screen. Father Raynes often said, “Life is a love-song we sing to Jesus.” Indeed – Father Raynes himself was a love song sung to Jesus. And the tune is a beautiful one, mellow, haunting, one that pulls me into his own heart. This is how God loves us – through real things, through real people. We call this the sacramental way.

Manifestation. Light. Telling the good news. Living the good news. And what is the good news? That God came to earth to be one of us, to bring us home to Heaven. No small thing – this promise of Heaven. No small thing – God’s love for us. No small thing – this immense and rich meaning granted to my time on earth. No small thing – hearing the music and the laughter and the joy of this sacramental way of knowing God.

I considered these things this morning in our parish church.  St. Peter’s in the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland is a quiet oasis of holy contemplation, a place of rejuvenation. It is a place of singing great hymns and hearing ancient chants drift through the air. It is a place where we meet God, receive Him in the Eucharist. This beauty of holiness continues even as our preacher speaks from the central aisle, manifesting God’s love among us, enlightening us. It continues until the crucifer and torchbearers recess to the bright narthex doors, until the moment when the tall tapers on the altar are silently snuffed by the acolyte.  It continues to the moment when the organ booms the postlude and we leave our pews to greet our sisters and brothers, our family in God.

Manifestation. Light. Seeing God. Worshiping Him in the beauty of holiness amongst family and friends united by that light, by God’s manifestation to we gentiles in the first month of the Year of Our Lord two thousand and thirteen.

Epiphanytide is a short season this year – there is only one more Sunday. Soon we will consider Lent. But for now, in this moment in time, I shall be glad for God come among us, shining through us, and especially his shining through Father Raynes.

Our two cats are creatures of the earth. The red tabby, just a tad overweight, sleeps a great deal, and craves affection when awake. He hears us enter the house and is soon nuzzling and purring around our legs. The black-and-white longhair, a tad underweight, sleeps less and mourns our absence by dragging small stuffed animals around the house as she wails piercingly (we caught her doing this once when she couldn’t find us). When we return home we discover the baby white chicken on the stairs, the red ladybug near my office chair, the orange bumble bee by the front door. Laddie and Lady Jane are simple creatures with simple desires. They do not ask the meaning of life, or how to become happy, or why must we die.

But we humans do ask these questions. We wonder, we ponder, we plan, we record, we make lists. We read symbols called letters that form larger symbols called words that make up long phrases assembled to make paragraphs and pages and books. We follow a train of thought with these symbols as we build cities of ideas in the landscapes of our minds. We also, like cats, sleep and eat and love and desire friendship and community. But we are far more, for we reflect our Creator.

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, when we celebrate the Wise Men following the bright star to worship the heavenly king born among men on earth. Our Jewish-Christian preacher, our new rector, stood in the center of the aisle this morning and described the long road the star had taken in time, from Abraham to the People of Israel to the Messiah born in Bethlehem. The numbers were many as the twelve tribes grew, but over the years a single tribe was chosen, a single family line was chosen, and a single woman was chosen to bear the Son of God, born to the People of Israel, in this moment in time. And we too, all others in the world – Gentiles – can now follow the star, that light in the darkness, to the Christ child.

The light in the darkness. We began in Advent with John’s promised light in the darkness. And now we end the twelve days of Christmas with that same image of light shining in the dark night.

The earthy things of creation are made new. The star recreates the manger of earth and beasts and childbirth in the hay to become something far greater than the natural order it seems to be part of. The star in the heavens bathes our planet in light, bathes us in light. We are pulled into eternity of time and space by such a star. And by such an incarnation. And by such a God.

God is born among men on earth. The supernatural intersects the natural. Our own spirits made in God’s image are called to understand, to believe, to meet this Heavenly Father, to hallow His Name.

I was thankful today in church for our new rector who understands this artful (and powerful) journey God made through time with his People of Israel. Our new rector understands the grand and glorious nature of the drama that has gone before us and he looks forward to the drama that will comes to each of us. He knows we are in the middle of the drama now, in the present. We need only see in the light.

The mother of a dear friend is dying. She will soon be part of the future drama, that great adventure of heaven when Christ will take her hand and lead her, bathing her in his love. And we, left behind on earth, will take part in the drama of the present with every Eucharist, every prayer, every sacramental offering as the new People of God, the Body of Christ. For that child born in Bethlehem, the culmination of the journey of the Children of Israel, has grown to become the Body of Christ on earth, the Church.

So we leave the rich and wonder-filled seasons of Advent and Christmas and enter Epiphanytide, the season of light. Like cats, we continue to eat and sleep. We continue to love and to be loved. But unlike cats, we partake of the holy as we worship together in church. Together as the Church we journey into a new year.  Together as His Body we follow the light of the bright star in the heavens, on the altar, as eternity grows within us.

When I returned to our local church this morning, I asked a friend, “How did the pageant go?” Being away over Christmas weekend meant, alas, missing our Christmas Pageant.

And I loved her answer. “You know,” she said, grinning, “it was just amazing. All the pieces fitted together, they all came together. The costumes were laid out with names and everyone put on their costumes and, well, it all just came together!  It was wonderful. One minute there were piles of clothing on the table and the next minute it seemed we were acting out a pageant!”

And so it did come together. But I was sorry to have missed seeing the great story of Bethlehem told in our parish sanctuary on the red-carpeted steps leading to the altar. I knew that Angel Gabriel appeared to Mary and she said be it unto me according to your word. I knew that Mary, when the days were accomplished that she should be delivered, traveled to Bethlehem where there would be no room in the inn, that she gave birth to the savior in a manger cave. Shepherds surely kept watch and guarded their flocks by night until a heavenly host appeared, singing glory to God and on earth peace among men. On this first noel the angels, I knew, sang joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her king! And the shepherds went on to seek this king born in a stable outside Bethlehem.  All of this happened, I was sure, on the red carpet leading to the altar where candles flamed.  I could see it. I could hear the music.

But this morning as I entered the warm nave and gazed upon the crèche nestled in its bed of greens, I thought how all the pieces came together like my friend said. They came together in Bethlehem two thousand years ago – the centuries since Adam, since Abraham, since the days of Moses and the exodus from Egypt. The pieces, those wandering Children of Israel, were pulled through the wilderness and finally into the promised land. Slowly, piece by piece, thread by thread, a new moment in time formed, the moment of the Incarnation, when God became man.

Just so, I thought, in my own life God has taken the pieces of my days and years and pulled them together to this present moment in time. Sometimes the shards of my experience, those fragments of me, do not always fit perfectly together.  For I am a daughter of Eve and prone to rough edges – anger, envy, pride, for starters – so the new vessel, the amphora of me, is not always what God may have intended. Nevertheless, he buffs those rough edges with love and mercy and forms a new me, again and again. And hopefully, certainly, he lives inside, taking possession.

The vessel of our parish has gone through some rough shatterings in the last few years, and we have pulled far flung pieces together, uniting them with love, with the strength of God. There have been moments when the task seemed far too large for us, but we were faithful, or tried to be, falling on our knees, admitting our helplessness. We worshiped together, we shared meals together, we taught our children about the love of God. Over the months and years we have re-fired our our broken fragments to make a rough amphora of a parish, a vessel to hold God’s children, his own body of Christ. Now, we welcome a new rector come among us. He will shepherd us, pulling us into future time, and we are thankful.

The first days of those Twelve Days of Christmas  that we celebrated this last week extended Tuesday’s Feast of the Incarnation. We remembered St. Stephen, the first martyr, on Wednesday, then honored the life of St. John the Evangelist on Thursday. Friday we mourned the Holy Innocents, those children slaughtered by Herod as he searched for the child-king to slay him.

As Christ’s body, we tell the story. We assemble together the words, phrases, deeds, and people that make up the story.  The fragments form a whole. Time is realized. The past, present, future, are drawn into this point of infinity, eternity, in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, when God intersected human history.  And God intersects our own time too, today. He makes us whole. He draws all of the minutes and seconds of our lives, together in him, in his son, Jesus.

And this is why we say, Merry Christmas. The pieces come together. We become whole.