Christine Sunderland

Merry Christmas!

We have entered the Twelve Days of Christmas, the time spanning the birth of Christ to the arrival of the Magi, the Epiphany of Our Lord on January 6.

I have found that the Christmas festivals of the last three days are often obscured by the rush and bustle of the season. Even adults who no longer believe in the birth of the Son of God yearn to recreate the days when they believed as children. They yearn to yearn for God, to experience mystery and miracle. The secular world, having lost faith, keep the rituals of gift giving, caroling, and the tale of the extraordinary bearded man from the North Pole on a sleigh pulled by reindeer. They keep the recipes and the dinners and the festive gatherings. They want to believe but do not want the moral demands of such belief. They want to be children again and see the world as fabulous.

This season was dampened by the pandemic, hushing it to a hum. My husband and I and our two Christmas kittens celebrated a quiet Christmas (well, they are kittens, so not that quiet). We connected with family by phone and screen rather than in a physical gathering. I wondered in some awe that the events in Bethlehem two thousand years ago could feed us so miraculously and mysteriously and joyously today in a quieter time. We have been forced to step back, breathe, and see differently.

The pandemic lockdowns, at least here in California, meant more virtual church, more contemplation, more singing alone or with one’s immediate sheltered family, and to those living inside the screen, more words read, more glory stories told, and most of all, a sudden quietude that filled the rooms of our home.

At the end of the day, and perhaps all time, we are reminded to remember God. We are called to pay attention to Christmas, Christ-Mass, the celebration of the child born in Bethlehem, He who brought salvation to mankind, and Himself in every Eucharist.

And so, on Thursday evening my husband and I gathered in front of our screens to take part in a virtual Christmas Eve Mass, celebrated at our beloved chapel a block from UC Berkeley. We said the words, sang the songs, and prayed the prayers.

Silent night, holy night / All is calm, all is bright / Round yon virgin mother and child. / Holy infant so tender and mild. / Sleep in heavenly peace. (#33, Joseph Mohr, 1818)

On Friday we gathered before our screens to hear the Holy Liturgy for Christmas Day, sung at our chapel at Stanford.

Hark, the herald angels sing / Glory to the new-born King! / Peace on earth and mercy mild, / God and sinners reconciled! / Joyful, all ye nations, rise, / Join the triumph of the skies; / With the angelic host proclaim / Christ is born in Bethlehem! (#27, Charles Wesley, 1739)

Mary and Joseph sheltered in a hillside cave. Obedient to God, she gave birth to the Savior of the World. We, obedient to God, shelter in our homes, give birth to belief in this Savior of the World. We welcome Him into our hearts, our sheltered hearts. We give him room. In the quietude of this season, we listen to the melody processing through the centuries, into our time, our day and hour and minute, and in these notes of grace we face our Redeemer. We are unmasked by Love; our souls are bare; we prepare for life eternal.

On Saturday, the Feast of St. Stephen, we honor the true cost of discipleship. We read the words in Acts 7, how Deacon Stephen saw the face of God as he was stoned to death, our first Christian martyr. St. Paul, then Saul, watches, as his own transformation begins, for he would soon meet Christ on the road to Damascus and be changed forever.

And today, Sunday, we celebrated the glorious Feast of St. John, Apostle and Evangelist. John saw and wrote that in the beginning of all creation was the Word, and the Word was God. He was the Light in the darkness witnessed by John to be the true Light, and all who believe on his Name would become sons of God. The first verses of John’s gospel are read on Christmas Day (John 1:1-14) and describe who Christ Jesus is: He is the Word who created the world, who was born into that world but unknown by that world. But to those who did know him he empowered them to become sons of God. And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.

These three days tell the magnificent story of the intersection of time with Eternity. We tell of our Savior’s birth, tell of Stephen the first martyr, and tell of John who teaches what this means for us.

Tomorrow, the fourth day of the twelve days of Christmastide that lead to the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6, we descend into the violent Roman world of the first century. We mourn and recall the slaughter of the Holy Innocents, the murders carried out by Herod to protect his crown.

We recall these historic events because we have witnesses who testified to their truth. Our Bishop Morse of blessed memory often said that Christians are a people of reality. We face the truth of what happened, then and now, both the glory and the tragedy, both life and death. For like Stephen we will be called to suffer for our faith. And like the killing of the firstborn boys under age two by Herod, we will be attacked for our faith. This is the reality of salvation, the reality of Christmas.

We Christians will never stop telling the story of our redemption in Time to live in Eternity, salvation on Earth to live in Heaven. We will never be silenced, even sheltered as we are, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

Deo Gratias.

We put aside, or perhaps assuaged, our grief over the loss of our tabby, Laddie, who climbed into Heaven three months ago, and adopted two kittens from a local shelter. At only 14 weeks, they seem incredibly tiny, and we have been introducing them slowly to the house and of course to us, graduating from small spaces to ever bigger spaces.

Coming into our home in this time of coming, Advent, has seemed appropriate, especially given the California lockdown this month. We have time, time to wait and be gentle and care for the kittens, as we await the coming of Our Lord in Bethlehem this Friday. It is a season of time, a timely season, one of quiet hope, enriched by Scripture. It is a dark season waiting for the light, waiting for the dawn of Christmas Day. It is a time of beloved lessons and carols, words made beautiful put to music, housed in song through centuries of hymnody, words living in the melody that tell the marvelous story of redemption, the story of the Savior of Mankind coming among us as a humble infant. It is a time of candle light at dusk in the middle of winter fog and frost and snow, when the shortened days end and the long night begins. It is a rich time woven into the tapestry of prayer.

We pray for grace to cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which the Son of God, Jesus Christ, visited us in great humility.

And the casting away the works of darkness is particularly true this year, with the fear and the panic over the flu sweeping the world, sweeping some into Eternity and forcing others into closed spaces, hoping the virus will not seep under the doors or through the windows.

The darkness, like the virus, is viral, slithering to our homes, a snake ready to strike, or pacing through our neighborhoods like the coyote howling at night, like a roaring lion eager to devour. For the true pandemic is a virus of the soul, as we have guessed and known for some time.

In looking upon these wee little kitties (not yet named) it is easy to understand the immense love of God, that he could create such delicate creatures with such magnificently minute parts – whiskers, eyes, ears, tales, long hair in proportion to their tiny bodies. Our Creator of the universe breathed life into these beings who eye us with hesitation, desire, and need, and finally acceptance of love offered and returned. We caretakers are so gigantic and clumsy, but we care for them as best we can.

The gigantic and the tiny reflects the miracle and mystery of God. The contrast is all around us and within us. We, such temporal weak creatures, with bodies destined to decay to ash, have been given souls full of God’s spirit, full of God’s love, beating hearts pumping blood, beating hearts longing for God, longing for Heaven, longing for fulfillment, longing for redemption.

I have long considered in my gentle years the happy and fortifying words memorized over my life of three score thirteen so far to be the food of God for my soul. For indeed, Christ was and is the Word of God. He became incarnate just as our thoughts become incarnate in words on screen and paper, in song and liturgy.  And when we look upon the manger and the poverty of His birth, we are astounded once again by the gift of life given to us in such a way, in such a place, amidst the terror and tumult of the Roman Empire. There was no room in the inn we are told. We rejected the Savior of the world, the Son of God. We rejected Love incarnate.

The Incarnate Word lying in a stable amidst the the farm animals, the angels singing glory and praise, the star in the heavens showing the way, a powerful portent of eternity, the Holy Family teaching us how to be a whole family, the traditions that further incarnate this immense event in history – all these things are given us. The creche, the evergreen tree strewn with lights, the gifts and cards and greetings given, the songs of peace and joy and delight – all the past Christmases are reborn to live in this coming Christmas. We keep the holy tales alive and they in turn enliven us, feeding us with humanity’s greatest desire throughout the centuries, to become whole, holy, filled with the love and light of God. The past is sacred for it forms our present and our future. To deny our history is to deny life itself, to deny meaning, to deny that what and who we are has eternal consequences.

And so we pray in our own time that in the last days when Christ shall return in glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we shall rise to the life immortal.

And such is our coming prayer, our Advent prayer, this fourth Sunday in Advent. We pray that when we are judged we shall be forgiven our repented sins, those things we have done and those things we have not done, for there is no health in us.

For we shall be judged, every one of us.

We should rightly fear this judgment, and so we try to keep current with daily or weekly confession of our failings. We clean out our hearts to make room for Christ in the inn of our souls. We find that with a clean conscience that we sleep better. We love better. We measure ourselves against God’s righteous standard, and continually failing to meet it, we confess and are forgiven. We are clean, washed in the blood of the lamb. A right spirit dwells in us.

And so we wait for His glorious majesty to be revealed in a cave manger outside Bethlehem. We wait for His coming, for the angels singing, the shepherds adoring, the kings on bended knee offering the first Christmas gifts: gold for His kingship, frankincense for His priesthood, and myrrh for His burial. We wait and watch and listen for His coming, His advent at Christmas and the end of time, in humility and in glory, just like His creation.

Come, Lord Jesus, Savior of the World, King of Glory, come. Come in your great humility and your glorious majesty so that we may rise to life immortal.

In my recently released novel, Angel Mountain, my characters face judgment in the course of the story, and how they deal with it reveals more about them. Indeed, America today faces judgment; our culture faces judgment; our universities face judgment.

None of us wants to be judged, and it is my guess that it is a part of our human nature, perhaps our fallen nature, to desire to flee judgment or to turn a blind eye to the accusation that we have fallen short of the mark. 

What is the mark? And how is it set? Does it change in time with the weather and politically correct opinion? C.S. Lewis spoke of an innate sense of right and wrong that we are born with and said that this is a proof of God’s existence. In some of us, this sense lies buried deeply, I would add. Then, in some of us it is so fine-tuned that we call those who have such an educated conscience, perfectionists. And perfectionists are guilty of pride. So there you have it. A conundrum. Can’t seem to win for losing, one of my relatives often opined.

On this Second Sunday in Advent our preachers touched on the theme of Judgment. As you may recall, the first Sunday is Death, the second is Judgment, the third is Heaven (I’m looking forward to that one), and the fourth is Hell. I virtually visited five Anglican parishes this morning, in tandem, slightly overlapping, a miraculous gift of the Internet to travel like this, from Bolingbrook, Illinois (All Saints), to Los Angeles, California (Our Saviour), to Carefree, Arizona (Christ Church), to Palo Alto, California (St. Ann’s), and lastly to our Berkeley Chapel (St. Joseph’s), parishes in our Anglican Province of Christ the King. Our Province is like a large family, stretched from sea to stinging sea, and if you have been a member for forty-three years as I have, it is heartwarming to see our priests say Mass and preach, many whom I recall as students in our Berkeley seminary in the eighties and nineties.

And so back to judgment and the last days, the Apocalypse, when we all shall be judged. One preacher referenced the hell and brimstone aspect of the possible verdict, a vision often buried. But, he said, never fear, for there is an escape route in the last hour, Jesus Christ himself. We need to repent and all will be well. We don’t repent, and all will, shall I be blunt, not be well. But we all have fallen short of the glory of God, of perfection, every one of us, so we need to get used to repenting, and often. Good advice, I thought, for I have long admired the power of habit. 

A second sermon considered the wonderful Collect prayer for this morning:

“BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.” (1928 Book of Common Prayer, 92)

If we want to know what will actually transpire at the end of the world, we need to read the Scriptures as often as possible, for laced throughout are clear depictions of our future. While Revelation paints entire canvases with image and song and poetry, the Gospels, as well as the Old Testament, describe our future. But more than read the Scriptures, our priest explained, we must “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.” I smiled with those words for in one of the Scripture readings this last week, St. John, in his vision we call Revelation, or Apocalypse, is give the holy book to eat.

But yes, we must inwardly write these words on our hearts. How else will we know what to repent and what to celebrate? How will we prepare for the Judgment?

Today’s times are troubling. Whether or not the end times are in the next hour or in another century, we do not know. In fact, we are told in Scripture that not even the angels know.

Ah, angels! They are all around us. I have a number of gilded icons portraying archangels which comfort me in this time of sheltering and pandemic. They guard and guide and protect. They are messengers and warriors. Scripture says we will be their judges one day (!).

Our world rejects judgment. And yet our world is quick to judge. We are told that if we fall short we can blame someone else, judge someone else, or a group, or a nation. It’s really never our fault, for that would hurt our self esteem. It’s always someone else’s fault. We are simply victims of prejudice, of class, of gender, of race. We are told to hate those who hurt us and cause us to fall short this way, damaging our self esteem.

Scriptures point to a different way, a brighter way, even if a difficult way. We must face our failings in the bright light of God and admit our sins every chance we have, daily, hourly, if not directly to a priest in a confessional, then directly to God in our prayers. Only then can we remove the cancers growing in our souls. Only then can we bear responsibility for our lives, heal our broken hearts, and step into God’s light.

Bishop Morse of blessed memory often said, “To love is to suffer.” I wondered about that but have come to see that to love is to give and to give is to lose something of ourselves. To love is to expose ourselves to hurt by others for we have given them a part of our heart. And yet to know this truth ennobles the hurt, so that suffering has profound meaning, at lease if it is the fruit of love.

Since the Fall of Man in the Garden so long ago we fail again and again, turning to the dark when we really want to turn toward the light.

In Angel Mountain, the hermit Abram preaches repentance from the mountainside, baptizing in the icy pond before the white cross. Pilgrims gather. Social media has gone viral. Who is this white-robed man commanding us to repent? Who does he think he is?

There is one in the crowd who hates Abram, hates being judged. Malcolm Underhill summons the reasons it is righteous to hate Abram, all the reasons that his teachers, his family, the social justice warriors have instilled in him over the years. For he has read, marked, and inwardly digested the scriptures of darkness. And when Malcolm is judged, he reacts like a cornered beast, growling, or like a coiled snake, hissing and ready to strike.

There are two strong currents blowing over our land. One is light and one is dark. One tells us to honor judgment, to confess, repent, and be forgiven, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, clad in the white robes of the Lamb. The other tells us to kill the judges, to deny, to hate, to fall into the lake of brimstone and fire, the Kingdom of Hell, clad in nothingness, to devour and be devoured.

It is Advent and we look to Bethlehem, to the Advent of the Christ Child on Earth. We watch and we wait. We clean out our hearts and prepare a room for the King of Glory to reside. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord God of Hosts, the Lord God of Hosts.

Come, Lord Jesus, come. In your advent, set your people free.

I found the three purple candles and one rose candle in a box of old Sunday School supplies. I unwrapped them, pulling them from clinging cellophane and gently pushed their bases into a circular holder. I next stepped outside into an icy breeze and snipped greens from a fir we planted twenty years ago. I wove the bits of greenery around the candles and set my Advent wreathe in the middle of our dining table.

Today is the First Sunday in Advent, the first of four Sundays that prepare us for the first advent of Christ Jesus in Bethlehem. On these four Sundays it is traditional to consider the four last events of man: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. In this way we prepare for the second advent of Christ Jesus upon this Earth, when a New Heaven and New Earth ushers in the Kingdom of God. In this way we prepare for our own death, face our own mortality.

It is a serious time, with serious themes, and particularly appropriate to our world today, our world of pandemic, unrest, division, and unbelief. It is a time for prayer, and Americans are lifting their voices, praying for our country, praying for protection from the violence in our streets, the violence on our campuses, the violence in our hearts. We pray for peace. We pray for freedom.

And so, today our preacher considered Death, the first theme.

It is a subject we hide from, as can be seen in the modern American rituals of death, the whisking away of the corpse to be cremated and no longer considered, the memorial service replacing the Christian funeral rites. Yet death comes to all of us, often with little warning. We do not know the hour or the day or the year we will journey into another world.

As our preacher mentioned this morning, all we know about where we are going when we die is what we have been told by the one who has been there and returned: Jesus of Nazareth, who died and came back to life. Witnesses testify that this itinerant preacher, onetime carpenter, performed miracles of healing and resurrection from the dead. This Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels by contemporaries, informs us that Heaven has many mansions – rooms – prepared for us. He tells us to be not afraid, for He is with us always, even unto the end of the Earth.

Advent is a cosmic, cold and wintry time, a time of watching for the coming of Christ not only in Bethlehem, not only in the last days, but in our hearts. We are told that the Son of God wants to abide in us: we in Him, He in us. He loves us. He desires to be with and within His creation.

This year the Advent Season is also a time of great fear in our land, fear of the unknown, fear of this virus that robs our breath and clings to our cells in unknown ways, fear of death following close on our heels. Some have said after months of battling the fear of the pandemic, and the pandemic itself, through questionable lockdowns, masks, and distancing, our fears have become a virus as well, worse than the Chinese Flu. Fear has shuttered shops and eateries and inns, theaters and sports and gyms. Fear has denied workers work, worshipers worship, and the worst of all, denied the dying their family and friends.

Also this year, the Advent Season in America is a time of cleaning up our elections, as though seeing that dirty windows needed washing. We are proving to the world that we have legal systems that help us clean up dirty elections, dirty voting. We are proud of our democracy, our electoral system, and will not allow excess dirt to bury it. We will not succumb to bullying and extortion. But we are also a loving, trusting people, so we often allow the systems to clog with grime before we decide enough is enough, and we decide to clean our house. This is that time. This is that year of wintry cleaning in Advent.

And so the Christian world pauses for a brief moment in the midst of battle to reflect on where we are today, where we have come from, and where we are going. We pause to clean out our own hearts as well, our own houses with our own dirty windows. We confess. We repent. We accept forgiveness. We invite the Lord of Lords into our hearts as we consider the mansions He has promised for those who repent, for those who choose Him, choose Love, choose Truth, choose Life, choose the only Way through the cross.

Advent prepares us for these great events, these four last things that we all will face. Alongside, in our prayers and our words and our testimonies, we will suffer with the nation as the nation suffers, we will uphold her freedom to worship and assemble peacefully, and we will shine a light on the great sin of our time, the ongoing genocide of the unborn, every minute of every day. We will walk the Way, with the Truth, and the Life, into the Light.

For we are told, again and again, that Jesus is the Way, that no one sees the Father unless through Christ himself.

Christians are unafraid of fear, for we have faced the ultimate fear, our own death. We have embraced the antidote to the virus of fear, Christ and his promise of eternity.

And so we walk the Way to Christmas, to Christ’s first advent in Bethlehem. As we light that first candle tonight, we pray, Come Lord Jesus, Come.

I am thankful for America, the bright light on the hilltop, a beacon to the world, from sea to shining sea.

I am thankful for my own year of life, my own year of living, my own year of prayer, penitence, and pleasure.

I am thankful for my latest novel, Angel Mountain, a story about the state of Western Civilization, Intelligent Design and Evolution, faith and science, cancel culture and free speech, Heaven and the Apocalypse, true history and the Holocaust, the sanctity of live and human dignity. 

I am thankful for America, for her freedoms, her liberty and law, her First Amendment and the right to worship, peacefully gather and voice our hearts and minds. 

I am thankful for America, for her people and their courage to stand up to tyranny rising, to speak the truth, to label lies, and sort fact from fiction.

I am thankful for America, for her entrepreneurs, inventors, scientists, homemakers, nurses, farmers, and all other workers with their unique talents; for books and writers, music and musicians.

I am thankful for President Trump and Operation Warp Speed, for his devotion to our country, for protecting us from threats within and without, for his epic heroism.

I am thankful for America, for the falling pandemic death rates in a country so vast and diverse. 

I am thankful for America, for those who defend her, on foreign or domestic soil, military and police.

I am thankful for America, for those who cherish academic freedom and have suffered for it.

I am thankful for America, for her past and present and future, for her wars of defense and correction, civil and uncivil, for righting wrongs and freeing slaves, for Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers, for the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

I am thankful for our loving God, for his Son and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, for His Holy Spirit indwelling in us, for his promises of Heaven.

I am thankful for our Church and clergy; for the faithful who pray for one another; for those who sing His praises, daily, hourly, minute by minute; for the hymns, thundering and poetic and uplifting, sung for centuries, ringing into this minute of our day; for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer; for Holy Sacraments.

I am thankful for our tabby cat Laddie, who climbed the ladder to Heaven, who shared his time on Earth with us; for animals and plants and colors and seasons; for wind and rain, for stars and planets, for day and night, for the sun and the moon, for apples and pears, for plentiful harvests, for ice cream, for espresso, for sleep, for dreams, for work and play, for seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching; for laughter, for faces, for smiles; for kindness, love, and generosity.

I am thankful for friends and family, for children, born and unborn, for the miracle and mystery of life itself.

May God bless America, from sea to shining sea.

Today is Stir-up Sunday, the Sunday next before Advent in the Christian calendar. It is called this because of the opening prayer that a collects us together:

STIR up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (1928 BCP, 225)

We call the Holy Spirit to come upon us and give us the will to do right according to His commandments, to bear good fruit. And there is no better time to call upon this Third Person of the Holy Trinity. There is no better time to stir up God’s people, our nation under God.

We often need stirring up, for we are a joyful people and prone to complacency in our joy. We have answered some of the great mysteries of life, the whys and wherefores, the whats and whos, the whens. We know we are fallen, but we know the remedy. We have a deadly virus, but be not afraid, for we have the antidote. We are under sentence of death in the cosmology of Heaven’s justice, but we know how to commute that sentence through repentance, through the death and resurrection of Christ, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, through touching the hem of His garment and carrying His cross. We are at peace, for we have immense meaning in our lives. More than that, our  lives embody meaning, every breathing moment adding to the total of that meaning, for nothing is lost and everything gained. Nothing is wasted.

Bishop Morse of blessed memory used to cheer me up with the words, “Nothing is lost.” I’ve often recalled those words, when I hammer away at a keyboard or receive another rejection, or a project has fallen through, or a plan come to naught. Nothing is lost. Everything counts in the economy of God. 

It is this wholeness of life, this holiness of life, that the Christian owns, that the Christian can claim for his or her own. It is a vast fortune, and we claim it to be ours. It is an inheritance my hermit Abram speaks of as he preaches and baptizes from a rocky ledge to the pilgrims in the grassy meadow below. It is a theme of my recently released novel, Angel Mountain, this joy, this grace given.

So out of sheer complacency, having been given so much grace, we often need a little stirring up. And so this Sunday Collect prepares us for the Advent season as a kind of bugle cry to get our attention: wake up! It’s time! The last trumpet will soon sound! Christ is born in Bethlehem! Christ is returning, filling the sky! Can you see Him?

The world needs stirring up as it awaits the Second Advent of Christ, the Second Coming.

This last week I needed stirring up and I needed the reassurance that nothing was lost. While I knew the media had years ago declared war on a sitting President, and while I knew that if an honest and free press gives way to tyranny that democracy dies, I was surprised once again that a major news conference shedding evidential light into the deep shadows of our recent election was not covered, but dismissed and scorned. It was as though the last hope of a free press was gone.

The Gospel today was St. John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand, with only a lad’s five barley loaves and two small fishes (John 6:5+). Andrew asks, “What are they among so many?”

And we ask, what are we among so many?

How can truth be broadcast when major media is corrupt? And yet our voices continue to be heard. For nothing is lost.

And so in St. John’s account we see the economy of Heaven: the vast and the microscopic, the immortal and the mortal. The Lord of the Universe sits on a hillside and receives a basket of loaves and fishes from a little boy. We are given concrete details: the people are to sit; there is grass to sit upon; Jesus gives thanks and distributes the loaves and fishes, feeding them all. It was a miracle of creation repeated, multiplied, a down-from-Heaven-to-Earth miracle, an intersection of eternity into time.

Finally, Jesus instructs his disciples to “gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” Nothing be lost. I am a fragment: gather me. I don’t want to be lost. John writes that there were twelve baskets of fragments gathered. He is a good witness to reality, to truth. He gives us details in his account.

And so we must be good witnesses to all the fragments.

One of the ways that totalitarian governments take and retain power is to repeat lies until they (seem to) become truth. Just so, it seems we the voters are expected to see and not to see, to witness and not to testify. We begin to doubt our senses. We begin to believe the lies. It’s so much easier to go along.

But many are praying that true truth is told by those who do the telling. As evidence is amassed in numerous court cases litigating recent election practices, we pray that light lights up the dark, forces the lies to emerge from the shadows so that we can truly see.

We must be stirred up enough to remain awake to reality, to truth, to the truth of the Advent of Christ, to the truth of the light shining in the darkness, to the truth of who we are in spite of our brokenness. We gather our words like loaves and fishes, hoping they will multiply and feed the hungry. The fragments are gathered too, so that nothing is lost.

Every breath counts. Every prayer counts. Every true vote for freedom counts. We need not be afraid. Nothing is lost.

I was meditating on what to write this afternoon when I received an email from a friend in one of our parishes. Did I have a recommendation for where to order personalized Bibles as gifts for Confirmation?

I considered the week and the watching and waiting for the Second Coming of Christ found in the Gospel of Matthew assigned readings. The words of Christ in red cover several pages as he foretells the last days, the Judgment, Heaven and Earth. There is a winnowing, a sorting out of human souls, those who watched and were ready, those who cared for the poor, those who followed Christ’s commandments, those who bore good fruit, those who said yes to the wedding feast of the king. Those who didn’t do these things would be sent into outer darkness, where there would be gnashing of teeth. He mentions outer darkness a significant number of times to add authenticity to his words. 

And then there was the lovely Friday Reflection, “Fraud Control,” by James M. Kushiner of Touchstone Magazine in which he writes of the importance of autographs as seals of authenticity. He cites St. Paul in his closing words to the church at Thessalonica (today Greece):

“The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle: so I write.” (2 Thessalonians 3:17-18, KJV)

Paul uses the words, outo grapho, or “this is my handwriting,” the origins of autograph which meant any works handwritten by the author. Paul was concerned that others were forging letters to the churches, and so he emphasizes with his outo grapho that his letter is truly from him. 

Just so, James Kushiner writes, the signs of Christ – his deeds – were his signature, affirming who he was and is.

Christians are named at Baptism, given “Christian” names, christened with signs all our own. Our name identifies us, separates us from others. Just so our autograph, our name written by our own hand, has long been used to ensure authenticity of documents. Today, with electronic signing and accounts that no longer require signatures we have nearly returned to the days of making our mark with an “X”, the mark of the illiterate, or no mark at all. We are identified by our passcodes, numbers. I am told that children are no longer taught cursive. What does that mean in terms of their signatures? A scribble or squiggle, I suppose. A fingerprint. A passcode.

In our national election we are currently concerned with signatures that match records on file so that voters are identified to be who they claim to be, living or dead, legitimate or fraudulent. Signatures still count, we hope.

Handwriting. Signatures. Fingerprints. Faces scanned.

Each one of us is so unique. We take this for granted but it is an amazing miracle that no two persons are identical. Even twins have unique markers, genetic as well. And so I fear we will not do well in the Judgment when we must say we allowed the genocide of several generations of unique human beings, children with all the identity markers we have, children that will never be born, children we will face in Heaven, should we survive the sorting.

As Christians we are assured of our salvation, to be sure, for we have Christ defending us; we have Christ standing for us before the throne of God, as long as we repent the times we looked away, the times we denied Christ, the times we were ashamed to speak. But we have been marked by Christ.

Just like the Bibles, we are personalized by our Creator. In the last days we will be marked with the sign of the cross on our foreheads, just as we were marked in our Baptisms with holy oil: 

“WE receive this Child (or person) into the congregation of Christ’s flock; and do *sign him with the sign of the Cross, in token that hereafter he shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end. Amen.” (1928 BCP, 280)

And when Confirmed, having been regenerated in Baptism, we are now given the gifts of the Holy Spirit:

“ALMIGHTY and everliving God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy servants by Water and the Holy Ghost, and hast given unto them forgiveness of all their sins; Strengthen them, we beseech thee, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and daily increase in them thy manifold gifts of grace: the spirit of wisdom and under-standing, the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness; and fill them, O Lord, with the spirit of thy holy fear, now and for ever. Amen.” (1928 BCP, 297)

We belong to Christ. We have been signed with his Cross, a blood red autograph. We are not ashamed to write, to speak, to love as he has taught us to do. At life’s end, we will hear his call, know his voice, and he will know each one of us. He will say, “Well done, good and faithful soldier and servant. Welcome to the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Dark clouds rolled in shortly after noon today and soon filled the big sky over and around our portion of Planet Earth. Then thunder roared and rain poured, as though the skies opened  to pour their tears on our land. It was cold last night, and I gazed up to Angel Mountain (Mount Diablo) wondering if it might snow. An American flag flew in the distance in the brown grass, and, farther up the horse trail, the white cross stood sturdy, weathering the weather. We are nearing Veterans Day, the day in which my novel’s story opens, closing on Thanksgiving. In Angel Mountain, the skies are filled with thunder and lightning. The leaves are turning gold and bronze and russet, as they fall into Fall. Earth is preparing for winter.

Thunder shatters the air, rumbling through the canyons. But I fear no evil. I was reminded this last week to be not afraid, that God is the God of all history, and there will come a time when there are no more tears. Christ will come again to judge the peoples of the Earth, and those who desire justice among men will have their fervent and patient wish granted.

But beware. This means a personal judgment as well as a general one. Wheat will be separated from chaff (weeds), sheep from goats. For if there will be no more tears in the new Heaven and Earth, those who did not keep (and do not desire to keep) the Ten Commandments, the Law given to Moses and the Prophets, those who did not bear good fruit, will be cast into outer darkness. This is God’s justice, justly severe, as written in Holy Scripture.

This last week the Book of Common Prayer daily Gospel readings included Christ’s condemnation of the Pharisees. They are harsh words, hellfire and brimstone words, and he is clear in his intention. So if we believe Jesus is the Son of God, if we believe the Scriptures are a fair account of his works and words, then we might pause and take stock of our own lives.

And so it was also good to hear the Gospel for today in which Christ explains forgiveness. We are to forgive our enemies, those who harm us or seek to do us harm. Forgiveness must come from deep within our hearts, through prayer and patience. We are told to love our enemies. Do good to those who persecute us. This does not mean that we embrace words and deeds of the lawless and the dishonest. We must be wise and not throw pearls before swine. But we prepare our hearts to forgive them when they repent. We do not hold grudges. With forgiveness we are free from this darkness. When we forgive, as seen in the prayer Our Lord taught us to pray, the “Our Father,” we will be forgiven in like measure.

I ponder these holy mysteries – a soothing symmetry – as I watch history unfold on our national stage, today an international stage, watched by the peoples of the world with fear and trembling. America, for now, shines her light on the hill, a beacon lighting up the darkness, a promise of hope to all those escaping the terror of socialist regimes. For as long as honest debate is allowed, freedom thrives. For as long as free and honest elections are held, liberty is lauded. As long as we can speak without fear, live without fear, America will continue to shine her light from the mountaintop.

And so I am pleased that our President is shining light on the allegations of fraudulent practices in the recent election. Such light will strengthen our republic. Such transparency will show the world that we are still a place of refuge, a place of justice. Our constitutional procedures wisely give us time to examine these charges, and, as we await the final results, we can pause and give thanks that we have such a process. I pray that all Americans accept peacefully the results, having waited patiently for every legal vote to be certified, trusting that the electors, in mid-December, will represent the true and honest will of the American people. For this is America. This is how we protect our freedoms.

The projections made by the media are projections, not elections. Let us pause and breathe deeply and pray for our country, for all her wonderful peoples of every race, creed, and background, born and unborn. She is a glorious melting pot, just like each one of us, a rainbow of colorful traits, treasures, and talents. She is the hope of the world.

The sun just came out on Angel Mountain, the sky now a dome of blue, the colors of the earth singing their song of hope.

May God bless America.

Prayer For Our Country:

“ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favour and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honourable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (1928 Book of Common Prayer, 136)

This prayer was offered in one of our Anglican parishes this morning, All Saints Day. It is a poetic, potent, plea for our nation as we draw near to election day and our choice of President for another four years.

I love America, and I believe her fortunes greatly influence the world’s fortunes. Many say that every election is heated, which to some degree is true. But never in our history have we had an election with such transparency. The ubiquitous smart phone has given every person a window into the character and habits of every public figure. This is historically new.

In the past, public figures were shielded simply by limited access. They could indulge in corruption and promiscuity with impunity. Damage control was far easier when information could not go viral in minutes whether true or false. (FDR, JFK, Bill Clinton come to mind)

This “living in a glass house” with full transparency has hurt both Democrats and Republicans. Some are offended by President Trump’s style. Some are offended by former Vice President Biden’s corruption. Even more folks are aghast at the biased press and the disintegration of this vital pillar of our free democratic republic (this may be the ultimate poison pill).

In spite of the power and wealth of the media (Hollywood /press/ academia /publishing /big tech), I return to my fifty-year policy of choosing candidates based on what they can do for our country. For what happens to our country affects the world for good or ill. I choose substance over style, performance over personality. There is too much at stake to consider anything else.

The current genocide of the unborn, free speech, freedom of worship, freedom of assembly, and peace at home and abroad are all substantive issues at the top of my list and have found their way into my novels. Cancel culture is seen in all of these issues – the cancellation of life, the cancellation of churches and schools, the cancellation of speakers (and novelist bloggers!), the cancellation of enterprise of all kinds, the cancellation of law and order. The Chinese virus was and continues to be weaponized against freedom, the pandemic’s dangers real but fears far exaggerated, designed to keep us locked down in dependance upon the State.

But be of good cheer, for today is All Saints! A wonderful celebration in the calendar for Christians. One of our preachers this morning (I visited three virtual liturgies and am becoming a sermon junkie) said that saints are you and I as well as those on the calendar, those canonized by the Church. He said, when folks think of you, do they see Christ? Tough question. Saints walk among us today, everyday saints, men and women who love with the love of Christ, who witness to his acts of salvation, who follow his commandments and repent when they fail to obey them, who pick themselves up (and dust themselves off) and move into the next minutes and days and months and years, suffering for the love of you and I, courageous and free from fear.

And so we thank God for the saints past, present, and to come in these challenging times. We pray for our nation and our nation’s leaders. We pray for peace. We pray for freedom from tyranny, from socialism in all its forms, soft or hard. We remember Russia and China and Germany and Cuba and those who fled here for refuge (and continue to flee here), those who witness to the horror they experienced. We tell our history to our children – true history, our true past so that we can learn where we went wrong and how to do better. We pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and gather together in prayerful thanksgiving and song:

“For all the saints, who from their labors rest,/Who thee by faith before the world confessed,/Thy Name o Jesus, be forever blessed./Alleluia, alleluia!” (Hymn #126, words by Wm. Walsham How, 1864)

May God bless America!

In many of our Anglican parishes we celebrate the Feast of Christ the King today (some celebrate at the end of November, following the new Roman rite from 1970.) Today kingship is one more form of authority frowned upon. And yet, as Bob Dylan sang in 1979, in “Gotta Serve Somebody”:

“You’re gonna have to serve somebody.
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord,
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

Dylan recognized that we all must make this choice whether we admit to it or not. Many make the choice by default.

Today many serve themselves, their own passions, their own wills, their possessions. As Christians we recognize we can choose whom we serve. For all must recognize an authority, whether they realize this or not. Christians have the blessed fortune to serve Christ the King, the God of ultimate love, the Creator of the world and the Creator of each one of us.

To recognize that we must choose whom or what we serve releases us from many worries. For when we choose our King, we choose the path on which we are to walk – His path – and the rest falls into place.

But the Devil lurks like a lion, ready to pounce, ready to tempt and distract. He desires our allegiance. Will we serve him?

We live in a world today that observes a darker and lower allegiance, a power that feeds on us, on our needs and desires, destroying us with lies. We are told that we do not need a king. We do not need authorities that tell us how to live. We are told to seek our own desires and be ruled by them. We are told to feel good, to follow whatever “makes you happy.”

And yet as Christians we know happiness can only come from the King who created us. Happiness can only come when we become what He designed us to be.

The mob violence in our burning cities, the gender confusion that mutilates children, the desire to throw out rules of behavior and live as we wish, the genocide of the unborn – all of these trends in our world today enslave those who claim truth is relative, goodness is relative, all perspectives are relative.

As Christians we know that Christ the King gives mankind ways to live since the world began. These ways, encoded in the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, the law of love, of faith, hope, and charity, we know informed the founding of our nation. Now, as our people depart from allegiance to Christ the King and His law of love, our nation and world fragment into millions of identities, devolving into tribal wars, and sinking into the abyss of chaos.

As Christians we know this world is only the beginning of something far better, more beautiful, more glorious to come, a nurturing time in which we grow fuller, more complete, whole. As T.S. Eliot wrote in “Four Quartets, The Dry Salvages”:

“These are only hints and guesses,/ Hints followed by guesses;/ And the rest is prayer, observance, discipline, /Thought and action. /The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, /Is Incarnation.”

We are part of this Incarnation, for we are made in the divine image, in the flesh, incarnate. We have choices. We can choose to create or we can choose to destroy. We can hide our light or we can shine our light. We can seek our Creator and listen to His voice, those hints followed by guesses. We can observe His law of love and discipline our souls and bodies with prayer, thought, and action. For today we see through a window dimly but tomorrow will clearly, having grown into our fullness.

We gotta serve somebody. If not Christ the King, then who knows what dark forces (including our own egos and passions) will command our path in this life.

It is easy to listen to the wrong powers that be. It is easy to choose ease and self and even withdrawal into hidden corners. It is not always clear which choice to make in a given moment. And so we pray. We immerse ourselves in the gifts half understood – scripture and sacrament and song. We keep Sundays holy. We honor our parents (and other authorities). We try not to lie, kill, covet, cheat. We repent and are washed cleaned by the blood of the Lamb.

And the hint half guessed is Christ the King himself. The hint half guessed is the Incarnation of our Creator who lived among us, died, and rose to life. The hint half guessed is all there before us – in the glory of song and the poetry of prayer and the humility of dependence upon our God of love, our heavenly Father.

For in the end, we need not worry. We are care-less, free of care. We fight the good fight, run the race. At the end of the day, we place our cares and worries at the feet of the King. We place our sufferings in his hands. And it is through these wounds that we climb the ladder to Heaven. It is through these wounds that we are welcomed by His side. It is through these wounds that His hand finds ours, pulls us up, and enfolds us in his arms.

For we have chosen whom we will serve – the God of all Creation, the God of Love, Christ the King.