It is not a story that can be kept quiet, Mark 1:40-45

Hat tip to the Episcopal Cafe...

February 15 • The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

Reflection by the Rev. Dr. Roger Ferlo...

When Jesus chooses to touch the leper he is not just curing him of chronic eczema or psoriasis. Nor is he simply forgiving the man’s sins, although most people who have assumed that the leper’s crawling skin was both the result and the sign of sinfulness. By stretching out his hand and touching the leper, Jesus muddies the boundary separating the clean from the unclean, what is socially acceptable from what is socially anathema.

Such a touch has political as well as therapeutic implications. In effect, it redefines how God acts in the world. Jesus tells the man he is to show himself to the priests, thus starting a process of political and social reintegration that will restore the healed leper to full status in the ritual system that once had cast him out. But Jesus’ touch, as Mark describes it, is more powerful than even Jesus himself had imagined. Instead of going quietly to the priests, the leper spreads the news through all the neighboring towns. It is not a story that can be kept quiet. In the gospel’s larger picture, the leper’s new wholeness is a sign that the entire system that had separated clean from unclean is in jeopardy, about to be blown wide open.

From Sensing God: Reading Scripture With All Our Senses by Roger Ferlo (Cowley Publications, 2002).

Roger Ferlo's Commencement Address at VTS

The Rev. Dr. Roger Ferlo's Commencement Address at VTS. Read it all HERE.

Some excerpts below:

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The joy of the Torah finds its renewal not in the closed circles of the rule-bound and proof-texting sectarian and schismatic mind, but in the incarnation and restoration of Wisdom herself, in the very person of Jesus.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me.” But be careful. This is risky ground. Walk this way with caution. This same Jesus whose yoke is so much easier than the yoke of the Pharisees is also the troubling and troublesome teacher who admonishes his followers to leave everything behind and to take up the heavy yoke of the cross. To deepen the paradox even more, the very heaviness of that yoke, borne by Christ alone, has against all reason and expectation restored the lightness and delight of Torah joy in us, unlocking and revealing to us in the Word of scripture the very Word made flesh. In cross and resurrection, in the power of the Holy Spirit blowing through our midst, Christ is made alive and vibrant in us, here, now, as readers and hearers and doers of the Word, in the continuing discipline of holy reading and holy living—in the lively, contradictory, polemical, dialectical, open and open-ended community of lernen—to which all of us are called, a yoke which all of us now joyously assume as our own.

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As we gather here in prayer and thanksgiving, and as some of you cross this stage, I suggest that all of us here try to regard these academic hoods not simply as the secular symbols of advanced degrees, but also as symbols of the yoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, the outward and visible signs of our shared commitment to the way of the Torah that is the way of Christ, a commitment to the act of lernen that my rabbi friend cherished so deeply, a commitment to the act of loving the Lord our God with all our minds as well as with all our hearts, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Can you receive these flimsy hoods this morning as a sign of your lifelong commitment to the life of the mind in service to the life of the soul, and not just your own minds and souls, but also the minds and souls of all whom you encounter as teachers, pastors, administrators, counselors? Will the lightness of these hoods remind you of the easy yoke that Jesus has laid upon us? In all our academic achievements, can we learn from Him the gentleness and humbleness of heart that are essential to the ministry of teaching and learning to which we have been called?

Let’s be frank, there is danger in academic occasions like this one. I daresay all of my colleagues here on this stage have experienced that danger as much as I have. I will talk about M.Div. degrees in a moment, but those of us gathered here to receive certificates of work accomplished, or MTS or MACE degrees, or D.Min’s, or honorary doctorates of divinity, might also know something about this danger. It is the danger of spiritual pride and intellectual hubris, the conviction that our educational achievements have somehow set us apart, that in earning our degrees we have been inducted into some kind of intellectual elite. Of course, such arrogance flies in the face of what the gospel insists upon when it comes to knowledge.

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There will be many experiences in your ordained life where a deep resistance to learning will make itself felt. You will feel it in a popular culture increasingly hostile to the educated mind. You will feel it in a political culture where strident voices pillory knowledge and expertise as somehow undemocratic and elitist. You will feel it in a religious culture where the give-and-take of the intellectual life is perceived as an alien threat to people of faith. My hope and prayer for you as you enter the ordained life is that you will steadily resist such know-nothing religion, that you will wear the yoke of your continuing learning with passion and determination, and that you will demonstrate to your parishioners and to the larger world that the love of learning and the desire for God are one and the same love, and a life-long enterprise—an enterprise that as teacher and pastor and priest you seek to share with those you serve.



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Just brilliant!

Virginia Theological Seminary Commencement, 2008 Online

I'm sitting here at my desk, trying to grade the last few papers before the onslaught of exam grading after I administer the exam this weekend, and also working through the last details of the my first opportunity to preside at a wedding. Amidst all these end of year tasks, I remembered that my seminary, Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) is having its commencement exercises. So, I clicked on the link HERE, and am watching it. So, check it out. My beloved professor and advisor, Roger Ferlo, will give the commencement address, and you can also check out last night's Mission for the Church service at which the Presiding Bishop preached HERE.

It brings me all back to only 1 year ago and my own commencement...wow, lots has happened since then! NYC for the summer, ordination to the diaconate, beginning a new job, new city, new school, having our third child, ordination to the priesthood, and on and on....

I hope and pray that in this time of the end of the school years that all of us can take time to reflect on the year past, and give thanks for God's grace through it all. Peace be with you!

Some images from a year ago are below:

Big Wave Episcopal Surfin' these days!

"Where's my board, dude?"

I feel like we are surfing the big waves of the North Shore of Hawaii these days in the Episcopal Church. The waves of sensationalistic news coverage of the recent House of Bishops' meeting in New Orleans are large waves indeed! As a newly ordained person in our Church I find myself in many conversations about this coverage, and the many, varied responses to it. Being busy planning chapels, preaching, teaching, participating in family life, and getting a bit of rest are occupying the vast majority of my time. However, in the midst of the wavy seas I was so glad to read two recent blog entries on the Episcopal Cafe blog that helped me to find a way to ride on through these waves. Roger Ferlo wrote a wonderful piece that gives some helpful perspective on the recent meeting of the House of Bishops, and I commend it to anyone who is feeling a bit weary by the recent rhetoric and news coverage.

"I thought I knew better. No good usually comes of this. In my long experience as a parish priest, there have been few occasions more dispiriting to me than these scheduled gathering of bishops. I say this not because I dislike bishops all that much. I admire a lot of them, count not a few as my friends, and most of the time feel rather sorry for them, isolated and misunderstood as they often are. But I find such occasions dispiriting because, in spite of everything I believe and teach about shared power and shared authority, I find myself buying the press’s line that the power and decision-making in the Episcopal Church in the United States are centered in the House of Bishops, and find myself hoping that whatever they decide this weekend down in New Orleans will set everything right.

And I am always proved wrong. There’s no reason to assume that these men and women will be up to such a task. It’s not their job. It’s a job all of us share. That fact underscores one of the ironies of Anglican history. In spite of our reputation in other parts of the Anglican Communion as a prime colonizer of heretical values and American power, the American church goes about its business in a distinctly post-colonial way. We long ago shed our allegiance to meddling foreign bishops. For two centuries our church has invested decision-making authority in a duly-elected bicameral legislature where both the ordained and the non-ordained have equal voice and equal standing. "


"Who knows where Paul would have positioned himself in the present fracas. If anyone knew about disarray and fracture, it was Paul, and we know that he was never above fomenting a little disarray himself. But he was faithful. That’s all that can be asked of any of us in the end—fidelity to God’s embracing love as we have experienced it in Jesus, and fidelity to each other, members of Christ’s body, wherever we stand or refuse to stand on the issues that divide us. Signing on to this kind of love will get you pretty far, regardless of what the bishops say or don’t say—no matter what political catastrophes seem to lie in store for Christ’s body, wounded and redeemed."

Read the rest of Roger Ferlo's piece HERE.

The second piece was written by Susan Daughtry who offers her own perspective on the documents that arose from the House of Bishops' Meeting. Rev. Daughtry''s take is helpful, pithy, funny, and wise...well worth a read, whether or not you agree with her take on things ...!

Since all kinds of uninformed reporters in the secular media have been adding their opinions to the mix, I thought I'd throw mine in there, which may be worth all the money you've just paid to get to see it, and may be just as objective as your hometown newspaper.

Here's a short, slanted, and totally oversimplified summary of what the House of Bishops' response to the Primates' Communique says (which, for the record, is nothing new at all):

Dear Primates:

First, we still love our gay and lesbian people. We agreed last summer not to consecrate them (though we're not making promises about anyone who might be single), or authorize any prayer book revisions for them, so that you would not write us off entirely. But only for a while. And yes, there are some of us who are doing everything we can short of those two promises to speak up with and for them. (If that troubles you, please see point The Fourth).

Second, we still love you and all of our Anglican Brothers and Sisters (though we're seriously peeved at a particular set of you who are using some seriously sketchy funding to put forward a massive smear campaign, take away buildings that were pledged to us, and give away a bunch of purple shirts to people who couldn't be duly elected to earn them). We love learning from you and with you. We want to follow Jesus right alongside you. We think we have a few things to contribute to you, too. Please don't stop speaking to us.

Read the rest of Susan Daughtry Fawcett's entry HERE

So, grab your boards and surf on over to read these two wonderful blog entries that may just help us to "hang ten" through these big waves....