The Rev. Bill Wagner

Isaiah 61:1-3
Psalm 121
Rev. 21:2-7
John 14:1-6a

They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

“Oaks of righteousness.” Those great old trees symbolize everything solid, lasting and beautiful and so it is a fitting image to remember Father Bill, for he was all those things, solid, everlastingly faithful, beautiful in the way only someone who truly walks with the Lord can be. Isaiah called such people “oaks of righteousness,” righteousness being a word we little understand, a word to which we attach all sorts of holier-than-thou meanings, but to be righteous is simply to walk with the Lord over the journey that is this life in such a way that the whole self is transformed into something that glows from within.
That transformed self grew out of a wealth of experiences that many of you know better than I: how he served in WWII and was there at Pearl Harbor when the ship next to his was destroyed. How he served in parishes of distinction not just in this country but in the world. How he came to Norfolk and made this his home and blessed all who knew him throughout his life with that warm smile, those gentle, twinkling eyes, that serene presence. Such righteousness as his was almost tangible, felt in a personal warmth, a charisma born of friendship with the Lord. It is not merely a personal quality but a spiritual quality.
It is a quality that he freely shared, finding always the word of blessing needed, teaching by example an intense reverence and devotion. One priest has told me he learned all the theology he needed to know from Father Bill simply by watching him. Watching Bill, there were no words needed to understand the miracle that is God’s presence in life. Because to spend time with him was to spend time with someone who was a friend of God. And it was delightfully contagious, this quiet assurance something that became part of those who knew him.
Which is not to say that he wasn’t immensely, refreshingly human. His genuine humanity was perhaps his most appealing asset; his ability to be comfortable with all the foibles of being a created being in an imperfect world. I am told that he once served in a church without air conditioning, on one of those blistering hot days that make one long for the pool or the ocean. Being both practical and not above the little joke, Bill wore his bathing suit under his cassock. Which would have been fine except that large fans had been installed in the church to move the air around and the fans insisted on blowing open his cassock at the most inopportune times, exposing some very white legs! It is so hard to be righteous when people are laughing at you! Then too, Bill was a huge Yankees fan and a die-hard Democrat, that loyalty being the price of admission to the breakfast group. I suspect many people faked being Democratic just to be around him.
And while his ears would not, in his later years, allow him to hear the gospel, it was OK, for he was at work being the gospel for all of us who need to have it enfleshed. That kind of righteousness comes of having heard the voice of the shepherd where it matters, in your heart, and of having followed, of having given oneself to those expressions of the good news of God that Isaiah spoke of, of bringing to everyone, with your own self, the presence of the living Christ. And those rare souls who live this way can’t help but bring garlands while we wear only ashes, can’t help but offer praise while we feel faint and weary, can’t help but make us feel anointed with the oil of gladness even while our spirits are weak. It is this kind of righteousness that builds up in the face of devastation, which repairs that which seems forever ruined. Such were the gifts of Father Bill among us, an oak of righteousness, and peace and gentleness.
Such people are the plantings of the Lord in our midst, the visible reminder of God’s generosity and graciousness. Isaiah says these oaks of righteousness among us are sent to display the glory of the Lord. It is for that, I am sure, but much more I believe, to display God’s kindness, compassion and humility. It is those qualities that draw us to God and that drew us to Father Bill, who made those qualities visible.
It was that kindness, that compassion, and that humility that converted my soul, yet again, though I barely knew him at the time. Because Father Bill did something that stunned me with its pure beauty, though for him it was an act as natural as breathing, and as revealing. It was perhaps my first Maundy Thursday here, and Father Bill came forward for the rite of footwashing. He had his feet washed and then Father Bill turned and knelt, rather painfully I’m sure, on the stone floor, to wash the feet of the next person. And after washing this man’s feet, so gently, he bent and, cradling those feet in his hands, he kissed them. And in that act, he recognized, and honored, the Christ present, in that moment, before him. It was theology lived out, a theology of humility by a distinguished, experienced, aging priest, a man who need kneel before no one, except the living God.
DeeDee, Bill, daughter DeeDee, all of you who were family to him, who loved him – thank you for sharing him with us, for having allowed us to see something of the good work that God can do in a man who offers his life in that service. Know that as the Lord has been his help and salvation, He is also ours. “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” Bill now sees face to face that friend he served for so long, the One we came to know through knowing him.

Bread for the Journey

John 6:35, 41-51
Proper 14, Year B
August 12, 2012

Patti, by the grace of God called to be a Deacon, to the church of Christ and of St. Luke that is in Norfolk, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you for, when I came to you some 3 years ago, both you and I had endured rough times. Though it was Win’s inspired idea that I come to you, I was more than a little uncertain, being intimidated by your grand spaces, your glorious music and your considerable history. When Anne said that I was “petite,” she was speaking the truth, for I was also petite in spirit, hungry and thirsty myself. But God is the One who draws us to Him, that he might feed us from His own table. And so, I was drawn here, for what has been too little time with you, to find a community of great care, warm hearts, and willing hands. “I will bless the Lord at all times [because of you]; his praise shall ever be in my mouth.”
And God has truly blessed this place. Here countless people over decades have been drawn, to find respite and strength in the One who offers the bread of life. That is as it should be, for churches were first built to draw our hearts and minds toward the Lord, the One who gives us life and light. And here we can’t help but be inspired, in this beautiful place, by architecture which draws our hearts upward but also by images which remind us of the long history of people who have given their lives to the faith that is in them. It is no small treasure. And soon you will have a new music director who will beckon you to more glorious worship, a man whose own life is illumined by the goodness of God. He will lead this choir in continuing what was begun so long ago, joining with the angels in praising God. And this is the finest choir, only a little lower than the angels. Every Sunday they cause me to sin, for the women’s voices make me envious and the men’s voices cause me to fall in love with them. Do not fail to encourage them, for the work they do is another kind of bread.
We are also fed here by two priests whose coming can only have been by the grace of God, for they offer distinctly different gifts, different approaches to life and worship, honey wheat and marbled rye so to speak, both a delight to the body of Christ. Win offers you the bread of peace. A man of contemplation and consensus-building, he is all about building up the body of Christ by treasuring each person, no part of the body being able to say to the other, “I have no need of you.” His is the bread renewed every day, like manna in the wilderness, the bread of kindness and understanding, the bread of life in what often seems a desert.
Anne brings another sort of food, the food of new ways to address and understand God, the bread of healing for what ails us, body and soul, the bread of hope when all seems lost. It is food offered by one who has known the hunger herself and met that hunger daily in her rounds of parish and hospital. She offers the bread of calm assurance, the bread of promise that God will never leave or forsake us, the bread of hope that with God, even the desert contains food for the soul.
And I — I am aware that I have asked much of you when I have asked you to take in bread that is sometimes hard to swallow, those stories from the nursing home that speak of the frailty of our humanity and the hunger that persists sometimes even to death. I have brought you those stories not simply because that is my weekly reality, but because that is also where God is found. It is in the ordinary things, like bread, and in ordinary people, whom we think we know, that God reveals God’s own self. And even among those whose bodies are failing, whose minds are damaged, there is a glimpse of the face of God and in that face is the bread of life. What I hope to have said to you over these many months is what I deeply believe: that there is no part of life that is untouched by God, no person in life who is beyond the care of the One who made us all. As the prophets said, “[We] shall all be taught by God,” and it is through other people that we learn the most enduring lessons.
Several years ago, I first came to you through the doors of this church, bearing on high the good news of God in Christ. My brothers and sisters, do not fail to notice each time you enter and leave this place, that the inner doors are red. Red has long been the distinguishing color for cathedral doors, signifying down through the ages a sanctuary, a place of safety and shelter. It is tempting, amid all this beauty, to want to hold onto it, to protect it by keeping it to ourselves. But cathedrals have always been the center of the community, the place where all could find refuge, where the lost, the poor, and the mistreated could find comfort. You have offered that in many ways, feeding the homeless, sheltering the cold and dispossessed, but you must remember that God has a special fondness for those whom we would dismiss. As it was in the wilderness that the Israelites were fed with the bread of angels, so it was to the hungry that Jesus came. So I implore you, my brothers and sisters, to seek new ways to offer the bread of life to those in a modern wilderness, those hungry for the grace and glory that you know here. Be of good courage, my friends; stretch yourselves, even when it is painful, to make this a community where those least valued by our society may find food for their souls as well as their bodies. Our Lord Jesus once reminded us that what is done to the least of these is done to him. That conviction came at great cost to Jesus and it may cost us too, for we can be sure that “whenever the church rises up to be the church, the world will rise up to be the world.” But we are called to offer a welcome to all those hungry for the bread of life, for by doing so we welcome the Lord Christ.
Finally, my friends, “thank you” is too small a phrase for all you have given me. You have touched my heart and blessed my life in ways too numerous to count. I will carry you in my heart always. May the God of all joy be with you, now and always.

The Journey

Jesus ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. Mark 6

So it begins: the great sorting out of what we will take and what we will leave behind. After 27 years in one house, we have an attic-full, a garage-full, closets-full – and here is Jesus, putting it all in perspective: take nothing except a staff. Well, we will no doubt take more than a staff but the point is a good one, one I become increasingly aware of. Because it is so easy to become attached to the things we have, to see them as somehow offering security. And they do that. Being surrounded by our own “stuff” makes us feel at home, wherever home is. But those things are so much less important than the other things we take with us. So I will be also taking the hearts of all those I’ve come to love in this place, the memories of people who have shared their lives with me, the images of people extending themselves for others, when it would have been easier not to. I’ll be taking the feeling of exaltation I get on hearing our choir, heavenly music in a heavenly place. I’ll be taking the kindness of all those who have encouraged me, told me something I said or did mattered to them. I’ll be taking all the blessings I’ve received in this place from all the people who have been part of this leg of the journey.

It really makes it so much easier to part with possessions (and I am doing so ruthlessly!) when I think about those real treasures. And those other things? Well, we’ll buy bread there and we’ll no doubt have a moving van full of bags and we’ll need some money. But in this heat, wearing sandals and only one tunic is a given! And the staff? People used to carry a staff both to help them to walk and to use to ward off danger. So the presence of Christ will be our staff. Having brought us this far and shown us the joy to be had in serving him in this place, we can rely on him to see us safely to the next.

Bumper Stickers and Other Thoughts

So I confess: I am fond of reading bumper stickers and deciphering license plates. It makes the driving a bit more interesting and often provides a clever surprise. My two favorites are: “Forget world peace; visualize using your turn signal!” and “What if the hokey-pokey is what it’s all about?” I wish life were so simple and so simply expressed.
But then I think of Jesus, who often expressed profound insights in simple-to-remember phrases, phrases like “Even as you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me.” Or “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” Or “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Those phrases immediately summon up the story that contains them and the people who were there and the power of his life and words to show us another way of being.
We have these sorts of sayings in our own families, sayings that remind us of the speaker, of our life with them, of who they have been for us. In my family, they are sayings like “She comes by it (that trait) honestly!” and “Bless Patti!” (which I thought for years was all about me) and my father’s most recently repeated mantra, “Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative and don’t mess with Mr. In-between!” They are ways of communicating without providing an essay explanation for what we believe is important. And don’t we get tired of essay explanations from all those who would tell us where we have gone wrong and what we really should do?
So, if we were to put our faith, our hope, and our life in a few words, what would they be?
“Life is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk the way with us. So let us be swift to love and make haste to be kind.”

It’s a God Thing

I recently ruminated on the idea that our God is too big for many of us, that we tend to relegate God to the heavenly sphere and have come to believe that the earthly problems are ours to control, to manage, to fix. Well, as they say, sometimes preachers preach the truth they themselves need to hear.
About 6 weeks ago, our pianist at the nursing home moved away, leaving us without the live music that is such a draw for our Thursday morning hymn sing. There is something about live music that feeds the soul and our a cappella singing just wasn’t the same. But I hadn’t gotten around to doing anything about it. Then a few weeks ago, a couple approached me after church to ask if I could use their gifts in the nursing home —they both play the piano! “Oh,” I said. “That would be wonderful! I really need someone to play for us on Thursday mornings.” “We’re free on Thursday mornings,” they said. “But,” I said, “We mostly sing Baptist songs so you might find it unfamiliar.” Well,” said the wife, “I was raised a Baptist.” And the husband said, “And I’m good at improvisation.” And then I said, “But my facility is all the way out in Virginia Beach and you might not want to come so far.” “Oh,” they said. “That’s all right. We live in Virginia Beach.”
It’s just possible that God cares about even a few people in a Virginia Beach nursing home.

Thank You Notes

During a recent trip to Atlanta for the Festival of Homiletics, I had dinner with an old friend, the wife of a Navy pilot buddy of my husband’s. We are able to do this every few years and it is such joy. We spent 3 hours talking non-stop about the changes in our lives, so different from the early days of careers and raising children and changing squadrons. Now we talk of retirement and grandchildren and the surprises our bodies bring! A few days after returning home, I had a thank-you note from her, which brought back all the joy of our time together. To read her note was to hear her voice again and to know that we are still connected, after all these years.

But it caused me to think about writing such notes, about how it seems to have fallen out of favor, replaced by the email or text, messages too short and in type, messages that just don’t carry the same meaning as a note in a dearly-loved, familiar handwriting. Reminded me of how good it was to find a letter from my husband when he was deployed or a letter from my mother when we lived far away from them. Reading such a note, I could see them, sitting at a grey metal desk on the ship or sitting on the sofa at home, pen in hand, spending time with me in thought and spirit. I could see them and feel loved, cared for, remembered.

I used to keep a journal in which I wrote down every day, one thing I was thankful for, as a way of writing a thank-you note to God. I wonder why I stopped?

This I Believe

For those of you who missed it at the Adult Forum, here it is, with my notes…

I believe in God the Father. That is, I believe that all that is was created by God whose nature is generous love. God is neither male nor female nor embodied, but we describe God as father in order to explain our understanding of God as creative, caring, and protective, among other adjectives. But God is ultimately a mystery which we can only dimly perceive. Most of our ideas about God must fail for God to be God. Staying open to that idea is the surest way to encounter God.
• My own father, giving himself away to church and to others: man at dinner
• My mother, teaching SS for 17 years, volunteering as Pink Lady and with Hospice, Jewish idea of giving without shaming the other.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son. That is, I believe that Jesus is the truest image and likeness of the nature and will of God. I believe that Jesus came not just to die for us but to show us how to live. I believe that Jesus’ death was not a payment made to an angry God but the ultimate act of confrontation with evil and the definitive evidence that the goodness of God will always overcome it.
• “The light was in the world and the darkness did not overcome it.” It is what keeps people getting up in the morning when there doesn’t seem to be any good reason to do so.

Thus, I believe that humiliation, embarrassment, failure and sin — everything that is darkness to us — can be the doorway to a more authentic humanity and thus a willingness to be human with other humans.
• This is part of what Paul means when he says we must give thanks for all things. Our fears around being imperfect, around failure and mistakes actually keep us from growing into the people God dreams we might be because we become defensive, superior, self-protective, relying on our own devices instead of on the all-encompassing, all-forgiving love of God.
• We must trust that God can use whatever we bring to the table to work for good.
• “God is a surprise.”

I believe in God the Holy Spirit. That is, I believe that God has acted and continues to act in the lives of the people God has created through inspiration, talents and gifts, music and beauty, ways too numerous to mention in which God both reveals God’s own self and encourages us to reveal ourselves.

I believe that God created each of us with a dream of who we would be and that our task is to discover the dimension of that dream and endeavor to live into it.
• Thus, God’s call to each of us is to discover where our deep joy and the world’s deep need meet, because there is God’s call to us. (Nouwen)
• I believe that God is never finished with us, that all of life is about growing up: “You are never too old to be what you ought to have been.” (Emily Bronte)

I believe that nothing can separate us from the love of God, except our own willful rejection of God’s love — and even then, God does not stop loving us or watching for us, as the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son.
• But, as Barth said, “Do not fear the wrath of God, but fear the love of God for love will strip away all that does not belong.”

I believe that we are created to live in community, that we are most able to become God’s dream of us when we understand that it is not good for us to be alone.
• I believe that independence is an illusion, best dispensed with as soon as possible. We know it as infants; our cries as children testify to our need for each other:
o When we are alone, we have “no one with whom to practice forgiveness.”
• Sammie saying “It’s all God.”
• Likewise, “To become the family of God is the vocation of the church.” (Bp. Michael Curry) — and families contain all kinds of odd people whom we welcome and love because we are related.

I believe that we are defined by the stories we tell; that is, not just us, here, in this place, but all people are defined by and find their meaning in the stories they tell.
• Thus, it’s important to look at what stories we tell about ourselves as individuals and as a group and to discern what those stories say (or don’t say) about who we are.
• Perhaps even more, it’s important to look at which stories we don’t tell and what that says. Not preaching about a certain passage is only another way of preaching about the passage.

I believe that the sole goal of this life is to learn how to love better. And that that is both challenge and blessing. Challenge because it is hard. Blessing because it brings us the closest we will ever get to God, this side of heaven.
• “Some people would much rather be religious than to love somebody.” (Joyce Meyer)
• We are charged to act out our faith.
• To learn how to love better, we must learn how to give ourselves away, because that act tears down our sense of independence and self-sufficiency. It is a life-long journey that continues even when we are sick, even when we are dying:
o Woman at WC praying over the church roster every AM.
o Sammie comforting the demented

I believe that God has a heart for people who are hurting and that when our hearts are also moved by those same things, we glimpse a bit of the face of God.
• Matt.25: the parable of the sheep and the goats. “Even as you did not do it unto the least of these, you did not do it unto me.”
• Clay: “I get in arguments when I go sit outside so I have to come in and go to my room. But I get lonely.” “I know you won’t believe this when I say it but I hope God blesses you today.”

While some find God in retreat, silence, and thin places, for most of us, God is most clearly and most often revealed in the people we meet in the course of an ordinary day. Thus, I believe that we can learn about God, ourselves and each other from those we think least likely to have anything to teach us. “God has chosen what is low and contemptible to confound the wise…” (Paul)
• “I seem to have lost myself. Is there anyone here who can help me find myself?”
• “Sitting in a grave.”