In the world we live in, it’s common to hear the phrase “seeing is believing.” It’s a sentiment that reflects a deep-seated human desire for tangible proof, for concrete evidence that can be seen, touched, and examined. Sunday’s Gospel challenges this mindset. It invites us to a different kind of knowing, a different kind of seeing. It calls us to foster a faith beyond sight.

Faith is a profound trust in what we cannot see. It’s deep-seated conviction that even though we cannot see God with our physical eyes, He is there. He is real. He is working in our lives. He is worthy of our trust. This kind of faith is not blind. Rather, it’s about recognizing that there is a deeper reality, a higher truth that transcends what we can see with our physical eyes.

This kind of faith is beautifully illustrated in the story of Thomas in John’s Gospel. Thomas, one of the disciples, wasn’t there when Jesus first appeared to the other disciples after His resurrection. He didn’t see Jesus with his own eyes. So, when the other disciples told him that they had seen the Lord, he refused to believe. He demanded physical proof. He wanted to see the nail marks in Jesus’ hands and put his hand into Jesus’ side….

On this Good Friday, when we remember God’s uncompromising love for us all, I offer these words from The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers:

The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love…the beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else—but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful…Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself…….

This time of chaos and undoing has elicited lots of feelings in many of us. They are not all on the negative side of the balance, these feelings, but those that are run the gamut from dread to fury and back again. Our Lenten spiritual practices and disciplines could not come at a better time—not because such commitments dismiss our broken hearts or magically repair them, but because they place our distress in the context of Jesus Christ.

When I first learned that my office was going to move to the nave of the church during the reconstruction of our Mission House, I was hesitant. I love my usual office. It is a perfect size for working alone and for 2 or 3 people to gather. There are trees outside all the windows, and I can hear the rotating activities on the Penn South asphalt outside throughout the year. I have most of my meetings in that office and I do most of my writing there, as well. It is the perfect combination of accessible and set apart….

Often, we let our circumstances dictate our faith. We trust God when things are going well, but when things get tough, we start to doubt. We start to question whether He really cares. In part of Sunday’s Gospel, (Mark 12:42-48) we see the faith of the widow was not dependent on her circumstances as she, despite her poverty, gave all she had to the treasury. She was clearly dependent on her trust in God….

As the world around us and our lives grow more and more complicated and stressful, it is often grounding to get back to the simple things in life — like a walk in a park. It’s a good way to let go of our worries and to be present to the beauty of God’s creation. And...

Last Saturday, our Vestry gathered for an annual Retreat Day. Bishop Mary Glasspool joined us to lead our morning program, and as an ice-breaker exercise she asked us to create our own version of a poem titled “Where I’m From.” Everyone filled in blanks in a “mad-libs” type template with details from their own experiences, and we read our offerings aloud. It was wonderful to learn new things about one another. There were benefits in figuring out how to fill in the blanks, too—each of us was asked to think about specific details that serve as windows into how each of us has been formed.

Some years ago, there was a story making the rounds about a man named Robert Liebowitz. A 60 -year-old single father of five, he had been struggling with kidney disease since he was 10 years old. Eventually he was told that he would need dialysis three times a week to survive, and a transplant to live. Because of his blood type (“O”), and the fact that some of his children were also contending with kidney disease, none of them could donate one of their kidneys to their father….

God wants us to be inwardly genuine and penitent in our worship.

Just as Jesus cleansed the temple we have to take an internal inventory of where we stand. As we know, taking an internal inventory of our own lives is not comfortable is it?

We all know that we have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God.

We do not like taking those kinds of inventories because we might not always like what we find within ourselves….

Today, Friday, September 29, is the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. It might be a particularly auspicious day to be open to how angels are present in our own lives. Here is John O’Donohue’s A Blessing of Angels, which might help us to experience angels in a new way…