The Message - January 2023

The Message this month:

Contributors:

Christ Church Staff:

The Rev. Patrick Gahan, Rector

The Rev. Scott Kitayama, Associate Rector

The Rev. Brien Koehler, Associate Rector for Mission and Formation

The Rev. Justin Lindstrom, Associate Rector for Community Formation

Karen Von Der Bruegge, Director of Vocational Discernment and Pastoral Care

Halleta Heinrich, Director of Family Ministry

Lily Fenton, Nursery Director

Avery Moran, Youth Minister

Front cover photo: Susanna Kitayama

Under the C Christmas Pageant main cast Back Cover photo: Gretchen Duggan Lessons & Carols

Editor: Gretchen Duggan

Worship Services:

Sundays

7:30 a.m. - Rite I 9 & 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. - Rite II *9 & 11 a.m are live streamed

Sunday School 10:00 a.m. Christian Education for Children, Youth, and Adults

Wednesdays

11 a.m. - Eucharist with Anointing and Healing Prayers. *The service is also live streamed

Saturdays

8:30 a.m. - Eucharist on the Outreach Pavilion lawn * www.cecsa.org/live-stream

Susan Lindstrom, Director of College Ministry

Joshua Benninger, Music Minister & Organist

Jennifer Holloway, Assistant Music Director, Children’s Music Director & Social Media Manager

Charissa Fenton, Receptionist

Robert Hanley, Director of Campus Operations

Darla Nelson, Office Manager

Donna Franco, Financial Manager

Gretchen Comuzzi Duggan, Director of Communications

Monica Elliott, Executive Assistant to the Rector

Elizabeth Martinez, Kitchen Manager

Robert Vallejo, Facilities Manager

Rudy Segovia, Hospitality Manager

Joe Garcia, Sexton

2022 Vestry:

Andy Anderson, Senior Warden

Margaret Pape, Junior Warden

Doug Daniel

Catherine de Marigny

Rick Foster

Spencer Hill

David McArthur

Lisa Miller Garry Schnelzer

Garnett Wietbrock Julianne Reeves Scott Rose

AVERY MORAN

PATRICK GAHAN

HALLETA HEINRICH

JOSH BENNINGER

TERRY KOEHLER

DUANE MILLER

CATHERINE DE MARIGNY

Pray… onlyas directed

by Patrick Gahan

I did not listen to the directions and ended up in the wrong place. Desperate to get to my good friend, I failed to carefully heed the busy lady’s instructions. After she had taken my temperature, peppered me with a half-dozen questions, and spent ten minutes on the intercom with the unit clerk at the ICU desk, I was in no mood to listen. The hospital, which I have visited no less than 100 times since my arrival at Christ Church, had barred my entrance due to the escalation in Covid-19 cases, even though my friend was dying, and his wife was suffering terribly. To seek a way in, I called the hospital chaplain’s office, only to hear the repeated buzz of the phone with no subsequent answer. Hanging up, I remembered another friend, a surgeon who practices at that hospital. I caught him just before he was to relieve someone of their putrefied gall bladder, and he agreed to intercede for

me, which cleared me for a single visit. Relieved, I raced to the hospital, queued in the snaking admittance line, and awaited my turn with the “Grand Inquisitor.”

Frustrated with the tedium, I did not heed her instructions to “go to the third floor and turn right through the double doors.” I was operating on automatic because I knew very well that the Medical ICU was on the second floor. She slapped the Visitor’s Badge on my chest, I jogged to the elevators, and instinctively pushed “2.” I stepped out of the elevator, turned right, pushed through the double doors, and suddenly found myself on the set of a science fiction movie. All the doors to the rooms were shut tight, each with an IV machine standing in the hallway like a British sentinel barring entry to Parliament. A few were beeping as if to ward off intruders. I was utterly disoriented walking down this dystopian passage, and even more so when I arrived at the

nurses’ station, which was completely encased in plexiglass. I could see the clerk and nurses moving and talking, but not a sound escaped their plastic stronghold. Seeing my bewilderment, a bright-faced RN summoned me to enter their fortress. I told her whom I was seeking. She checked her computer screen and reported, “Oh, he’s on the floor right above us.” I had not listened to the directions I was given in the hospital lobby and ended up on the Covid ICU floor. If I had doubted the lethality of the Coronavirus before my imprudent wanderings, my doubts were smashed upon those sealed doors, behind which were my neighbors struggling for breath.

Those were disorienting and sobering days. As I write this essay in early December 2022, the number of Covid-19 infections are climbing again, with more than a hundred serious enough to be admitted to area hospitals. These variant strains remind us that the Coronavirus is

Alberto Giuliani, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

From our rector...

not finished with us. Will it ever be?

With the proliferation of the vaccine, infections have slowly abated, hospital censuses have declined, and advanced treatments have fended off the lethality of the disease. Nevertheless, the disorienting cloud will not leave us entirely. Mutated strains of the Coronavirus are not yet in retreat. Charlie Darwin emerges yet again with his exasperating assertion of “survival of the fittest.” Viruses, like the living organisms they inhabit, change in order to survive. Recall that Covid-19 may have first jumped from bats to humans, much like the “Bird” and “Swine” flus which preceded it. Viruses constantly seek hosts to survive. We may walk out of these woods, but our illusion of invulnerability has vanished. The new normal is uncertainty, which, if the truth be told, has always been the case. We just didn’t realize it because we were too busy playing god.

Our Father Who Art in Heaven…

Christ composed a prayer for all of us whose delusions of control are crumbling beneath the weight of a world far more precarious that we could have predicted in those heady days at the close of 2019. An unforeseen benefit of this sobering realization is that we feel more akin to those first disciples of Jesus, whose lives were as unsteady as the sandy shore of the Sea of Galilee they traversed. A male’s average lifespan in Jesus’ day was 35 years, less than half of ours today. Nearly a third of all women died in childbirth in the 1st century, and babies in Caesar’s Empire were not given a name until eight or nine days had passed due to the high infant mortality rate. Christopher Hall, an ancient Church historian and former Executive Director of Renovaré, makes this stark statement about life during Jesus’ day, “To live beyond childhood was a miracle of sorts. Epidemics often rumbled through ancient cities, devouring young and old alike.”1 Roman occupation of the tiny nation of Israel made men’s score and fifteen years even more uncertain and stifling. While our present-day struggles

1 Christopher A. Hall, Living Wisely with the Church Fathers (Downer Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017), 179.

hardly approximate theirs, the fact that for two years we were evicted from our favorite restaurants, kept away from our aging parents, forced to line-up, separate, mask, and be regularly interrogated does make us feel somewhat like an occupied nation. Whatever control we once thought ours seems laughable, yet now we finally may be ready to listen.

“What they Want is to emulate Jesus’ relationship With the Father. in the precarious World

they inhabited, they needed to be anchored With God. ”

We most often conjecture that Jesus gave us his prayer as a formal invocation to be used in our rituals but nowhere else, like the wedding china we bring out twice a year. Worse still, we conceive of the Lord’s Prayer as a verbal amulet to be hastily repeated in the midst of calamity. If we open our ears to what Jesus is actually saying, however, we’ll realize that he offers his prayer as a gift of revelation, prophetic words that expose a profound truth about God and our relationship with Him. In fact, it is actually after the disciples watch Jesus at prayer that they ask, ‘Teach us to pray like you; after all, John the Baptist did as much for his disciples’ (Luke 11:1).

They are not asking for a clever text to memorize. What they want is to emulate Jesus’ relationship with the Father. In the precarious world they inhabited, they needed to be anchored with God. They did not need another prayer to spout off at a Bar Mitzvah. Jesus accedes to their request and teaches, ‘When you pray, say “Our Father…’ When you pray, begin with God.

Most of us will race to our own defense to claim, “I do start my prayers with God.” Look more carefully to see that we begin our prayers as if we are addressing a letter to God that is almost entirely about ourselves. Jesus contends that our prayers only take flight when we understand God’s place and our own. With the first words

of his prayer, Jesus points to a greater Reality – the Father. His purpose is not to distinguish himself from the Father but to insist that we are dependent on the God Reality. God is what is Really Real. Here we see where modern man has departed from our ancient ancestors. We consider God as sort of a garnish to add a slight sprig of spice to our lives. The ancients, on the other hand, could not conceive of their world without God. Mircea Eliade (19091986), the towering religion historian from the University of Chicago, reports that an isolated aboriginal tribe, upon discovering their sacred totem pole is broken, will all lie down beside one another and die.2 We may regard such a severe act as manifestly out of touch with reality. Surprisingly, they would agree. The destruction of the totem, which they consider the naval of the universe, connecting their world with God’s, has decidedly cut them off from Reality – from the source, sustenance, and enchantment of all life. Bereft of the origin and substance of their existence, their lives are drained of meaning and rendered unlivable. Communion with the divine is broken. We who have relegated God to an appendage or our occasional “rabbit’s foot” can hardly understand such a life and death connection with Reality.

An example from the Bible will better illuminate how Reality, the presence of God, is not incidental but essential to the living of our lives. Most of us are familiar with the first chapter of Genesis, the roaring opening salvo of the Bible. ‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’ (Genesis 1:1). We take that line as a statement of faith, yet we rarely think about when or why it, along with the rest of the epic Genesis story, was actually written down on parchment or papyrus. True, the stories about creation, the flood, and the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph were shared in tents, around campfires, and on journeys throughout Israel for a thousand years. They carried the Reality of God along with them, like Moses and David carried the sacred tabernacle on their journeys and into battle. Genesis, however, was put in its

2 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane (New York, Harcourt, 1957), 85 ff.

From our rector...

final form, not in Israel, but in despised Babylon. When the royals, rabbis, artists, and merchants had been marched off to Babylon and imprisoned there for two entire generations, they began to write down the words they had long rehearsed orally. Why? Because they were in danger of being disconnected from Reality, and their children were in equal jeopardy of never understanding their origin in the God revealed by Abraham and the patriarchs.

“...the JeWs considered the temple in Jerusalem as the nexus oF the cosmos, the very naval oF the universe, actually connectinG israel to God’s realm and Will ”

Not unlike the aboriginals and their sacred totem poles, the Jews considered the Temple in Jerusalem as the nexus of the cosmos, the very navel of the universe, actually connecting Israel to God’s realm and will. Babylon decimated David’s city and Solomon’s Temple and carted the leading Israelites 1,700 miles from its sacred site. Herded for over fifty years (586-538 BC) amongst the glittering citadels of Mesopotamia’s ascendant power, the Jews began losing touch with their Reality – Yahweh. Many Jews, if not most, would never return. For some, their faith crumbled like the rubble left

upon the Temple mount. The rabbinical writers and editors get busy at this critical juncture. Weaving oral tradition with writings carefully kept from King David’s dynasty, the first book of the Bible was put in its final form. The very first verse declares the truth about Reality: ‘In the beginning God…’ Moreover, Genesis reveals the truth about Babylon’s feigned reality, for what is the laughable tale about the collapsing Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) if not a mocking rebuke of that empire’s imagined sovereignty and their faux constructed reality.

Here it is important to pause and note that the rabbis wrote Genesis to be heard.

As a matter of practicality, Torah scrolls were too unwieldy for individuals to carry about. That inconvenience is of minor significance. The Scripture, then and now, is meant to be heard. The text is less to be studied objectively than it is to be taken into ourselves, become part of us, and lived. Graphically illustrating this point are that two of the major prophets active during the Babylonian exile, Jeremiah an Ezekiel, are commanded to take the Torah scroll and “eat the book” (Jeremiah 15:16; Ezekiel 3:3). Later, John of the Revelation will be commanded to do the same thing (Revelation 10:8-11).

At the same time, the Scripture convicts our age that our towering technological bulwark of control is a fantasy. A microscopic virus shuttered mighty nations and still shutters large swaths of China, the most populous nation on earth. We should reconsider this menace as a prophecy that we do not create reality; we live in God’s Reality. Once we recover from our demotion, we will accept this as Good News. Evelyn Underhill, the 19th century English spiritual master and teacher, who spent much of her best years trying to straighten out overconfident priests like me, wrote in her book on the

Nicene Creed, The School of Charity:

God, not man, is the first term in religion. Our first step in religion is acknowledging He is. All else is the unfolding of those truths about His life and our life, which this fact of facts involves. I believe in One God. We begin there; not with our own needs, desires, feelings, or obligations. Were all these abolished, His independent splendor would remain, as the Truth which gives meaning to the world.3

Thy kingdom come…

Even the most avowed scrooge is brought to his feet hearing the splendorous cadences of the Hallelujah Chorus of George Frederic Handel’s Messiah. A Christmas staple for parish choirs since 1742, when it was first performed in Dublin, the Hallelujah Chorus resounds with the words of Revelation: ‘The kingdom of this world shall become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. And He shall reign forever and ever’ (Revelation 11:15). On Christmas Eve two years ago, when we heard the four-part harmony of Handel’s masterpiece waft over us on the cold lawn, the words struck a more powerful chord within me than before when sung in the comfortable confines of the church building. God’s Reality envelops us amidst the oft cold reality of this world, just as expressed throughout John’s Revelation. Martyrs and those other faithful saints who did not concede to the idolatrous worship of Rome, sing out from the pages of the terminal book of the Bible “night and day.” Once transported to the heavenly court, John attentively listens to their unending songs. They assure John and us that all of our man made kingdoms are temporary – Babylon and the lot of them.

A Reality exists that is far mightier than our armies and grander than our citadels. Consider Dickens’s Scrooge, we recall the angels who take him beneath the surface events of his past, present, and future to reveal the foundational Reality of it all. All through that dreadful night, the real

3 Evelyn Underhill, The School of Charity: Meditations on the Christian Creed (London: Longmans, 1954), 7-8.

Joshua passing the River Jordan with the Ark of the Covenant by Benjamin West, 1800

From our rector...

truth breaks through to Ebenezer Scrooge in painful waves, just as it happens to us when we finally see what we have missed in our shallow, surface-oriented lives. Jesus Christ, like Scrooge’s angels, came to show us what we have missed, are missing, and what is at stake if we fail to peer beneath the surface of our lives. Christ insists that we open our eyes right now to the Reality which completely encompasses us. ‘Look, look at the birds of the air, who have neither farm nor barn, and yet your Father feeds them such that they soar like angels above our heads. Look, look at the wildflowers on a thousand hills, whose colorful splendor surpasses Solomon and every festooned magnate before or after him. Will our Father’s hands fail to give us what we need, you who have lost touch with Reality?’ (Matthew 5:26-30, my paraphrase) Jesus insists that we live within a miracle. The fact that the earth is exactly the right distance from the sun to support life, that the Father created single atoms that He wove together to make a bountiful menagerie of plant and animal life, that He fashioned humans to think, create, and love in ways resembling Him –are what Jesus urges us to see and to have faith in the One who is the genesis of it all. To do so, we will have to awaken from our long sleep in order to recognize the actual Reality in which we live. Recall that Scrooge awakes to his renewed existence on Christmas morning, the birth of the One who calls us all from our sleep.

When we do come fully awake, Jesus assures us that we will see that the Father is far from finished. In sending the Son, the Messiah, the Father’s heavenly Kingdom, His Reality, now overlays our earthly one. The stately words we recite at Christmas, ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14) is expressed in a much earthier way in the Greek: ‘The Divine Expression of God pitched his tent amongst us.’ The line can also be understood, ‘God’s will tabernacled in our midst.’ John, the Gospel writer, declares that Christ returns us to Eden, where God was once intimately present to Adam and Eve, such that the heavenly and earthly kingdoms touch one another. God made Adam and Eve priests of his earthly realm and tabernacle, until they betrayed His trust and one another’s (Genesis 2:15; 3:8). Paradise lost is restored in the Son,

who invites us to live in communion with him, and in so doing, learn to live in communion with God’s people and His creation. We take up where Adam and Eve exited the east gate of Eden. Everyday people become priests. To magnify this point, God’s Kingdom arrives in a cave stable in Bethlehem in the neighborhood of the common man, a rude beginning for the King of Kings. No wonder those who wielded temporal power in that day could not discern what was taking place in Bethlehem.

“...God’s KinGdom arrives in a cave stable in bethlehem...”

King Herod storms about his palace, subjecting his subordinates to a frantic inquisition: ‘Where is this blasted kid to be born?” he roars in a futile effort to stop the kingdom he fears will upend his own (Matthew 2:7-8, my paraphrase). All at once, Herod, given the exalted title “King of the Jews” by the Roman Senate, looks like the comic book king in the Wizard of Id. How disconcerting it is to realize that we often resemble paranoid Herod far more than we do the dauntless wise men in the Nativity story. The last thing we want is God ‘setting up His tent in our front yard.’ We’ve built our tiny fiefdom and life is tolerable – that is if we don’t look too hard. If we do garner the courage of the magi and lift our eyes beyond our shrunken enclaves, we’ll discover a kingdom Reality with a far richer life than the one for which we’ve settled. Just take it from Scrooge.

When questioned about the kingdom of God by the Pharisees, Jesus told them, ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, “Lo, here it is!” or “There!” for behold the kingdom of God is in the midst of you’ (Luke 17:20-21). Like those Pharisees of old, we miss it, too, because we expect God’s kingdom to suddenly explode into our lives. But the Reality of God is much more like the gentle tap of a child, unrelenting, yet not overpowering. God wants us to concede to His will, not be bullied into it. ‘Come to me all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give

you rest… for my yoke is easy and my burden is light’ (Matthew 11:28-29). The kingdom of God becomes Reality for us when we stop and attend to His tapping and replace our onerous yoke with His lighter one. It is not incidental that Christ’s yoke hangs around our neck like a priest’s stole, gently drawing our hearts to God and our eyes to those friends and strangers surrounding us.

A newborn trust tenderly turns our hearts and our eyes to experience God’s Reality and serve as His priests. In fact, at one point, Jesus called himself “the Way.” ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me’ (John 14:6). The disciples were so stirred by Jesus’ pronouncement on that night of his arrest that eventually his first followers became known as the people of “the Way” (Acts 9:2). The name, however, does not serve as a badge of membership, but rather as the path for Christ followers. Essentially, it is the job description of a priest. What is the path? Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault gives the simple answer: “Self-emptying is what first brings Christ into human form (his nativity) and self-emptying is what leads him out (his crucifixion), returning him to the realm of his dominion of glory (Philippians 2:5-11).”4 Christ relinquishes his divine glory in order to enter our reality and sacrifices his life to return to his Reality. In so doing, Christ’s life serves as the brackets for our own. We release our tight-fisted, ego-centered grip on our lives and receive the gentle yoke of His grace. There is no fight for what we need, no struggle for who we are to become. It’s all given to us so that we may empty ourselves of our exaggerated egos and besotted burdens that have frozen us in place. Here, we begin to personally understand why Christ is designated as the Word. Our posture is to listen, really listen to the Word, and let him direct us. We are then ready to step out on the Way. God’s Reality is becoming our own. The kingdom has come.

4 David Benner, Surrender to Love, pp.99-100.

the lonG WalK home

youth ministry

by Avery Moran

Sometimes in life we spend so much time thinking about where we’re going, it can get easy to neglect where we have been. It’s easy to get caught up in where we are heading, what we need to be doing, the many small tasks of the day. But oftentimes looking at our past can give us the strength we need to push forward.

In Luke 15, Jesus shares the story of the prodigal son, a story that we’ve all heard millions of times. For the sake of space, we’ll jump to the end, I apologize for any spoilers. At the end, the prodigal son goes back to his father, where he started it all. We’ve all been there, over committed to an idea without thinking it through. Sometimes we must travel around the world, just to end back up at our front door. The beauty of the story is that not only was his father waiting for him, but he ran into the field to meet him.

It can be difficult to make the long walk back home. Sometimes we expect to be greeted with an “I told you so” or a “What were you thinking?” But God, like the father in the parable, is always ready to run out in the field and meet us. He wants us to make him our source, the well that we constantly go back to.

To get involved with Youth Ministry, contact Avery Moran at 210-736-3132 or averym@cecsa.org.

music ministry

PSALM 51

CAST ME NOT AWAY

JOSH

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sight, love; ways,

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judge trite to

What is holy communion?

cec Family ministry

by Halleta Heinrich

In developing our Children’s Communion Class, I had two considerations - first, modeling what Catechesis Of the Good Shepherd presented after visiting St. John the Divine in Houston and second, placing myself in the mind of a child as to what questions they might have concerning this sacrament. A group of us visited St. John the Divine to get insights into their Communion Course and Retreat. We took away many great ideas. Then I looked at our children and developed questions that children and even adults have about Holy Communion in order to form a schedule of lessons that would answer

these questions. The following are those questions:

What Is Holy Communion?

Who wants to be in communion with us? Who is this Jesus? How do we know this?

How do we celebrate Holy Communion? Who are we as a Christian Community?

One of my gifts is the ability to simplify. I think I do have the heart of a child. I believe that what Jesus said about faith is so true. He stated, “…unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3 The destination in faith development is coming back to where we started – childlike faith. We answer the above questions in our Children’s Communion Class using scripture as our main source and adding our own Anglican traditions to complete

our understanding. The deeply profound gift of Holy Communion is explained in a simple way in the class, so even we adults can understand!

Our Children’s Communion Class begins on the first Sunday in February and concludes with a Communion Retreat and Celebration after Easter. This class is for first graders and older who have not taken the course. The only requirement for receiving communion is Baptism. The class is not a requirement but is offered to enrich the Communion experience. Parents play an active part in helping in the class, on the retreat, and on the day of the Communion Celebration. It is truly a community-building experience for the children and parents.

Love in Christ, Halleta

oranGe update

by Catherine de Marigny

Orange you glad I’m not going to make a joke about oranges?

The Children’s Ministry, specifically the elementary children from Kindergarten through fifth grade, had an amazing fall learning about God’s love in the Old Testament. They learned about Creation, Abraham, Isaac, Joseph, Moses, King David, and Queen Esther. An Advent study rounded out the fall, and the children will continue with the New Testament after the first of the year.

The wonderful people who stepped up to lead and teach this new curriculum have all talked about how enjoyable it has been leading classes. Every week, each class gathers for the Bible story and for those old enough, take turns reading the story from the Bible. After reading the Bible, activities build on the major points from the story to further the children’s

knowledge and understanding of that story. These activities included: acting out Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea while the Egyptians pursued them; making marshmallow launchers to play a review game about David & Goliath; and creating their own nativity sets to take home.

The theme of God’s love has been more than the Bible stories and fun handson activities. God’s love is seen in the children’s faces as they arrive breathless to Sunday School, running from the sanctuary so as not to miss anything. God’s love is in the voices of the incredible teachers as they lead the children through the lessons. There’s even an app for God’s love. Well, that may be a bit of a stretch.

Orange partners with the Parent Cue app to provide a weekly recap of the Sunday lesson, a four day devotional for children to do either on their own or with a loved one, and suggestions for parents to connect

with their child throughout the week (https://theparentcue.org/app/). The age-appropriate devotional format ranges from word searches to fill-in-blanks to more traditional reading and reflection.

It has been an exciting and dynamic fall and the spring plans are just as fun. We started on January 8 with the annual Epiphany party and then returned to separate classes. Spring classes will discover God’s love beginning with Jesus visiting the temple as a child and ending in May with the celebration of Pentecost.

First graders have the wonderful opportunity to join the First Communion class from February 5 to April 16 which follows the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. Sundays before and after this special class will be Orange curriculum. All other elementary grades will continue with Orange throughout the spring.

aFter Five years in madrid...

cec World missions

by the Rev. Dr. Duane A. Miller

We arrived in Madrid in August of 2017, found an apartment and registered our kids in a local trilingual charter school. Samantha, who was born in December, skipped first grade and started in second grade, even though she didn’t speak Spanish yet. I started assisting at the Anglican Cathedral of the Redeemer as a recently ordained deacon. Another American missionary and I started regular prayer walks, interceding for the local churches to gain a vision for reaching Muslims, and for Muslims to come to Christ. Sharon started taking Spanish classes and was praying about how she could get more involved in a Christian community center doing outreach to Muslim immigrants and refugees. I was asked to teach Methodology and Research, a requirement for every freshman at the local seminary.

Five years later and what can we report? I was ordained to the priesthood and would go on to disciple numerous people, baptizing several of them and presenting one of them for confirmation. Our prayer walks turned into an experimental Arabic-language meeting and then grew into a small, but very real, church. High

points at the church include the baptism of a new Christian from Morocco and passing many leadership responsibilities onto Christians from the Arabic-speaking world. The seminary leadership was pleased with me, it seems, and I was eventually invited to be professor of Old Testament, one of the most important positions in any seminary. Sharon has been able to use her musical talents a great deal—leading the music at the Anglican Cathedral, the Arabic fellowship, and on several retreats. She also serves on staff at the Oasis Community Center where her duties include being the Director of the English program.

And what a time of growth and flourishing it has been for our kids! They all speak Spanish fluently now. David (18) has inherited my love of languages and is now studying linguistics at the University of Amsterdam. Amelia (15), who is quite shy, has developed a bunch of friendships from school and church. She has become a pro at using the metros, buses, and light trains to get around the sprawling city of Madrid. And Samantha is the event coordinator among her circle of friends, hosting a Halloween party every year. In addition, all our kids have served at the cathedral and the community center in various capacities.

We are back in San Antonio through late Spring. While we are here we want to spend time will all our friends, answer any

questions, and God willing, make some new friends. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with Duane (drdamiller1232@gmail. com) or Sharon (srbabmiller@gmail.com). Thank you for all you do for God’s mission in the world; and thank you for supporting our missionary work in Spain.

hope in honduras

cec World missions

by Terry Koehler

The story of the border is familiar from daily news in our state. Divided families are often mentioned, but the most serious division is what has happened to the families left behind. The missing husbands, father, brothers, and children have left households in shock and sadness. Many times, those leaving do not share their plans with their families. Those left behind, often suddenly and without warning, struggle in every way. Most aren’t getting the wonderful money that they heard about; they barely survive month by month.

During our visit in the fall of 2022 (the first in two years due to Covid) we saw the tears and sadness in our meetings. Here are some of the stories you don’t hear; stories of the families left behind.

Zoila – The mother of eight children. Her oldest son left for the US and took her youngest son with him so he could more easily enter the US. He was taken into custody and deported back to Honduras. He made a second entry to the US. The youngest son was not sent back. That child now lives in a family that is not his own. Zoila will probably never see her youngest son again, hug him, show him his mother’s love, except in WhatsApp calls.

Dessy - She is the mother of two sons. The youngest son is disabled but has had surgeries to help him walk. Her husband took their older son to the US. When we asked if he was sending money back to her, she replied, with sadness, that he was having trouble finding work, and was sending very little if any. Dessy will probably never see him or her older son again.

Mercedes, Lizzy & José Maria – The mother in this household recently died of cancer at age 45. Mercedes’ son went to the US, leaving his father to care for the two daughters on his own. Mercedes is a hard worker, but caring for his daughters is very hard, and the whole family is grieving. He needs the help of his only son to make the family work.

Etel – Her son went to the US and was kidnapped by a gang. The family had to pay a ransom to free him, and then he was deported. The family may never get out of debt.

It is amid this sadness that Christ Church missions is at work. The Hilos de Dios (Threads of God) embroidery project is extremely important. We told the ladies that they need to use their embroidery earnings to start other enterprises – buy chickens to sell eggs, work together to make food to sell, and other ideas as well. They must be strong for themselves and their families, and they cannot depend on those who have gone to the US to work. The people we

met are demoralized but not without hope. Christ Church and the embroidery project is a sign that they are not alone or forgotten.

The Copan Deanery is coming to new life after the years of Covid and the beatings by hurricanes over the last two seasons. A new priest and his wife are active together serving seven congregations. We helped him with a new computer and printer to support his ministry.

Three young ladies Christ Church has supported with university scholarships are finishing their degrees. One will be a teacher or school administrator in the area we serve, and two, a priest’s daughters, hope to finish training in seminary.

Everyone we met was deeply grateful for the food support Christ Church sent month by month during the worst of the pandemic. The corn crops looked good, and the coffee beans are slowly coming back. The Educatodos Program (a Saturday school) is doing well with about 12 students, grades 1-7. Most of the students are not able to attend public school because they are too old for their class level. With the lifting of pandemic restrictions, we expect enrollment to increase next year.

Thank you, Christ Church, for your support of the mission in Honduras.

paGe turners – From the rector’s booK stacK

Driven inward to despair and anger by the loss of his right hand in a farming accident, Andy Catlett verbally bludgeons his wife and children mercilessly. He is in danger of losing everyone and everything he loves when he is called from their Kentucky home to San Francisco, where he has been asked to give an address at an international agribusiness convention. He leaves the house without so much as a “goodbye” to his wife. Unable to sleep through the night in the hotel, Andy is haunted by remembrances of his parents, grandparents, and his early ancestors who were the first to farm his land in northern Kentucky. Thus, when called to the dais to deliver his address to the assembled mega-farmers and agriculture corporation CEOs, he tears up the notes of his planned speech, and instead lambastes the gathering for destroying the land and countless farming families with their mechanized greed. Andy departs the convention center with the eyes of the audience staring at him with a mixture of disbelief and pity. The encounter foists Andy onto the streets of San Francisco where he remembers who he was before the accident and who he must become again. Remembering, like all of Wendell Berry’s fiction and non-fiction writing, is entertaining and easily read. Digesting his work is harder because he insists the reader remember what is enduring and important to us as opposed to what is fleeting and trivial. Remembering appears in Berry’s compendium, Three Short Novels. I will read the other two once I gather the courage to further examine myself.

Clay, our oldest son, gave me a copy of Weep Not, Child, by Ngügï Wa Thiong’O, for my birthday and also because Kay and I were headed to Kenya for a

second time. Ngügï, East Africa’s most famous author, tells the story of a family caught up in the infamous Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s in Kenya, which was directed against the White colonizers who took the people’s land – often while the natives were fighting in the colonizers’ European wars, WWI and WWII. Kenyan soldiers would return to find their farms confiscated and their families subjugated. The protagonist of the story is Njoroge, a precocious boy in a large family of boys. He is the only one of his large clan to pass all the examinations and ascend into secondary school. Njoroge is happy beyond measure at the boarding school, when suddenly the police apprehend him, beat him mercilessly and without explanation, and separate him from school forever. At least one of his older brothers, Boro, is a leader with the Mau Mau, and that fact implicates the entire family. Boro and their father are summarily executed, and a life-sentence given to Kamau, the brother to whom Njoroge is closest. The backdrop of the violence is a Shakespearean romance between Njoroge and Mwihaki, whose family aligns itself with the white settlers. They are two star-crossed lovers doomed by powers beyond them. Weep Not, Child is Ngügï Wa Thiong’O’s first and only novel written in English. His other eight novels and three short story collections were written in Kikuyu and translated into English to serve as a sign of solidarity with his people.

Marthe Curry, Head of World Mission for the Diocese of West Texas and faithful member of Christ Church, gave me The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby, Ph.D, distinguished historian and best-selling author. Tisby does not avoid nor dilute American Christians’ complicity with racism. He illuminates the church’s role in slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and the oft-times fallacy of “color blindness.” Tisby’s book, however, is not an indictment; rather it is a plan for reformation – not too unlike the 15th and

16th century reforms that resulted in the Protestant church of which we are a part. He insists that the dismantling of racism in and around our churches demands open-eyed, honest understanding that leads to creative, compassionate action. Marthe knew full well that the book would grab my attention from the first page. That’s because Tisby opens with a speech from a young attorney to an all-white businessmen’s club in my hometown of Birmingham, AL just days after the infamous bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on September 15, 1963. Four little girls, two aged fourteen and two aged eleven were killed after nineteen sticks of dynamite were placed beneath the church. Kay and I were just beginning our 3rd grade year at that time. Those innocent four girls adorned in their crinoline dresses and carefully coiffed hair became symbols of our depravity and icons of our hope. As Tisby states, “If racism can be made, it can be unmade,” or as our Savior stated in so many words, “When I get into the devil’s house, it will not stand much longer” (Mark 3:25, my paraphrase).

Eric Metaxas’s, Letter to the American Church, a surprise gift from Libby Carter, is a long letter but a short book at 139 pages. Utilizing his considerable knowledge of Bonhoeffer, Luther, and William Wilberforce, Metaxas strikes a chord many Christians have ignored: We still have work to do and much of it is political. The foundation of his argument is that Jesus Christ is the Truth; he is the veritable embodiment of truth. Therefore, Christians must never relent as long as the righteous life Jesus Christ represented in the world and the life he sacrificed out of love for the world is unfulfilled. For those who imagine politics and religion don’t mix, he reminds us of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who actively opposed Hitler and his fascist thugs. I would add that

we must remember that it was the state, the Roman Empire, that executed Jesus. Hence, there is no getting around the Church’s relationship with the governing powers. Metaxas is particularly concerned with the sanctioned elimination of unborn citizens, the unaccountable, rapacious globalist corporations that diminish humans, and the suffocating seduction of cultural Marxism. I applaud his valor, but some evils are left unnamed: For one, if we Christians cherish the lives of the unborn, we must provide prenatal care to all pregnant women in the Lone Star State – over half of pregnant Texans do not receive any such care at this point?

Two, if we take on globalist powers, we must confront the corporate greed and inequality in our own country – among other things, how can the very rich shield themselves from paying taxes when middle class citizens are burdened by them?

Three, expose the Marxist ideologies that menace us, yes, but, at the same time, call out those who threaten to dismantle this unique republic, this gift of “one nation under God.”

Scott Kitayama has worked with me so long that he knows the kind of books I relish. In The Truth and Beauty, by Andrew Klavan, the life, teaching, and sacrifice of Jesus Christ is juxtaposed to England’s most celebrated Romantic writers – William Wordsworth, Mary Shelley, John Keats, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Percy Shelley. Klavan is a story in himself. He is an internationally known mystery writer, having won two Edgars and been nominated for five. Even more fascinating is the fact that he was an agnostic Jew until middle-age, when, at his Oxfordeducated son’s request, he read the four Gospels. Klavan even learned to adeptly translate Greek so he could read the New Testament in its original language. The result is that Klavan is living the joyous and meaningful life unavailable to him before, and he draws out fresh lessons

from the Bible that many of us have long overlooked. Klavan’s somewhat strange dance of Christianity with English literature will delight quirky bibliophiles and Anglophiles alike.

I only write my name on the title page of a book if I intend to keep it. Reaching the satisfying end of Working the Angles, by Eugene Peterson, I did so. Peterson does not speak comfort into my vocation as a pastor as much as he continually challenges the status quo of my work, my satisfied homeostasis. This book is the second in Peterson’s trilogy on the pastorate, the other two, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work and Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration of Vocational Holiness, I hungrily read some time ago. Working the Angles is directed to three concerns that are often lacking in the experienced pastor: Praying, Reading Scripture, and Offering Spiritual Direction. Peterson raises the hackles of most of us seasoned pastors by charging, “The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeeper’s concerns – how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the goods so that the customers will lay out more money.” His words moved me to buy a copy for all the clergy serving Christ Church in the hope that we will never concede to such a low common denominator of ministry. Many of our people may think they want a shopkeeper priest, someone to keep religious goods on the shelf and deliver ecclesiastical services when required. But at heart, they really want more. Peterson offers a final word on that score: “People go for long stretches of time without being aware of (their desire for God), thinking that it is money, or sex, or work, or children, or parents, or a political cause, or an athletic competition, or learning with which they must deal. Any one or a

combination of these subjects can absorb them and, for a long time, give them meaning and purpose that human beings seem to require. But then there is a slow stretch of boredom. Or a disaster. Or a sudden collapse of meaning. They want more. They want God. When a person searches for meaning and direction, asking questions and testing out statements, we must not be diverted into anything other or lesser.”

The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, by Lisa See doesn’t hardly seem the kind of novel I would read – except for three things: For one, my daughter, Catherine Grace, asked me to read it, so it was something we could do together. Second, I am a veritable tea snob. I love black tea, which is far and away my favorite drink. Third, I have a growing interest in China, if not an out and out fear of what is transpiring there. This book presents a more hopeful China as expressed through the story of Li-yan, a peasant girl of the Akha minority, who lives in the mountainous Yunnan Province of China, known for its ancient tea trees. I approached the book with trepidation, only to find it engrossing from page one. The saga of Li-yan, her 14-hour days of tea harvesting drudgery, her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, the grace of her education, and her sojourn to America and back home drew me to the unlikely heroine. Ultimately, Li-yan saves her struggling people through what they know best – tea! I listened to this book for free through my Libby app, which I recommend to all. Kay read it on her Kindle through Libby, as well, and enjoyed reading it just as much.

As an aside, for those who wish to take the temperature of modern China under Xi Jinping, I strongly urge you to listen to the podcast The Prince, sponsored by The Economist. It’s particularly well done and will open your eyes to one of the greatest trans-international challenges before our nation.

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Christ Episcopal Church 510 Belknap Place San Antonio, TX 78212 www.cecsa.org

The Message (USPS 471-710) is published bi-monthly by Christ Episcopal Church, 510 Belknap Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Periodical postage paid in San Antonio, TX. Postmaster: Please send address changes to Christ Episcopal Church, 510 Belknap Place, San Antonio, TX 78212. Volume 25, Number 1.