The next class will be Sunday, June 10, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. at the Rectory (5019 Grape, 77096).  All are welcome – both interested newcomers and existing members.  Refreshments and childcare are provided.  For information or to RSVP, please contact Sharon Lambert at 713-559-1632 or lambert.sharon@stes.org.

A couple of summers ago, my family and I toured the Mediterranean. One of the highlights of our trip was a visit to Ephesus, the ancient city in modern Turkey where St. Paul preached and to whom St. Paul wrote his letter to the Ephesians. While in Ephesus, we visited the home of Mary, the mother of Jesus. You might remember that in Jesus’ final moments on the Cross, He bequeathed the care of His mother to St. John the Evangelist. He said to Mary, “Woman, behold thy son.” He then said to John, “Behold thy mother.” John writes, “from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home (John 19:26-27).” According to Christian tradition, John took Mary with him in his travels to establish church communities in Asia Minor, and finally brought her with him to Ephesus. There he built a garden home for her where she lived for the rest of her days in this earthly life.

House of the Virgin Mary, Ephesus

It is a beautiful place, blanketed in lush foliage and caressed with gentle breezes. As we stood there, among the hundreds of pilgrims that surrounded us, it felt like the kind of place that Jesus would have thoughtfully prepared for His mother as she awaited her reunion with her beloved son whom she lost on the Cross, regained at His Resurrection, and then was separated from Him again at His ascent into Heaven. After we left her home—a stone structure that houses a chapel where the Eucharist is offered daily—we came across a long stone wall that stretches for a hundred yards, each square inch covered with little slips of paper. Pilgrims inscribe prayers on these papers, and then they weave their prayers together with the others until they form a long blanket of prayer. My family and I joined our prayers with the thousands of pilgrim prayers that preceded us, and then we left. What it is about Mary’s house that produces a blanket of prayer? Is there a connection between an encounter with the motherhood of Mary and prayer to Jesus, or is there a larger connection between motherhood and prayer and spirituality in general?

It is hard to overstate the importance of a mother’s influence on her child’s psychological development. Fathers also play a vital role, as do schools and church communities, but there’s something unique about the impact of mothers on their children. You might remember the story of the three mothers of adult children who gather for lunch the week after Mother’s Day, and the bragging begins. The first mother says, “My son loves me so much that for Mother’s Day he sent me a $100 floral arrangement.” The second responds, “That’s nice, but my son loves me so much that for Mother’s Day he took me out to a $200 dinner.” “That’s lovely,” says the third mother, “but every week for the past five years my son goes to a psychiatrist who charges $300 per hour. What does he talk about? Me!” Mothers have a lasting influence on the way their children perceive the world. According to some child psychologists, one of the critical roles a mother plays in her child’s life is to help teach her child how to trust. Their theory is that in the first few months of an infant’s life, when his mother leaves him in his crib or bassinet and he perceives that she is gone, he cries out. If the mother consistently fails to respond to her child, the child learns that he has no one to trust and that he is on his own; such children, according to this theory, may struggle for many years to learn how to trust anyone, including himself, and perhaps including God. But when the mother responds to her infant’s cries, the child begins to learn that he can trust the universe to be a benign, caring, nurturing place. Over time, the child learns how to tolerate the increasing separation with his mother until he becomes, hopefully, an independent and healthy adult. This process of learning how to trust is important because the prayers we offer to God require an element of trust. When we pray to God for something, we trust Him that He will grant what we pray for; or, if He does not grant what we ask, we trust Him that sooner or later He will give to us some other blessing that we need. Because a healthy prayer life depends upon our ability to trust God, and because mothers play a vital role in teaching us how to trust, motherhood and prayer are connected. Mothers provide an emotional and spiritual atmosphere through which we learn how to pray and live life trustingly.

Trust is essential to our being well-adjusted people. When we operate from an attitude of trust, we are free from fear; when our trust is shaken, we are more likely to want to tightly control our life, which almost always leads to our being controlled by neurotic and self-destructive behaviors and consequences. Speaking for myself, I know that sometimes I can have a hard time with trust. Sometimes I do not trust that people will do what they say they will do, perhaps because I do not trust that I will always do what I say I will do. Sometimes I even have real and serious difficulties in trusting God to care for me and for the people I love. In these times of mistrust, I can become anxious, overwhelmed, and even angry. I suspect that I am not alone in this struggle to trust. I wonder whether some of our difficulty in trusting God comes from our emotional experiences of abandonment over which we had no control, whether from early childhood experiences of understandably distracted mothers or from later experiences of disappointment or even betrayal by others. If we have forgotten our mothers’ lesson of trust, or if we never learned it from them, and if the peace we want comes only from a kind of trust in God that we do not always feel and feel helpless to generate on our own, then what can be done to heal our mistrust?

In the Bible, God has something to say about how He works in us to build or rebuild our trust in Him. The overwhelming scriptural evidence of both the Old and the New Testaments is that God wants us to think of Him as a Father. Jesus Himself consistently and explicitly addressed God that way. Nevertheless, there are several important instances when God describes Himself with maternal imagery. God said to the prophet Isaiah, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee (Isaiah 49:15).” God also said through Isaiah to His people, “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you (Isaiah 66:13).” Following the lead of His Father, Jesus describes Himself with maternal terms, when He says to the city of Jerusalem, “How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chicks under her wings, and ye would not! (Matthew 23:37).” While the masculine imagery of God is inescapable, it is tempered and infused with a kind of compassion that is inescapably and perfectly maternal. God is our Father, but He loves us in a way that sometimes feels like mother. The grace that was given to our mothers, as loving and yet imperfect as they were, flows from God who loves us and has always loved us perfectly and completely. Behind the love of every mother stands the eternal and limitless love of God. The good work that He began in us through our mothers is the loving work that He continues to perfect in us after we leave home and for the rest of our lives. Our occasional mistrust of others, mistrust of ourselves, and mistrust of God is completely overwhelmed by God who loves us infinitely more perfectly than any mortal parent can. God knows how difficult it can be for us to trust Him, and He responds to our mistrust with infinite compassion and limitless grace. It was precisely because mankind was unable to trust in Him that God became one of us in the person of Jesus to live as one of us and to die for all of us. The love of God as revealed in the Crucified and Resurrected Christ shows that God knows us as we are, God loves us as we are, and God is already at work within us to heal our wounds and to help transform us into the people He created us to be.

Motherhood is a ministry from God through which He teaches His children how to trust. In the same way that God cares for His children through everyone whom He calls to ministry, God shares the care of His children by entrusting them to mothers. Today, on Mother’s Day, we give thanks to God who gave us our mothers, and who gave His grace to our mothers as they did the best they could to raise us. We also pray for the mothers in our midst, who do the best they can to raise their children in a very difficult time. In the face of rampant materialism, which teaches that you are what you have, and of commercialism, which teaches that you are what you want, today’s mothers face an almost overwhelming challenge to teach their children that you are who you are because God loves you for who you are. Like all ministries, the only way mothers today can fulfill their calling is to entrust themselves and those whom they love to God. He cares so deeply for us that even the powerful love of motherhood is only an approximation. Today, together, as His children, we cast all our cares on God. We can trust that He is doing greater things for us, and greater things for all whom we love, than we can imagine, than we can desire, or even than we can pray for.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Copyright 2012 St Thomas' Episcopal Church

Picture Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Are you graduating from High School?  If so, we want to recognize you on Senior Sunday.

Please contact Sharon Lambert (713-559-1632 or lambert.sharon@stes.org) with what high school you are graduating from and your future plans.

Post expires at 12:28pm on Sunday May 20th, 2012

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.”

-The Serenity Prayer

Dear Friends in Christ at St. Thomas’ Episcopal Church and School:

I thank God for His many gifts and blessings at our parish. We have inherited a precious and powerful identity as a traditional Episcopal community that worships God and cares for God’s people in the Name of the Crucified and Resurrected Christ. In the past few years, God has blessed us with an increasing number of new members who are drawn to His grace through our practice of the Faith. We are grateful for the legacy that we have received, we are confident of our identity in God, and we are secure in His love. Through God’s grace, St. Thomas’ continues to stand ready, as our Mission Statement declares, to “share the joy of loving and serving God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

We are entering a challenging time for Episcopalians in general and for the Diocese of Texas in particular. Last week, Bishop Doyle convened a meeting of the clergy of the diocese to share his plan to keep our diocese united during what is likely to be an anxious summer. The General Convention of the Episcopal Church, when it meets in Indianapolis this July, is almost certain to approve a liturgy for the blessing of same-sex relationships.[1]

Bishop Doyle informed us that he does not approve of these proposed liturgies, and that he will vote against them. His position is that the Episcopal Diocese of Texas is a traditional diocese that upholds the Scriptural teaching and practice that Christian marriage is a lifelong union between one man and one woman and that sexual activity is healthy and appropriate only in that context. Nevertheless, he believes that there will be enough bishops and delegates from other dioceses who favor these rites to ensure their approval.

Bishop Andy Doyle

Bishop Doyle believes, and I agree, that this action at the national level will inflame an existing division within our diocese. The majority of clergy, congregations, and people in our diocese do not approve of such rites, but there are many clergy and several congregations who say they feel conscience-bound to proceed with them. In my judgment, at that point Bishop Doyle’s choice will be either to ignore those infractions of ecclesiastical discipline or to pursue costly and divisive legal and disciplinary measures that would be overruled on appeal to national canon law.

In anticipation of these events, and to avoid ongoing conflict that would overwhelm our work to proclaim the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ, Bishop Doyle convened a committee of about forty Rectors and other church leaders that met regularly for about a year. This “Task Force for Unity in Mission” represented a wide variety of perspectives. Meanwhile, he sought input and counsel from other bishops in our Church, including our former diocesan bishops, our Presiding Bishop, and the sitting and the previous Archbishops of Canterbury. As a result of these deliberations, Bishop Doyle authored his plan to navigate the Diocese through the events of this summer. He also wrote a 120 page theological paper that articulates his teaching on Christian marriage, ecclesiastical unity, and episcopal authority.[2]

At our diocese-wide meeting at Camp Allen, Bishop Doyle discussed his plan, his paper, and the Task Force’s Affirmation, which he had released the week before.[3] After General Convention’s decision, the essence of his plan is as follows:

1. Congregations may choose to take no action, one way or the other.
2. Traditional congregations may declare, either in letters to him, statements to the public, and/or amendments to their by-laws, that they will not conduct or participate in these rites, nor sponsor for ordination or employ anyone who is in a non-celibate relationship outside of Holy Matrimony.
3. Two congregations (St. Stephen’s, Houston and one yet to be decided in Austin) will receive permission to enter an eight-month process of discernment about whether and how to bless same-sex relationships, following the rites approved and the direction of the Bishop. In the future, additional parishes may request permission to perform these liturgies, but their rectors, vestries, and laity must be in complete support of them.

While St. Thomas’ will continue to welcome, love, and minister to every person in our midst, including those who are homosexual and those whose family members are homosexual, we will not offer same-sex blessings. We make this choice not out of defiance against our diocese, but in concert with it and its leadership. Part of what it means to be an Episcopalian is to be a Christian in the apostolic tradition, which means we follow Christ the way the earliest disciples did under the Apostles. We respect the differences among our brothers and sisters in Christ and we respect the authority of our Bishop. When Bishop Doyle invited me to sign the Affirmation of the Bishop by the Task Force for Unity in Mission, I immediately accepted his invitation. I did this not because I agree with the congregations that choose to perform same-sex blessings, and not because I like every part of Bishop Doyle’s plan, but because I support Bishop Doyle’s efforts to keep our diocese united during this time of disagreement. I grew up and was first ordained in an Episcopal church that broke away from the national church during the controversies of the 1970’s. As noble and honorable as those breakaway churches’ intentions were, their decision to leave the Episcopal church damaged the churches and dioceses they left behind and also damaged themselves. People who leave churches during times of disagreement lose their ability to see life and God as they really are because they stop dealing with people who think and behave differently than they do. Unity among churches is different from and deeper than institutional uniformity; it is a grace among those who, “speaking the truth in love […] grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ: from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love (Ephesians 4:15-16).”

I am convinced that traditional congregations in the Diocese of Texas must not abandon our diocese or each other during times of disagreement. If we did, we would diminish our witness to God’s truth to those who need it, we would surrender what influence we have over our common life, and we would devalue the grace we receive when we work with other Christians with whom we differ. St. Thomas’ will continue to work with our diocese and all the congregations in it to manifest the Kingdom of God established by our Lord.

A word about media: I hope that by now we all understand that the news media uses controversy to sell advertising. Therefore, be prepared for additional sensationalistic and misrepresentative news stories about this subject this summer and in the following months. I will not be writing letters like this every time this topic is addressed in the Houston Chronicle! Furthermore, in our past six years together, I have never discussed national or ecclesiastical politics or controversies on Sunday mornings, not because I do not have opinions about these things and not because they are unimportant, but because the purpose of the Church is to proclaim the love of God as revealed in the Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ, and to make disciples in His Name. People do not come to church to hear about fights or fears—we have enough of that in our life outside the church.

As for me and for our congregation:

• With God’s help, we choose not to let any decision or any person in our national church, in our diocese, or anywhere else change the way St. Thomas’ believes in God, worships God, teaches about God, administers God’s sacraments, or ministers to the world in God’s Name.
• With God’s help, we choose not to let any decision or any person in our national church, in our diocese, or anywhere else undermine with faithless fears or worldly anxieties our trust in God’s truth about all, mercy towards all, power over all, or love for all.
• With God’s help, we choose to abide in the serenity that comes from accepting the things we cannot change, the courage that comes from changing the things we can, and the wisdom that comes from knowing the difference.

We do not always understand what God is doing in and through His Church. He does not command us to understand what He is doing, but only to faithfully love and trust in Him with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves. In the meantime, please pray for the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, for our diocese, for our Bishop, for our Vestry, and for our parish family as we prayerfully discern how to respond to all the challenges of our time.

Finally, remember what the Resurrected Jesus said to His faithful disciples: “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (Matthew 28:20).”

Faithfully,

The Rev. Christopher A. Bowhay

“…ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.”

Last month, as my family and I drove back from our Spring Break trip to Santa Fe, we passed through the Texas Hill Country. For the first time since we came to Texas twelve years ago, we finally saw the famous and gorgeous wildflowers. Somehow, probably because the wildflower season coincides the busiest season of the Church year, I had never seen them at their peak. We saw mile after mile of iridescent patches of exuberant color: yellow prickly pear cactuses, purple Missouri violets, magenta Firewheels, and, of course, Texas bluebonnets. As we roared past these blooming rainbows, I was struck by contradictory feelings of delight and sadness: the thrill of their beauty was framed by a sadness that they would only blossom for a few more weeks and die. The wildflower season of Texas is a mingling of beauty and regret: even while we enjoy their color, we are aware of their passing glory and impending doom. Spring and Autumn have their own kind of melancholy. In autumn we see tired leaves returning gratefully to the ground, to their Maker.  In spring, each plant trumpets its glory with reckless abandon, strutting its stuff as if it were totally ignorant of the looming shadow that creeps behind it. Even in spring, the season of life, we hear whispers of winter and death.

I bring this up because it has something to do with today’s Gospel when Our Lord gives His farewell address to His disciples at the Last Supper. He warns them that “…a little while and ye shall not see me.”  On the night before He dies, in His typically subtle way, He prepares them for His immanent crucifixion and death. The disciples, remaining true to form, have no clue about what Jesus means. To them, everything seems to be going so well. They had just marched triumphantly through the gates of Jerusalem and now sit with their Master to enjoy a meal. Why was He talking about loss and sorrow when He seemed to be so close to victory?  We might ask the same question in the Church this morning. We have passed through our commemorations of the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ and we prepare even today a Picnic party to enjoy time together. Why do we read about the events leading up Calvary now?  Easter has happened, Christ is risen, spring is here, it is a beautiful day. Why talk about doom and gloom and sorrow and loss?

In the same way that a flower begins to wilt even while it blooms, and in the same way that our Lord warned His disciples that they would lose Him even while He was still with them, we need to confront the fact that in this fallen world, loss is a part of life. As we say at every Graveside service, “In the midst of life we are in death.” On this side of eternity, we constantly fight a losing battle with loss. Anytime we experience anything in life that is good, pleasurable, and enjoyable—a special gathering of friends, a sunset by the sea, the good health and life of family, even a great meal—we suddenly become aware that “these too shall pass.” If we can feel sorry about the loss of a flower, which, while beautiful, is relatively common, how much more do we mourn and fear the more precious losses of family, friends and loved ones? In a way, to be alive at all is to be aware of how life slips away like sand between our fingers, like tears washed in the rain.

If to be alive is to be aware of the fragile particles of life we are losing, then Christ, who is the King of Life, is also profoundly aware of what loss feels like. Like us, He is no stranger to loss. When He mounted the Cross, He took upon Himself every loss that mankind can ever know.  He lost His friends, He lost His family, He lost His honor and reputation, He lost His strength and, as He was losing His life, He cried out in the most horrible, inconceivable experience of loss, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” God Himself, God Incarnate, suffered the loss of God. All the broken loss of humanity meets in the broken body of Christ on the Cross. This is expressed symbolically in the Eucharist during what is called the Fraction, when the Priest takes the consecrated Host and breaks It. At this point the brokenness of our life—the sorrows, the sufferings, and the losses that we endure—are offered to God and are wedded to the brokenness that Christ endured on Calvary once and for all because of His love for us.

This is all heavy stuff. Sometimes we do not want to think about it. As the Anglican poet T.S. Eliot wrote, “Man cannot endure too much reality.” But we who are here today in Church know that life can get pretty heavy. Christians are a reality-oriented people. Because God is ultimate reality, and because we want to know the truth about God and ourselves, we do not flinch from any reality, even the real horror of loss. If everyone we love and every good thing in life is doomed to fade like springtime wildflowers, why do we love or live at all? In the face of all this loss and horror, what comfort do we receive to keep going, to dare to love, to choose life? The one thing that frees us to believe in life even in the face of death is the bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ from His tomb, three days after His death on the Cross. I cannot tell you that believing in the Resurrection of Christ from the dead will make you feel better about the all-too-palpable pain that comes from the real losses that we face, but I can tell you that without that faith there is absolutely no hope for a life that is honest and sane, much less lovely and lively. Jesus did not promise His followers that they would not sorrow when He left them; He promised that their real sorrows would be turned into joy when they saw Him again. Like the birthpangs that every mother endures when her child comes into this world, our occasional but real sorrows in this earthly vale of tears will be swallowed up by the joy we will experience when we see God at our Resurrection, and when we see Him remake His fallen world into the paradise He intended it to be.

In the Eucharist, after the Fraction, which re-presents the Crucifixion, the Priest places a particle of the Host in the Chalice, which re-presents the Resurrection.  The Body and Blood of Christ, once separated at His death, are reintegrated and transformed at His Resurrection. In the same way, our sorrows and losses in this transitory life, having been joined to His, are reintegrated and transfigured. In Jesus’ death and Resurrection, all things are made whole, the whole creation is made new, and our sufferings and sorrows are turned to joy. The victory of Jesus’ Resurrection offers us the joy of Heaven, not only after we die, but mysteriously even now as we receive the comfort and strength to live and love through and beyond our sorrow. In this life, whether dealing with flowers, family, or friends, we cannot prevent loss. But, because of the Resurrection of our Lord from the dead, we are free to love, because we trust that no one and nothing is ever finally lost to God.

Jesus answered, If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would ask me for a drink and I would give you fresh, living water. 

Children aged 2-11, make plans to join us for Bible stories, music, and crafts from 9:30 a.m. to noon, Tuesday, July 17 through Friday, July 20.

Bring your parents and friends to our joyful Friday night program with hot dogs, music, and fellowship on July 20, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Registration forms have been mailed and are available in the church office.

Forms should be returned with payment ($15 per child) by July 2.

For more information, please contact The Rev. Chad Martin at 713-559-1637 or martin.chad@stes.org.

Post expires at 8:45pm on Monday July 30th, 2012

In preparation for Bishop Doyle’s visit to St. Thomas’ on June 17, Fr. Martin and I will hold two Confirmation classes for those who wish to become Confirmed, or for those who wish to be Received from another ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or for those who wish to Renew their Vows. These classes will take place from 4:00—6:00 PM on Sunday, May 20 and on Sunday, June 3.

All children and youth currently in the 6^th grade or above are welcome to attend these classes and to be Confirmed at the 10:30 AM service on Sunday, June 17. As is our custom from previous years, adults are also welcome. To reserve your place in this class, or for answers to any questions, please fill out the attached form and send it to my Administrative Assistant, Sharon Lambert (lambert.sharon@stes.org or 713-559-1632).CONFIRMATION REGISTRATION

by Fr. Chris Bowhay