Wondering Where to Find Ashes-to-Go This Year?
Get your Ashes-to-Go on March 6 at these locations around the diocese:
- Shady Grove Metro station (map), courtesy of Ascension, Gaithersburg, 7:00 – 9:00 a.m.
- Tenleytown Metro station (map), courtesy of St. Columba’s, 7:30 – 8:30 a.m. and 5:15 – 6:00 p.m.
- Chapel of the Incarnation, Brandywine (map), courtesy of St. Thomas’, Croom, beginning at 1:00 p.m.
- UPDATED START TIME Courthouse Steps in Upper Marlboro (map), courtesy of St. Thomas’, Croom, beginning at 4:30 p.m.
- CANCELED DUE TO ANTICIPATED LOW TEMPERATURES Silver Spring Metro station (map), courtesy of Grace, Silver Spring, 7:00 – 9:00 a.m.
- Metro Center Metro station at 13th at G Streets (map), courtesy of Epiphany, D.C., 7:45 – 9:00 a.m.
- Montgomery Mall Transit Center (map), courtesy of St. Luke’s, Bethesda, 9:00 – 10:00 a.m.
- Grosvenor Metro station (map), courtesy of St. Luke’s, Bethesda, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
- Corner of Wisconsin Avenue and M Street in Georgetown (map), courtesy of the collaborative efforts of Grace, St. John’s, and Christ Churches, Georgetown, 7:00 – 8:30 a.m. and 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
- Laurel MARC train station on Main Street (map), courtesy of St. Phillip’s, Laurel, beginning at 7:00 a.m.
- SIP at C Street Flats in Laurel (map), courtesy of St. Phillip’s, Laurel, beginning at 10:00 a.m.
- More Than Java Cafe in Laurel (map), courtesy of St. Phillip’s, Laurel, beginning at 10:00 a.m.
- Capitol South Metro station (map), courtesy of St. Mark’s, Capitol Hill, 8:00 – 9:30 a.m. and 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
- Dupont Circle Metro station (map), courtesy of St. Thomas’, D.C., 7:30 – 8:15 a.m. and 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.
- On the Suitland Road outside of Timothy’s Church (map), 7:30 – 10:30 a.m.
- At the Safeway on Alabama Avenue SE (map), courtesy of St. Timothy’s, 7:30 – 10:30 a.m.
- Burtsonville Crossing Commuter Lot/Park & Ride (map) – U.S. 29 and MD 198 behind the old Giant Food, courtesy of Transfiguration, beginning at 6:30 a.m.
- “Drive Thru” at Transfiguration, Silver Spring (map), 4:30 – 6:00 p.m.
- Christ Church Clinton parking area in front of church, Clinton, Maryland (map), 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.
- Indian Head Pavilion off Route 210 (Indian Head Highway) (map), courtesy of St. James’, Indian Head, 6:00 – 8:00 a.m.
- Whalen Commons in Poolesville (map), courtesy of St. Peter’s Church, 8:00 – 9:00 a.m.
- Union Station, main level, west end (map), courtesy of Calvary Episcopal Church, 7:00 – 9:00 a.m.
- 6th and H Streets, NE (map), courtesy of Calvary Episcopal Church, 10:00 a.m – 12:00 p.m.
- Waterfront Metro station (map), courtesy of St. Augustine’s Church, beginning at 8:00 a.m.
Can’t wait until tomorrow? Try an evening option TONIGHT, March 5 at All Souls Church (map), 8:00 – 9:00 p.m.
Living a Called Life: What Lies Beyond the Mountain
Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.
Luke 9:28-43
When trying to describe a profound spiritual experience, we often use the phrase “mountain top” to evoke that feeling of arrival, clarity of vision, and sense of coherence to our lives that can be hidden from us in the valleys of daily existence. From a mountaintop, we also see our destination, where, in the language of faith, God is calling us to go.
In this last reflection in a series, Living A Called Life, I invite you to remember your mountaintop experiences. They are gifts of grace, although often hard won, in that it takes effort to climb a mountain. Once there, we are touched by a power and presence that gives meaning to all that has gone before and all that will come afterwards. We sometimes long for such clarity and imagine it to be like a lightning bolt from the sky, an outward sign to help us overcome our inner uncertainty. Yet in the long arch of our lives, those mountaintop moments, are, in fact, the culmination or resting points in a long process of revelation and response.
This Sunday in church, we’ll consider together one of Jesus’ mountaintop experiences. He went up to the mountain to pray, the story goes, and in his prayers he was given the gift of an encounter with the greatest of prophets and the voice of God speaking in a cloud. But Jesus was always going up mountains, or into the wilderness, or to a synagogue to pray. It was, as the scriptures tell us, his custom. He prayed; he waited; he listened. Not all of his prayer was rewarded with dramatic assurance; we know that he spent many a long and lonely night, as we all do. The moments of insight and direction that he did receive were preceded and followed by many small steps of persevering faithfulness.
Years ago, a colleague told me of the mountaintop moment that came to him when he received a call to serve as director of a residential home for troubled adolescents. He said, “I have been preparing all of my life for this job.” It struck me as an extraordinary and enviable statement, and a transforming moment if there ever was one, reconciling his past and preparing him for the future.
But one thing we know about such moments is that they end. Invariably something happens on the way down the mountain to call into question everything about our experience.
Once, when struggling to make a decision of real consequence, I went for a swim at a nearby recreation center. Somewhere in that timeless zone of swimming laps and praying for clarity, clarity came with a rush of euphoria. I knew exactly what I was to do and why. I remember feeling so relieved to have reached a decision, knowing in my bones that it was right. But no sooner had I stepped out of the pool and dried myself off when all my uncertainty came rushing back. It took every ounce of faith to stay with the decision I had made. This memory remains a touchstone for me; every time I have a similar experience of insight followed by doubt, I remind myself to hold steady, not let the forces of ambiguity blow my life off course, and to trust whatever glimpses of direction I have received.
So it is for all of us: we come down mountain, get hit with reality, take a deep breath, and go on. Life looks pretty much the same on the way down as it did on the way up, and maybe that’s the point. After Jesus comes down from the mountain, he sets his face toward Jerusalem and all that awaits him there. On the journey, he does what he did before: heals the sick, feeds the hungry, preaches good news to the poor. He did his day job, and so do we.
The sweet, rare moments of clarity and affirmation are wonderful when they come, but where life gets interesting is what happen next, when we re-enter the world as it is and do our best to live according to the clarity we received. As the Haitians say, what lies beyond one mountain is another mountain. How we walk the path between them is most important, giving thanks for the sweet moments of illumination when they’re given us, but remembering how we live both before and after is what matters most.
Living a Called Life: Transforming Evil into Good
But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
Luke 6:27-28
In 1962, as Dr. Martin Luther King was speaking in Birmingham Alabama, a white man jumped onto the stage and attacked him, repeatedly hitting him in the face. After the first punch, King dropped his hands to his side, refusing to defend himself. Chaos ensued. Others intervened and forcibly removed the man, while King kept saying, “Don’t hurt him. We must pray for him.”
For many who worked closely with the young civil rights leader, watching King’s response to his assailant forever changed them. They realized that for King non-violence was not simply a strategy, but a way of life so practiced that even his reflexes responded non-violently when violently attacked.
In this third reflection of a series, Living a Called Life, I invite you to consider the holy vocation of participating, through the grace and power of God, in the redemptive work of transforming evil into good. This is the difficult path of redemptive suffering. We do not choose this path, but it is thrust upon us whenever we are confronted with tragedy, trauma, injustice, or other painful circumstances we cannot control or fix on our own.
Sometimes, as a result of the good that results, we come to believe that God willed the evil in order for good to be realized. It’s an understandable response, and if you attend this Sunday, you’ll hear an example of it in the classic biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. (Genesis 37-50) After a long and winding path of suffering brought about by his brothers’ resentment, Joseph finds himself in a position to bring about extraordinary good. Joseph says to his brothers, “Do not be distressed because you sold me into slavery, for God sent me here before you to preserve life.” Later he will say even more directly, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today. (Genesis 50:20)
I do not presume to understand the ways of God, and the challenge to reconcile belief in a loving God in the face of all that is truly evil in this world is real. Many thoughtful people turn away from the idea of a loving God precisely because they cannot reconcile such belief with what they see and have experienced.
But this I know: it not necessary to believe that God causes evil or tragedy to experience the transforming power of God’s love through them, a love that does indeed bring good out of evil.
Such transforming love is offered to us through the grace of God and in relationship with Jesus, the one who came to show us the depth and breadth of God’s love. Daily I choose to believe, in the words of St. Paul, that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. More than that: I believe that at times we are called to join with Christ in the acceptance of suffering, taking into our very being, so that in some small way we might participate in the mystery of resurrection–bringing life out of death, transforming evil into good.
Such a vocation requires practice in small things in order to be ready for the larger challenges when they come. Dr. King was practiced in non-violence, so that when he was called upon to embody non-violence, he no longer had to choose his response. The way of love had become his way of life.
As followers of Jesus, we do well to practice the disciplines of love, forgiveness, and generosity of spirit. Most of this practice takes place in the realm of smaller transgressions, and the acceptance of life’s imperfections. There may well come a time, however, and maybe that is now, when we are called to greater sacrifice. Rarely do we feel ready to accept and embrace the suffering that can be thrust upon us. But here we are and the choice is ours.
Only then do we know the true cost of such love, a cost that we cannot bear on our own. In a hauntingly beautiful and courageous sermon preached at Washington National Cathedral, syndicated columnist Michael Gerson described the heroic vocation of living with the insidious disease of clinical depression.
“Many, understandably, pray for a strength they do not possess.
But God’s promise is somewhat different:
That even when strength fails, there is perseverance.
And even when perseverance fails, there is hope.
And even when hope fails, there is love.
And love never fails.”
We would never wish our suffering on others, nor must we believe that God willed the suffering to come. Yet there are gifts that come to us, costly gifts, but real nonetheless. When we accept this calling as our own, we experience deep communion with Christ and a love that will never let us go. For that, we can be eternally grateful, and confident in the redemptive power of love.
The Path of Imperfection
But when Simon Peter saw the catch of fish, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
Luke 5:8
Glennon Doyle, author of the best-selling book Love Warrior, began her public life in open acknowledgement of imperfection. Here is part of her story as told to radio journalist Krista Tippett.
On Mother’s Day 2002, Doyle learned that she was pregnant. She decided to keep the baby and marry the father, whom she did not know well. That was also when she determined to get sober. As part of her recovery, she attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. She began to wonder, “Why is that we can only be this honest with one another in the little dark basements of churches one hour a week? What if we could be fully honest and real with each other in everyday life?”
Doyle started to get up early in the morning and write in the voice she heard herself speak at AA. Through Facebook, she gained a large national following. What came back to her from people all across the country was a collective admission that the work of keeping up appearances was exhausting. “Why is it,” she asks, “that we feel we must keep from each other the very things we are meant to carry with each other?”
Why indeed.
As part of a series on what it means to live a called life, today I explore the path of imperfection. For feelings of inadequacy–and their shadow emotion of shame–can greet us the moment we hear a call. “Woe is me, for I am lost,” the prophetic Isaiah laments as he felt summoned before God. “I am the least of the apostles,” writes Paul about his call to follow Jesus, “unfit to be an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” “Go away from me, Lord,” Simon Peter says to Jesus, “for I am a sinful man.” Yet it is precisely in that moment when we acknowledge our brokenness and our failings that we can lose whatever armor we’ve been carrying to keep others from seeing who we truly are.
Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton’s has just published a book about the disciple Simon Peter entitled Flawed but Faithful Disciple. In Scripture, Simon Peter is truly our companion on the path of imperfection. (Adam Hamilton, Simon Peter: Flawed but Faithful Disciple (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2018).) He gave his heart to Jesus, but time and again, he would get things wrong, say the most inappropriate things, and fail spectacularly in his efforts to be faithful. Yet Jesus turns to Simon more than any other disciple, as if to say to all of us, “I do not expect perfection from you. Embrace the path of imperfection.”
What makes Simon’s example so compelling is his perseverance, a willingness to get up every time he falls, acknowledge his failings and accept Jesus’ forgiveness. Remember that he was the one who denied even knowing Jesus three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest. How could he ever forgive himself for abandoning his teacher and closest friend? Even then, after his resurrection Jesus seeks Simon out to make sure that he knows he is forgiven, and still called to be a witness to Jesus’ way of love in this world.
As my life has become more public, so have my failures. Some of my more painful and embarrassing mistakes have been unintentional; others, more painfully still, the result of that particularly dangerous form of blindness that accompanies certitude that I am right.
I am learning that acceptance is the first step on the path of imperfection, but only the first. The second step is to take responsibility for the impact of my mistakes and failings on other people. The third step is to apologize and to make amends. The step after that is to learn how I might avoid such mistakes in the future. In other words, when walking the path imperfection, we must move toward pain rather than away from it. It isn’t easy, but it is the path of forgiveness and hard-won wisdom.
Public failure is the price of a public life, to be accepted with humility and grace. We must all do our best, all the while knowing that as imperfect beings we have been called, and in imperfection we respond. There is freedom in that realization, appropriate humility, and wonder at the depth of God’s love and mercy.
It also is a clarion call of responsibility, propelling us forward to act and offer what we have, rather than hold back in embarrassment or shame. For every day God calls us to acts of courage and kindness, of intention and commitment. Every day God calls us to live with the audacious conviction that our lives and our actions matter. Nothing serves the forces of evil better than the hesitancy of those unwilling to fail. Yes, we are the imperfect vessels of God’s grace, not the grace itself. But without vessels, grace cannot be carried from one place or person to another.
May you walk with confidence on the path of imperfection and boldly offer something of the love, mercy, and forgiveness you have received to those you encounter along the way.
Living a Called Life: The Path of Imperfection
Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God, he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink. But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken; and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.
Luke 5:1-11
This sermon is the second in a series Living a Called Life. The theme of call rises from the Scripture stories we’re blessed to hear this month, stories that highlight this experience of feeling one’s life summoned either by external circumstance or by an internal, driving energy that all spiritual traditions attribute to the voice of God.
Last week, I reflected on the inner and external nature of call, how sometimes we are called to depth within ourselves or within an immediate circle of concern, and at other times we are called out, beyond our boundaries of comfort or knowledge, for the sake of adventure or service. These two calls are not in opposition to one another, but rather “in constant conversation,” to borrow a phrase from the poet David Whyte. We don’t really get to choose between them, for more often than not, one or the other is thrust upon us. Yet there is a choice, in that we can say no, that we can reject or resist the spiritual work required of us in a given moment of life; conversely, we can give ourselves wholeheartedly to what is before us, choosing to accept and embrace even those calls we would have done anything to avoid.
This week, inspired by the biblical texts we have just heard and that you have printed before you, I’d like to explore the path of imperfection that we invariably walk when living a called life. Feelings of inadequacy–and their shadow emotion of shame–can greet us the moment we hear a call. “Woe is me, I am lost.” The prophetic Isaiah laments as he felt summoned before God. “For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.” “I am the least of the apostles,” writes Paul about his call to follow Jesus, “unfit to be an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” “Go away from me, Lord,” says Simon Peter in the boat with Jesus, “for I am a sinful man.” Yet it’s that moment when we acknowledge our brokenness and our failings that we can lose whatever armor we’ve been carrying to keep others from seeing who we truly are.
This week I listened to Krista Tippett’s interview on her podcast On Being to a woman named Glennon Doyle, a best-selling author who began her public life with a blog she calls Momastery. Tippet begins the interview with this summary of Doyle’s life:
On Mother’s Day 2002, Doyle learns she’s pregnant and decides she is going to keep the baby and marry the father, whom she did not know well. She also realized that she needed to get sober. As part of her recovery she begins attending AA meetings. There she begins to wonder, “Why is that we can only be this honest with one another in the little dark basements of churches one hour a week? What if we could be fully honest and real with each other in everyday life?” So she starts getting up early in the morning to write in the voice she heard herself speak at AA meetings. Through Facebook and social media, her writings spread. What comes back time and again, from people all across the country, is a collective admission that the work of keeping up appearances was exhausting. “Why is it,” she asks, “that we feel we must keep from each other the very things we are meant to carry with each other?”
The Methodist pastor and author Adam Hamilton’s has just published a book about the disciple Simon Peter entitled Flawed but Faithful Disciple. Simon Peter is truly our companion on the path of imperfection (Adam Hamilton, Simon Peter: Flawed but Faithful Disciple (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 2018)). From the beginning of his relationship with Jesus, Simon Peter felt himself to be unworthy even to be in Jesus’ presence. When Jesus instructs Simon to put his net down into the deep water even though they had been out all night and caught nothing, and the catch of fish is so large that his nets begins to tear, Simon realizes that he’s in the presence of someone holy. And he’s certain that if Jesus really knew what kind of man he was, he wouldn’t want anything to do with him. But Jesus did know him. He knew all about him. “Follow me,” he said, “from now on, you and I will be fishing for people.”
In that moment, Simon Peter gave his heart to Jesus, but he would never be a perfect disciple. He would be the one to get things wrong, say the most inappropriate things, try repeatedly to be faithful to Jesus and yet spectacularly fail. Still, Jesus turns to Simon Peter, more than any other disciple, as if to say, “I do not expect perfection from you. Embrace the path of imperfection.”
What makes Simon Peter’s example so compelling for us is his perseverance, his willingness to get up every time he falls, to acknowledge his failings and accept Jesus’ forgiveness, even after what was surely the most horrible failing of all, when he denies even knowing Jesus three times on the night of Jesus’ arrest. How could he ever forgive himself for that failure, for not being there for his teacher and closest friend in his hour of great need? Even then, Jesus seeks him out, after the resurrection, to make sure that Simon Peter knows that he is forgiven, and still called to be a witness to Jesus’ way of love in this world.
Like St. Paul after him, the one who had to forever live with the memory of persecuting followers of Jesus until he himself became one, Simon Peter came to know and accept himself as a faithful and flawed disciple–faithful, flawed, and forgiven, loved and called. “By the grace of God I am who I am,” St. Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, and surely Simon Peter could say the same. “And God’s grace toward me has not been in vain.” Like Isaiah before them, both would go on to live lives of noble and imperfect service.
A dear friend came to town this weekend, someone we’ve known for 25 years, whose children grew up alongside ours from kindergarten through high school. He knows a lot about my life story and I know a lot about his, and both our stories have their share of mistakes and regrets. We reflected on what we have learned through our mistakes; how we have grown through our failures. Now, as we watch our own children forge their way into adulthood, while as parents we would love nothing more than to spare them their own mistakes and failures, we know that wisdom and character are born of suffering, from falling down and getting back up, learning from mistakes and moving forward.
As we talked, I thought back to one of my early public failures as bishop. It was one of my first Christmas Eve services at Washington National Cathedral. The year before, I had preached a sermon that was very well received, which left me feeling rather anxious as Christmas came around again. Preaching on Christmas Eve at Washington National Cathedral for a preacher is a bit like being a field goal kicker at the Super Bowl. You have to do what you do every week, but in front of a much larger audience with seemingly higher stakes, or at least that’s how it feels inside. As much as I tried that year to find inspiration, nothing particularly inspiring came to me as the day drew nearer.
But because deadlines are deadlines, and Christmas Eve invariably came, I cobbled something together and offered what I had. It was, at best, a mediocre sermon. To make things worse, I said something that several people in the congregation took to be overly critical and even hostile toward the current state of Israel. That wasn’t my intention, nor was what I said about the Israeli government central to the point of my sermon. But what I said was interpreted to be so strong a political statement on Christmas Eve that one person contacted the Washington Post in protest, and others wrote the very next day some of the most strongly worded critical letters I have ever received. I was completely caught off guard by this flurry of harsh critique for a sermon that I was already disappointed with, and it shook my confidence to the core.
Now as public mistakes go, this one wasn’t going to end my career, and trust me, I have made far worse mistakes in both my personal and professional life. But for several days I was truly devastated, not because some people didn’t like my sermon, but because I had rather thoughtlessly caused unnecessary pain for some on one the most hopeful and joyful nights in the Christian calendar. Somehow I had to find a way out of my sense of shame and embarrassment, and come to a place of peace with imperfection.
It occurred to me that accepting my mistakes and failure was only one step on the path of imperfection. The next step was to take responsibility for their impact on other people. And the next step was to apologize and make amends. The step after that was to learn how I might avoid such mistakes in the future. In other words, I realized that my task was to move toward the pain I was feeling rather than away from it.
So I decided to respond to every person that had written to me. I apologized for the ways my words had offended and offered to meet with them. To my astonishment, every person accepted my apology and my offer, and I spent the better part of a week in personal conversation with people who wanted me to hear their stories. By the end of the week, not only did I feel humbled by what I had learned, I felt forgiven, free, and yes, a bit wiser. My learning wasn’t that I should never risk offending people from the pulpit, but to be aware of the ways certain words and phrases can trigger a whole host of reactions, and that part of my job is to be mindful and to choose my words carefully.
I also realized that part of the cost of my vocation as a public speaker–just like a field goal kicker–is the inevitable experience of public embarrassment when the best of what I have to offer simply misses the mark. I needed to accept that with both grace and humility, or I would simply freeze every time I had to preach a sermon. I still have the responsibility of doing my best, all the while knowing that mine was a path of imperfection through which, as St. Paul writes so beautifully, the grace of God can shine through, making it infinitely clear to all involved that it comes from God.
So it is in imperfection that we are called, and in imperfection we respond. There is freedom in that realization, and appropriate humility and wonder at the depth of God’s love and mercy. It also is a clarion call of responsibility, propelling us forward to act, to give, to offer what we have, even as we know it will be insufficient, rather than hold back in embarrassment or shame. For every day we are called to acts of courage and kindness, of intention and commitment–to live by the audacious conviction that our lives and our actions matter, and they matter, in the words of my colleague Bishop Jake Owensby, “on an infinite and eternal scale.” Nothing serves the forces of evil in this better than the hesitancy of those unwilling to fail.
What is true for us as individuals is also true for us in community. So I encourage you, St. Augustine’s, to walk confidently on the path of imperfection to which you are called, willing to learn and grow together, knowing that by the grace of God you are who you are, and that grace calls you to love and follow Jesus in his way of love. Take to heart these words from St. Paul from his second letter to the church in Corinth:
Since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. . . For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ salke. For it is God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge in the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.
We are indeed the imperfect vessels of God’s grace, not the grace itself. But without vessels, grace cannot be carried from place to another, from one person to another. So walk on, you noble clay jars, on the path of imperfection, and offer something of the love, mercy, and forgiveness you have received to those you encounter along the way.
