One of the jobs of a priest is to proclaim the good news of the gospel each week.  I am well aware as one of the pastors of St. Augustine’s Chapel that my job is easier because I am preaching, not just to a sweet choir, but to a congregation of disciples who have already discerned much of their calling and believes in offering one another the freedom to act as our callings guide us.  About nine years ago in the fellowship hall of St. Augustine’s, we started making candles and body balms.  We began because of a desire to help the women residents of Magdalene have an income and job experience.  We began with volunteers from this congregation, three women of Magdalene, and the name Thistle Farms, decided upon after discussion around a dinner table. The prayer was to make bath and body care products that would be healing to the earth, the body, and the women who were making products.  The chances that such a venture would succeed were exceedingly slim.  Our business plan was created by students, our work force of three had a combined record of over 500 arrests, and the director got mad every time someone asked for a budget.  But, slowly and surely we grew and outgrew our space. When construction on the chapel started, we found a new refuge in a building offered to us by St. George’s Episcopal Church on Belle Meade Boulevard.  And over the years as we embraced the reality of being thistle farmers and went out into the world, not just to help a group of women who needed help, but to talk about the myths in our culture of why women walk the streets and the truth about what it takes to invite them back into the wider community, we even outgrew our space at St. George’s.  Two years ago we started praying and publicly asking for a space to manufacture these revolutionary bath and body care products that preach without words that Love Heals.  It has been our dream.

In this Gospel, the Good News, Jesus calls Simon Peter to discipleship.  Peter, who has already witnessed the miraculous healing of his mother- in-law and the great catch of fish, is being invited by the Lord to stand close as the Good News is proclaimed.  In this account, he falls to his knees and seems unsure if he can take on this offer.  He feels unworthy, and seems to be on the brink of walking away.  He has to abandon everything else to follow this call.

In the story of Isaiah’s call, he receives a magnificent vision and is given the voice of a prophet.   He is given a message and told to proclaim it to the wide world.  It seems incredible, as if it would be a place of privilege and honor that many religious leaders would crave.  God gives him the words and the ability to preach them and Isaiah says, “Woe is me.” He stands back, and finally, almost as a surrender, we hear the words, “Here I am, Lord, send me.”

It is not that Peter doesn’t hear the call as the Good News or that Isaiah doesn’t love his Lord and desire his words to be on his lips or in his steps.  It is that the weight of not just good news, but great news is coming our way in our lessons today, that makes it a little overwhelming. We realize it means our lives will change and the calling will lead us to places we have never been before.  That is what is unfolding in our lessons today: the great news that we are called.   We, like Isaiah and Simon Peter, are called to intimacy with God on the path of discipleship, to hear his voice and follow his lead, and that is not just good news, it is great news, and it is completely overwhelming.

After two years of search and prayers, a donor came to Thistle Farms this fall and asked what we needed.  I told him a manufacturing facility.  He had given two smaller gifts to us in the last two years to help purchase the raw materials needed to grow our sales revenue.  The way he described it to me was that he was ready to make a significant gift.  Shortly thereafter we found a building, and he wrote a check for the entire amount. Now we are waiting to close on a building that has four store fronts, a manufacturing facility, and offices on the corner of 51st and Charlotte by the old First American Bank building.  We have a million dollar building that needs paint, carpet, lights, and heating/cooling to expand and live out our dream of growing and becoming a force for change in the world.  It is huge and the largest gift we have ever received.  It allows us to grow fourfold, to meet the needs of women we haven’t met yet, and to dream of things we haven’t begun to imagine.  The beatific irony of being thistle farmers and having the deed to a $1,000,000 building is a testimony to the dreams of a community.  But when the news came, it was not jump-up-and-down joy.  All of us were like Peter and Isaiah, feeling unworthy at this new calling.  It is not going to be easy to allow the longing and the dream to come into our waking truth.  It will pull us all in deeper and that is not good news; it is great news, and great news changes our lives.  This building, on top of our Ecuador commitment, our pastoral concerns, our baptisms, our personal stuff, and our prison tour is a great new calling for all of us. 

The great news for all of us today is that we are called like Isaiah and Peter to follow closely.  This calling isn’t a sweet reflection that fits into our lives.  Callings move us to walk more deeply into the wilderness of our faith.  It is not good news—it is great news, and because of it, our lives will never be the same. Thank God.



"Ave Maria" muzak blew through speaker-wreaths at the mall in strange and perfect dissidence with the Christmas classic “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” that was ringing from the Santa kiosk.  The booth had a long coiled rattlesnake-line of weary children on the verge of a venomous meltdown.  Two old stoics sat on a nearby bench in the decked halls under camo ball caps that silently revealed their sugar-plum dreams of sitting in a homemade stand of pine boughs waiting for their Christmas feast to amble by.  What normally would have been a tightrope walk hanging above a gulf of sarcasm masking my fear that my own materialism is drowning out the call to peace, instead, felt like just a sweet stroll with my children.  I believe the joy was welling up in me, because I had spent the morning sitting with a woman who believed this may be her last Christmas.  Seeing this Christmas scene through eyes filled with the memory of her tear-filled eyes was the antidote for hearts that while they may never say “bah humbug," still beat through stone-like flesh.  I walked through those decked halls, welling up with gratitude for love.

That stroll became my “O come, O come, Emmanuel” this year.  It came as a surprise, and it was freeing and joyful. It has made me reflect on how many seasons I have spent trying to get the Christmas spirit by getting back to the spirit of Bethlehem or at least the spirit of my youth and feeling like something was missing and ending up feeling lonely.  This year though, instead, the gift of the spirit for me was found in imagining that this might be my last Christmas.  I know that if this was my last Christmas, I would love every gift that I gave and every single gift I received.  I think that if this was perhaps my last Christmas Eve, every carol would make me cry and sipping coffee by the tree as the kids opened presents would feel like even this sadness was filled with blessing.  I think that if this were my last Christmas I could hear the words of "Ave Maria" and the Magnificat as balm to my soul.  I could feel that Mary was singing her song of praise to all of us-- from generation to generation-- that remember our very flesh makes us human and lowly and that is what God loves. It is in our humanity that we are lifted up and that our pride is scattered as we remember that we are returning to God one day.  If this were to be my last Christmas, that is the good news that would feed me and carry me through the many silent nights.

After my walk through the mall, I spent the next couple of days in a grateful cloud that always seems to hover after moments of clarity. I received an email from a woman who had contacted my brother, The Rev. Gladstone Stevens, III, to see if he was the same Rev. Stevens she had met in New England when he was a young priest.  My brother explained that he was his son, and that our father had been killed by a drunk driver in 1968 when we were little children, not too long after she had met him.  She wrote us back and said that almost 50 years ago before Christmas, on what would turn out to be one of my father’s last, my father and mother both were very warm and kind to her and her boyfriend, a young couple who found themselves in the middle of tremendous personal upheaval and change.  She explained that they were both students and very much in love.  She wrote, “When I learned I was pregnant, we decided to be married. We contacted St. Andrew's Church near Yale where your father was vicar.  Your parents, who couldn't have been that much older than we were, invited us into their home for premarital counseling. I recall such a happy scene there, with at least two small children climbing on your father's lap.  At a time when our world was full of censure, your parents were accepting and supportive.  Your mother helped dress me in a borrowed gown and veil and choreographed the ceremony.  I was in a daze.  I wish your father could know that he joined us with strong glue---four children, ten grandchildren. I'm long overdue in expressing my appreciation, but it is heartfelt.”

For me, this letter was not overdue, but right on time.  That my father, who I can’t remember, spent one of his last Christmases opening his home and church to a couple seeking shelter from the storms around them is the best Christmas gift I could have asked for this year.  She remembered to write and give thanks 50 years later to children and grandchildren who might have wanted to ask the young priest, “How did you spend some of your last Christmases?  And would you have done it any differently if you had known you would die so young?”  Her email memory is a sermon to me about how each of us might want to spend this Christmas, whether or not it is our last—seeking to love without judgment, welcoming the stranger, not feeling put upon, opening our homes and hearts, letting children just crawl on our laps, planning a celebration in the midst of hard circumstances, and seeing Christ’s love in it all.

This is Christ the King Sunday when we celebrate the end of our liturgical year and try to marry the Jesus of History with the Christ of the Kingdom.  The reading selected for this celebration is from the Gospel of John where the potential threat to the Roman occupation of Galilee and Judea is being tortured and questioned.  Within this historical event are layers of theological ideologies of the Johannine community including anti-Semitic bias and redactive storytelling. We are close to Advent, and so even though this story is set within the context of Good Friday, the emphasis today is different.  Our focus is not on the passion of Christ, but on the nature of his kingdom and what it means to proclaim him the King of that realm.  

When Jesus proclaims, “My kingdom is not of this world,” I don’t think that he is saying that his kingdom dwells in outer space.  He means that his kingdom is not of the world of power, politics and money.  When I think of places and positions not in that kingdom, I think of places preparing for war or the threat of war, of communities alienated from one another by judgment, and of the places in politics where personal gain trumps the needs of people.  And I think of prison.  In the United States right now there are more than 2.3 million Americans in prison.  The estimates are that 85-90% of those behind bars are there because of drugs or drug-related felonies.  Last week Thistle Farms and the United Methodist Publishing Company launched the first leg of our Find Your Way Home Prison Tour in Gadsden Correctional Facility in Florida.  We are deeply grateful for the generous invitation from Rick Seiters, COO of Corrections Corporation of America and a grant offered by the Cal Turner Family Foundation.  Our goals are to go into eight prisons in different states to speak the story of hope to women incarcerated; to share the story of Magdalene; to share our book, Find your way Home; and to connect local church communities with practical ideas about how to welcome women from prison back into the wider community.  Gadsden holds 1,500 women inmates with an expansive campus that in addition to the women is home to greyhounds being retrained after their abuse on racetracks.  There is also a big greenhouse where woman learn important gardening skills. Our program inside the prisons includes talks by two of the graduates of Magdalene, a couple of readings from our book, a story or two from me, music by Marcus Hummon and Julie Roberts, followed by a time for questions.  It was a bright, clear day, so between our presentations we walked the grounds surrounded by bailed-barbed wire. Hundreds of women were walking single file on a stretch of sidewalk painted with yellow lines in a sea of blue prison uniforms.  As I walked, I wondered how the women survived this confinement inside the walls –without their families or the ability to stroll freely on the grounds.  Then I looked over and noticed a row of tall, bright purple coneflowers reaching toward the sun in full blossom.  The coneflowers didn’t know they were in prison.  They just bloom where they are planted.

That is when I heard the proclamation of Christ the King.  The kingdom is not a place; it is where love grows and blossoms, no matter where it is planted.  In becoming part of the kingdom of God our job is to bloom, wherever we are.   Our ruler in this kingdom reminds us always to bring hope and love wherever we find ourselves, whether we are at the mercy of rulers, inside prison walls, at church, behind a desk, by the stove, or under a bridge.  We are living out the kingdom when we can answer with our Lord in all those spaces, “For this we are born and why we are here on earth.”

An African American woman named Dorothy Brown was born in Philadelphia in 1919 and raised in an orphanage until the age of 15.  Having moved to foster care, she graduated second in her class from high school and in 1944 with a scholarship from the United Methodist Women enrolled in Meharry Medical College.  It is said that she chose Meharry over Howard, because the cost of living in the South was less.  After a year’s internship at Harlem Hospital, Dr. Brown returned to the South as the very first African American woman surgeon and a member of the American College of Surgeons.  She said she always tried not to be hard, just durable.  From 1957 to 1983, Dr. Brown was chief of surgery at Nashville’s Riverside Hospital, clinical professor of surgery at Meharry, and educational director for the Riverside-Meharry Clinical Rotation.  Her determination, beliefs and values helped her break through tough ground and bloom in a powerful way as a witness to the possibility of believing that we are all able to break new ground and bloom.  Blooming where we are planted means that we know for what we are willing to give up our lives, it means we know why we were born, and for what purpose we will live the rest of our days.

After the walk we came back inside the prison and their prison band, called “Project Her,” played two of their songs for us. They asked Marcus to sing and as he introduced the song, “Bless the Broken Road,” one of the women in the band told him she knew the song and wanted to sing with him.  Holding a mike, she stood beside him in her pressed, prison uniform.  Then she lifted her head and sang in perfect pitch,

I set out on a narrow way, many years ago
Hoping I would find true love along the broken road
I got lost a time or two
Wiped my brow and kept pushing through
I couldn’t see how every sign pointed straight to you
Every long lost dream led me to where you are
Others who broke my heart, they were like northern stars
Pointing me on my way into your loving arms
This much I know is true
That God blessed the broken road
That led me straight to you.

More beautiful than the coneflowers blooming, she was the incarnate kingdom of God, singing about hope and forgiveness in the soil of prison. You can’t kill hope, thank God.  You can try, but in the kingdom of God hope flourishes and has the last word.  You can torture and kill Jesus, you can kill the prophets, but in the kingdom hope still blossoms, and we are the witnesses to that field of blooming.  Hope is the tension in the bow that propels the arrow.  It is the stuff of dreams that allows Samuel to still see visions at the end of his life.  It is the proof that the kingdom, while not of this world, is alive and well all over the world where hope blossoms again.  

The mystical oak has towered over a hill longer
than any living memory like a regal sentry.
She stretches out even branches, a welcome mat,
for the passing hawks and owls like a perfect host.
She claps her leafy hands to entertain howling
coyotes like a happy mother.
She keeps watch over the fog taking in a morning nap before
sailing off on a sunlit ray like a forgiving friend.
She marks everyday as Sabbath in her canopy like a
beloved peacemaker.
She kisses the enamored sun, then drops a leaf in his honor
every evening like an obedient disciple.
She stands her ground in dry springs and tends wildflowers at her
rooted altar like a dutiful bridesmaid.
She offers acorns as gifts to all, giving her mite
in the holy of holies like a generous widow.
At her sanctuary all pilgrims are blessed.
In her shadow all our souls find rest.
By her feet, silent, unbridled songs of gratitude for this wonder
of creation rise easily into the air she gives us to breath.
Our mother, friend, and disciple, the incarnation of love.