Feast of the Presentation and Gramma Jean

Anna and Simeon with the Holy Family

February 20, 2002

Feast of the Presentation of our Lord

One year ago today I was in Cuernavaca, Morales in Mexico, and my mother called me with news I was expecting--my grandmother, Jean Cowen, had died. Gramma Jean had spent less than a year in a nursing home, and her health was rapidly declining. Even though we knew that she was miserable and that her health was bad, hearing the words still shook me. One year later, I am still learning how to live in a world without the person who most shaped me into the person I am today. 

It is meet and right that my grandmother died on the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord. While her Southern Baptist tradition would not have celebrated this Feast, per se, she would have known well the story from Luke's Gospel of Mary and Joseph presenting Jesus in the Temple. She also would have known about Simeon who recognized the baby as God's promised Messiah and Anna the prophet who proclaimed the Gospel that God had fulfilled God's promise. 

As I read the story of Jesus, his parents, Simeon, and Anna, I realize the generational diversity of this crowd: The baby, the new parents, the old man near death, and the 84 year-old widow. Each of these people had come to the Temple to worship God and to seek the promise God gave through Moses and the Prophets. 

Just as Jesus was carried to the Temple by his parents, I was carried to church by my parents and by my grandparents. My grandmother, in particular, made sure that I, like Jesus, was raised in the faith of my ancestors. She bought me and my brother an illustrated children's Bible, which I still have, and as I grew she bought me at least three other Bibles that I can recall. Each was appropriate to my age and each filled me with a sense of awe and wonder as I studied the stories of God's people.

Because my grandmother was the church organist--a position she held for more than 60 years--she taught me the hymns and music of the church. I would sit at the organ bench with her turning pages and watching her hands and feet as they played the notes on the page. She was my piano teacher, and I still find solace and connection with God when I sit at the piano and play. 

Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the temple because he is the firstborn son. In Jewish tradition of that time, you presented the firstborn to God. I, too, am a firstborn son. When I was born, my grandmother took out an ad in the paper with my picture. Charles and Jean Cowen of Henderson, TX have a new grandson. She was so proud. When I was baptized at age 5, she told everyone who would listen. Like Mary, my grandmother wanted to make sure that I was dedicated to God. Like Anna the prophet, she told everyone about how the baby in her life connected her to God. 

Gramma Jean came to see me in my first high school musical:
Hello Dolly. I played the judge and was in the chorus.

My grandmother was my greatest champion, advocate, and cheerleader. She came to every single play, choir concert, basketball game, and piano recital she possibly could attend. Her support gave me the confidence to do well and to keep trying new things. 

From my very earliest memories, I was with Gramma Jean. We went everywhere together, and we did everything together. She used to call me "my shadow." I can remember sitting on her bathroom vanity and watching her put on her makeup--an hour long endeavor at best. I would ask a million questions, and she would patiently answer them all. 

"Why don't you have eyebrows, Gramma Jean?"
"I plucked them out."
"Why?"
"I can draw them better than God made them."

She took me to see ballets and concerts and plays, and I asked a million questions, and she answered them.

"Why do we have to stand up when they sing Hallelujah?"
"Because the king did."

She took me to antique auctions and seminars on decorating. I asked a million questions, and she answered them.

"Why do you arrange the candlesticks like that?"
"Things look better in odd numbers. Avoid symmetry. It makes it more interesting." 

Gramma Jean instilled in me a deep love of beauty. She loved beautiful things: clothes, jewelry, furniture, decorations, and even her own hair and makeup. I think she saw that God made all the beautiful things, and through them, we could learn something about God. To this day, the beauty of my church's liturgical tradition helps me see God.

Gramma Jean in the 1960s
Dressed for church.

One year after Gramma Jean's death, I am still learning how to live in a world without her. Just two nights ago I went to a choral concert, and my first thought was, "I have to call Gramma Jean and tell her about this." Not a single day goes by where she isn't in my thoughts. I sometimes feel incredibly lost without her light to guide me.

I think about Simeon in those moments. Simeon spent his whole life awaiting the birth of the promised Messiah, and when he holds the baby Jesus in his arms, he is finally able to say, "Let your servant now depart in peace."

My grandmother died after seeing me ordained to the priesthood--something of which she was incredibly proud. I also had 35 years with my best friend, teacher, mentor, and guide. No one in this world has loved me more than she did, and I loved her fiercely.

Now that she is gone, I have to do the work that that the prophet Anna did. I have to proclaim the love of God and the revelation of God through beauty that my grandmother taught me. That is why I was called to the priesthood. I learned from Gramma Jean (and many others in my family) the love of God, and now I get to share that love with others. Every time I give the Blessed Sacrament to my parishioners, I feel her with me. I know that she is among that great cloud of witnesses and that she is still cheering me on.

I love you, Gramma Jean, and in the fullness of time we will be together again in God's Kingdom. In the meantime, keep praying for me.

Good Book Club 2019--Romans 14:1-12

Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God 

 (Rom 14:5-6 NRSV). 

A monstrance where a consecrated host
is placed for Eucharistic Adoration

I have always believed that one of the Episcopal Church's greatest strengths is its ability to hold a wide spectrum of beliefs and practices within a framework that proclaims Jesus as Lord. Because our tradition has unfolded over time through the influence of many theologians, preachers, mystics, divines, and worshipers from traditions and cultures across the globe, we have an eclectic and abundant set of traditions melded together. There is beauty in this model,and there also can be great tension as factions within the church try to defend their own position as more honorable or holy than the other.

One huge shift in our tradition, which in many ways realigned us more with the past, was the Oxford Movement of the 19th Century. To oversimplify this movement, the Anglican Church reclaimed many of the traditions of Roman Catholicism lost in the various English Reformations and applied them in ways that made sense to Anglicans. We see this again and again in our 1979 Book of Common Prayer, which adopts many practices out of this movement--perhaps most visibly, Holy Eucharist as the primary weekly service.

People worshiping in song and posture
with hands raised to the heavens

Looking only at ritual practices, we see a wide range of practices within our Episcopal Church, even when they use the same words from the prayer book. For example, one church might have incense, chanted prayers, a choral anthem in Latin, and lots of kneeling while another might have a praise band, spoken prayers, extemporaneous prayers of the people, hand-raising, and even praying in tongues. Both of these ends of the spectrum are permissible and, when done in the right spirit of holy worship, pleasing to God. I imagine, however, that every reader has a negative reaction to one or the other--if not both!

Why is this?

First of all, worship is and should be an incredibly emotional and personally transformative act. Each of us has sensory memories tied to our own places of worship as well as the way in which we were raised and the ways in which our faith has grown. Likewise, many of us bear scars of betrayal from church that may have harmed us and can have sensory memories of worship that link to those thoughts.

How do we know what it "right?" How does God want us to worship?

Here is where Paul becomes an incredible help to us.

First of all, if we read through the entire Pauline corpus, we find that Paul address different congregations differently and even has different guidelines for each one based upon their experience(s). Context matters! Just as it would be out of place for the worship in the barn at the camp where I worked for there to be fine vestments, incense, and a chanted Gospel, it would be equally out of place in the Church of the Advent in Boston for there to be a priest in cargo shorts and a stole singing along to teenagers jamming on guitars and drums. Within their context, however, both styles show forth true joy in their sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and God is well pleased.

Secondly, Paul reminds us in today's reading from Romans that it is not as much what we do as it is why we do what we do. Both those who eat and those who abstain give honor and thanks to God. Those who practice Eucharistic Adoration--a practice this Protestant-leaning priest struggles with--give honor and thanks to God when they do so in a posture of praising God. Those who raise their hands to the skies and pray in tongues and interprets the tongues--a practice this Anglican priest struggles with--give honor and thanks to God when they do so in a posture of praising God.

What practices of the church resonate most with you? Which do not? Why? How might re-framing those practices with which you struggle as acts of praise and thanksgiving shape your understanding of those who practice them?

Good Book Club 2019--Romans 12:1-8

Whew! I will be the first to admit the difficulties of trudging through the last few chapters of Romans. There's much to glean from Paul's dense prose, and we also should have the humility to know that scholars for hundreds of years have struggled with Paul's words.

Today, however, we come to this brief passage which our guide has graciously given us two days to walk through. They are words so beautiful, that I feel justified in doing what every writing professor told me not to do and reproduce them here:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:1-2 NRSV).

If you look to page 376 of the Book of Common Prayer, you will find that these words are an option for the priest to read as the offertory sentence (the sentence that invites the congregation into presenting their money, lives, and joy to God in the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving that is about to occur in the Holy Eucharist).

I could pick apart these words for hours, and I think they transition beautifully into Paul's next section on spiritual gifts.

My the mercies of God--Paul recognizes the importance of our bodies, our lives, and our spiritual worship. We cannot divorce our physical selves from our spiritual selves because God mercifully made us as both. When we give all that we have of ourselves to God, we are united fully to God and can join all the heavenly host in worshiping our creator.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed--Again, the created world in and of itself is not bad. It is God's creation. Humans, however, through disobedience and hardheartedness (review Romans 9-11) have turned to our own will rather than to God's will. When we align our will with God's, we are transformed and experience the creation as it was meant to be experienced.

That you may discern what is the will of God--This leads to our ultimate happiness and ultimate flourishing. Through this knowledge and conformity to the will of God, our spiritual gifts flourish. As we read in the next section, Romans 12:3-8, each of us has so much to offer the world, and the world is better--more the way God intended it--when each of us develop our gifts and share them with one another.

What gifts do you have?
What gifts do you see in others?
How might you join those gifts together for the betterment of the world?

Gramma Jean--February 2, 2019--Feast of the Presentation

On the day I was born, so goes the story in my family, my father was so nervous that he spent most of the time in the bathroom with diarrhea. My grandfather was pacing the waiting room, and my grandmother was upset. She thought she was too young to be a grandmother. She was a beautiful woman with youthful features, and she was adamantly opposed to being thought of as old in any way. She had already decided in her mind that this child-to-be would call her "Aunt Jean" and never "Grandma."

Then I came.

Gramma Jean told me five million times that the first second she saw me, she fell completely in love. She would stand at the window looking into the hospital nursery for so long that a nurse pulled the curtain in her face to try to get her to leave.

Since the very fist moment of my life, Gramma Jean and I were inseparable. She bought me clothes, took me to see a Russian ballet company perform The Nutcracker, taught me to play the piano, and showed me how to blow the paper off your straw across the restaurant. I had memorized her phone number before I memorized my own, and I knew how to call her to tell her what I did that day or if someone upset me or, most of all, to ask her if I could come stay with her and Pawpaw for the weekend. In all my life, I have never loved anyone more than I loved her, and no one has ever loved me as much as she did.

This morning, around 9am, my Gramma Jean died. She had been in very poor health for many years, and the nursing home where she lived was her own idea of hell. Her death came as something of a relief for both her and me, even though it has left an enormous hole in my heart.

I can remember when I was a little boy, I sat on the counter in front of the huge mirror and piles and piles of beauty products where Gramma Jean undertook her daily routine--of at least an hour--of applying her make-up and doing her hair. With every brush, bottle, or palate she picked up, I would ask, "What's that?" She would patiently explain every single step, and sometimes would even put a little on my face.

"Everyone looks better with a little make-up," she would say as she caked her face in the foundation she used every day.

I can still smell the sweetness of her powder and the pungent, spicy smell of Elizabeth Arden "Red Door."

Gramma Jean and Pawpaw c. 1960

My grandmother might be accused of being vain, but I don't think that was exactly the case. What Gramma Jean believed intensely was that appearances matter. She believed that you couldn't just roll out of bed and face the world. You had to prepare yourself. You had to make yourself into the best person you could be, and you had to put on your red lipstick and go into the world confidently even when you feel like you can't possibly go on.

Today, on the Feast of the Presentation, I am in México with a group of clergy and lay leaders from the Diocese of New York taking a two-week Spanish intensive. This morning, I knew what was coming, and I felt like crawling under my covers and hiding forever. Gramma Jean would have hated this. She would have told me to put on my brightest, reddest lipstick, spray my Red Door perfume, find some big, stylish sunglasses and a big floppy hat, and hit the road with a toothy grin on my face. I didn't wear any lipstick, perfume, or hat, but I did take a shower and go with my group to visit the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation, and the words of Simeon are ringing loudly in my ears:

"Lord, you now have set your servant free *
   to go in peace as you have promised;

For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *
   whom you have prepared for all the world to see:

A Light to enlighten the nations, *
   and the glory of your people Israel" (Book of Common Prayer, 135).

Simeon had waited his whole life to see the messiah. He remembered the promise God had made to his people and how God had never abandoned them. He remembered that even in exile and even under Roman conquest, God kept God's promises and delivered God's people. Then, finally, he got to see God made man in the baby Jesus, brought to the Temple by his mother and father.

Gramma Jean c. 1960

In no way do I equate myself with Christ. However, I do believe there are some parallels here. Gramma Jean spent much of her life praying, playing the church organ, and studying Holy Scripture. When we cleared out her library, I found at least a half dozen Bibles, and every single one was covered in highlighter and notes in the margins. She studied the Holy Scriptures every single day, and they taught her that even when life feels unbearable, God never abandons us. God loves us and keeps us, and, for that reason, we can put on our red lipstick and heels and run into the world in faith. She also got to see me and my brother Michael grow into men shaped by the love she and my grandfather taught us. Even though she always had an aversion to growing old, I know that she died having seen the messiah in this world, and today she rests eternally in his arms.

I am deeply grieved, dear readers. My very best friend and the closest ally I have ever had has died, and my life can never be the same. The pain in my heart is almost unbearable. However--I still have hope. I still cling to faith. I know that Gramma Jean saw the savior and today sees the savior, and one day we all will dwell together in that land where there is neither suffering nor death.

I will head to bed after I write this, and I will get up early tomorrow to go to a church here in Cuernavaca, Morelos, México. I will feel like hiding under the covers, but I will put on my red lipstick and heels--or at least my alb and green stole--and I will walk into the world with my head held high. Gramma Jean taught me that. She taught me that God will never forsake me, and I know she will be walking alongside me the whole way.

Good Book Club 2019--Romans 8:9-17

In today's lesson, Paul writes about spirit and flesh. What does it means to be alive in the spirit? What does it mean to be dead to the flesh? I think that sometimes we read into lessons like that that our bodies--physical things--are somehow bad and the only good things are those spiritual things beyond the physical.

In church yesterday, we heard Paul in 1 Corinthians use the body as an illustration for what it means to be the people of God--what it means to be church. In Paul's image of all of us coming together to form the Body of Christ, he has an overwhelmingly positive view of the body. It is a marvelous, wondrous thing that allows us to do Christ's work in the world and live into the fullness of who we are. Through the body we can flourish and have joy-filled lives.

When Paul talks about "the flesh" I think he means those things which serve ourselves, whereas "the spirit" means those things that further God's plan. God's plan, seen throughout all of Holy Scripture, can be summarized into a world of abundance, peace, justice, and love.

Paul writes that "if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness" (Rom 8:10). Sin, that which separates us from God, has a death-like effect on us. Jesus, however, through the Spirit, restores life by reuniting us to God. In other words, we who have strayed away from God's plan of abundance, peace, justice, and love are brought back into that reality through Jesus' faithfulness in the cross.

For those of us who profess the love of God and of Jesus, we have a duty to live into that vision and share it with the world. What would the world look like if we really lived as if Christ's life-giving Spirit dwelt within us? What are some concrete ways we could live this way?

Good Book Club 2019--Romans 7:7-13

We're getting into the really difficult stuff now, folks! Chapter 7 of Romans completely captured the imaginations of early church fathers like Origen and Augustine. Through these lenses, particularly that of Augustine, the reformers of the Protestant Reformation also shaped much of their theology.


I was taught that when we read the works of the past, we should read them with generous eyes. After all, it would be arrogant to think that we're somehow smarter than our ancestors just because we live in later times. I base much of my belief on inherited tradition of the church on what I learned from the translators of the Authorized (King James) Bible. Writing of translators prior to themselves, the translators of the Authorized Bible wrote:

Nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, an the later thoughts are thought to be the wiser: so if we building upon their foundation that went before us, and being holpen by their labours, do endeavour to make that better which they left so good.

In other words, each of us owe what we have learned to the past, and we should have the humility to understand that future generations will stand upon our shoulders and reveal further truths through our labors. This is a progressive view of history that has deep, deep respect for the past.

As we've discussed in previous posts here and on the Trinity Episcopal Church Facebook group, there is a tradition of interpreting Paul as incredibly anti-Jewish. I, and all biblical scholars of good repute, reject this notion. Remember that Paul was a Jew!

Stanley Stowers in his dense but incredibly helpful book A Rereading of Romans argues that the entirety of Romans is directed to a gentile audience. These gentiles, possibly through exposure to Christ followers or through exposure to Judaism, came to adopt many of the teaching of Judaism and of Jesus. Perhaps most importantly, they would have known the Ten Commandments and most likely much, if not all, of the Torah.

Stowers interprets Chapter 7 of Romans as Paul's explanation that both the Law and Jesus provide a means of being in relationship to God. However, you cannot and should not subscribe to both. Mark Nanos goes even further in his essays found in Reading Paul Within Judaism in arguing that Paul believes that God intends for Jews to remain Jews and Christ-followers to be something new so that God's promise of blessing to Abraham might spread such that Jews bless gentiles and gentiles bless Jews. (I am greatly simplifying this argument and encourage interested parties to read Stowers and Nanos.)

Ok, ok . . . I'm being really technical here. Why does any of this matter to us?

The "I" that Paul writes in Romans 7:7-13 is not an autobiographical writing, but Paul using a common Greek rhetorical device of a kind of Everyman--in this case a gentile Everyman. Paul says that the Law is good in that it teaches us what sin is, but he also does not believe that the Law, for gentiles, cannot bring us into relationship with God. Only Jesus can do that.

For this reason, Paul can say that "the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good" (7:12). Sin, however, separates us from God. The Law can teach what sin is, and it can also have a dangerous effect, for Paul, of allowing sin to take root.

For those of us who are Christian, especially those of us who have never been Jews, Paul is teaching us that we do not need to become Jews to know the God of Israel--Jesus provides that link that adopts us into the family of God. Likewise, Jews do not need to become Christians--God covenanted with Abraham to make them God's people.

This makes Jews and Christians members of the same family. We know the same God, and we experience that God in different ways. Perhaps our differences reveal something greater about the loving nature of God.

Good Book Club 2019--Romans 6:1-14

"Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means!" (Rom 6:1-2 NRSV)

This seems like such an obvious statement to me, yet Christians throughout the ages have had to ask Paul's question of themselves many times. Paul asserts that in our baptism we are united to Christ's death and resurrection: "For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (6:5). This assertion has led many Christians into conversations about salvation and how death and resurrection actually works. If we are baptized and united to Christ, can we ever do something so bad that we fall out of that grace? If we can fall out of grace, is baptism efficacious? If we cannot fall out of grace, does that mean that we can do whatever we want? 

I think the biggest problem with this means of thinking is that it takes a mechanical approach to salvation. If you follow steps A, B, and C, then you get to proceed. Remembering that our baptism is an entry into Christ's death, Paul writes that "our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin" (6:6). Does this mean that if we're baptized, we no longer sin? Judging just from my own life, from the age of 5 to 35, I have done some additional sinning. What this means for me is that I am no longer held captive by sin. In other words, I don't have to worry if I fall into sin because the grace of God has already been given. I don't read this as meaning that I can do whatever I want, but that I can dive head-first into life attempting to live out the kingdom of God without the fear that I will somehow fail. Paul says it this way:

No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness (6:13).

My task as a Christian, according to Paul, is to use my life--my very body--as a means of establishing God's righteousness. Because I am a human being and far from perfect, I will inevitably mess up sometimes. I will make wrong decisions, I will hurt people, and I will fall short of the glory of God. HOWEVER, because I have died and been risen with Christ in baptism, God's grace will far outshine my shortcomings. I can be an instrument of righteousness and peace, and the sins and mistakes I make out of my humanness will not enslave me.

This has incredible implications for our daily life. You've probably seen that meme going around that asks the question, "What would you try if you knew with certainty that you could not fail?" Paul assures us that with Christ, we cannot fail. Wow! Even if we do mess up, there is forgiveness and there is grace.

Attempt to spread God's love. Live like you believe it. When you mess up, ask God for forgiveness and learn from the experience, and above all, know that God's love for you never diminishes.