Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart… Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?
I spent the first few days of this week in Alexandria, at Virginia Theological Seminary for our annual Convocation, and I traveled into Washington, D.C. for a morning to see what things felt like there, with our government shut down, museums closed and National Guard troops in the city. Many of my encounters this week were unexpected, and resonated in this morning’s readings. So if you’ll bear with me, for this morning’s sermon I’d like to share a bit about that journey up the valley of Virginia, leaving the mountains and valleys and small towns of our diocese for the urban forests of our nation’s capital.
So on Monday morning of this week, I left Staunton and drove over Afton Mountain in drizzle and fog, then into downtown Charlottesville to the Amtrak station. I wore my collar, as I often do when I travel. Wearing my collar often leads to unexpected conversations and sometimes even to shared prayer – last summer, I still remember the man who stopped me on a sidewalk in London, carrying what looked like all his belongings in a large trash bag. “Are you a vicar?” he asked me. And then he asked me to pray, for him and for his estranged wife. And so we prayed, holding hands right there on the sidewalk, and then went our separate ways.
On this particular morning at the train station in Charlottesville, one of my first conversations was with an older woman with an accent I didn’t recognize. She stopped me with that question we sometimes find ourselves asking a stranger, “have we met? You look so familiar!” Neither one of us could think how – she was from New Jersey, heading home, and I am from Virginia, and haven’t been to New Jersey since just after college. And so we laughed, and she said, “I love you!” And I told her I loved her back.
When do we ever stop on a sidewalk in the city and tell a stranger we love them, especially these days? The blessing of her kindness traveled with me.
And so I boarded the morning train heading north. VTS’s annual Convocation combines class reunions with meetings and lectures and continuing education. We reconnect with friends and former students and with the professors who terrified us and inspired us; we talk about the challenges and joys of our ministries – what we’re teaching and preaching, the weddings, the funerals, the church roofs that need replacing. We talk about the worlds we live and work in – big cities, small towns, farming communities, suburbs. We wander around our old haunts, drinking lots of mugs of free coffee in the Flamingo (that’s the campus coffee shop), digging shamelessly through the 50-cent and one-dollar books in the library’s corner book sale. (And those of you who have stepped into my office know I really don’t need any more books.)
For a few days we re-experience the “trinity” of seminary life – Chapel, Class, Lunch – those three places where as students we were expected and invited to pray, learn, and break bread together. Talking with students brings back so many memories – chaplaincy training in hospitals, studying for our General Ordination Exams, writing papers. And on Tuesday evening, before we all scatter again for another year, we go to Chapel for Evensong, and I always find myself weeping at some point during the service, listening to VTS’ Taylor and Boody organ, the sopranos in the choir singing soaring “Glorias,” the whole congregation’s voices singing the hymns together, the organ dropping out for a stanza or two so you hear the harmonies fill the chapel.
Being on the seminary’s beautiful campus feels like finding refuge, a sanctuary from the challenges of our work and the politics of the outside world, the arguments and anger and suffering happening in the rest of the country and around the globe. At the same time, we can’t help but be conscious of our close proximity to the nation’s capital, and much of our conversation this year – including talks by New York Times columnist David French and Washington, D.C. Bishop Marianne Budde and our former professors – was about how to be people of faith, how to be priests and teachers and preachers in a time of such division.
After Convocation ended, on Wednesday morning I dropped off my suitcase at the Amtrak station in Alexandria and took the Metro into D.C. I wore my clergy collar, and I traveled light. Everything was closed, so I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to the National Gallery of Art or any of the Smithsonian museums. I took the Metro right into the heart of the city, to the National Mall. The Metro was quiet – the cars were not crowded. At the Pentagon stop, a couple army guys got on, and got off a few stops later. People, heading to work or to meetings.
And when I came up into daylight, the National Mall was not crowded either. I saw some National Guard members walking, and a couple cars labeled border patrol, a few people jogging, a few tourists. A small political demonstration was taking shape within view of the Capitol, and, curious, I stopped for a while to listen. The protest centered on an art installation – an ice sculpture of the word “DEMOCRACY,” that over the course of the day and the night would remain, while melting, for anyone to walk up to, touch, witness. The people who were gathered were thoughtful, hopeful, and the speakers – artists, activists, politicians, and a pastor, the Rev. William Lamar IV from the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in D.C. – were inspiring and encouraging. People smiled, made room, listened. Afterwards, people gathered in conversation, and I stopped to speak with the pastor and another woman who spoke, a former senator, who gave me a hug and a prayer.
I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come?
Heading back to the Metro station, I went by another way – home by another way, perhaps – and found myself unexpectedly at the foot of a waterfall, in D.C. – a beautiful cascade of running water, tumbling over stone, the sound of it washing out the sound of the city. The waterfall rushed down and around a huge building which turned out to be the National Museum of the American Indian, closed of course because of the government shutdown. It is built of stone in such a way that it looks like it is part of a desert in the American southwest someplace. It looks like a giant hill carved by wind, a stone mountain rising up in the middle of the city. The waterfall settles into a river that flows along the side the building, widening and calming, and I walked along, shaded by trees, past a memorial to Native American war veterans, and this slow-moving river created a space set apart from the political outrage, the protests and the anxiety and the uncertainty of the outside world.
Here, this museum, created by and for a people who were pushed out of their land by colonizers who wanted it, created by and for a people whose culture white Europeans tried to wipe out, this museum, with its river of peace flowing in the midst of a conflicted city, is a gift back to the country that almost defeated it. And on that day, it was a reminder of what is still good, what is still restorative, what binds us together and will carry us through difficult times.
Today’s Epistle, 2 Timothy, is believed to be Paul’s last letter to the church, written from a prison cell, and yet it is equally full of hope. He reminds his readers, his congregations, to “continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Continue to proclaim the good news, he tell them.
And the words of today’s Psalm:
I lift up my eyes to the hills; from where is my help to come?
My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth,
the maker of stone mountains in the middle of the desert and in the middle of the city, the maker of trees and rivers and waterfalls.
In our Gospel, Jesus reminds his disciples, and us, to pray always and not to lose heart. He tells the story of a widow who keeps asking, keeps asking, “Grant me justice,” begging help from a man who does not care, but finally relents. The widow’s voice is not a nagging voice, but a prophetic one – she is both vulnerable and faithful, calling out for help, not unlike artists and politicians and the pastors Wednesday on the National Mall. And she is answered.
In these times of anxiety, I invited you to look and listen for the moments of stillness, the moments of peace, the moments of music, the moments when a stranger says, “I love you,” the moments when you can say “I love you” back. God lives in the city, in the hills, in the midst of our anxiety, in the protests, in the chapel, on the train, in the halls of government, in the rivers God has made, in the person who comes to us asking for help, and in the person who helps. God is on the journey with us, always and Amen.
Sermon for October 19, 2025 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Staunton. Lectionary readings for Proper 24 found here.
