Author: Rev. Dr. Daniel C. Wilburn

Once again, I took down all the Halloween decorations late last night.  This morning I nailed up a long white ribbon over my front door.  A white ribbon isn’t as dramatic as jack-o-lanterns and skeletons and candy.  But I like its simplicity.  Like the martyrs who go before us, they are hidden and nameless for the most part.  Their blood is the seed of the gospel.  Today is All Saints’ Day. Fr. Alexander Schmemann says we in America (the western mind) misunderstand what a martyr is.  We think a martyr is a someone who died for their faith.  But he says we are all martyrs because a martyr is first a witness.  Think of Stephen: “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” (Acts 7) Stephen is a witness to Jesus.  He tells not only his private story but the story of the whole Hebrew nation.  A martyr “sees.”  Do we see Jesus?  Can we say “Look! I see the heavens open and Jesus feeding the children in Haiti! …I see girls with fistulas being cured by Jesus!  …I see my brothers and sisters in China secretly worshipping our Father!  …I see water for the thristy, I see the Living Water!  …I see special needs children loved …I see someone standing up for the poor inner city students...

My eight-year-old son is fond of this quote:  “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”  He must have learned this at his special school program for smart kids.  Maybe it resonates with him at some deep level because he was once an orphan – and many of the world’s great leaders were once orphans. John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, achieved greatness.  Born, achieved, and thrust – he had all three paths to greatness.  Today is just about my favorite “saint day” – John the Baptizer Day, June 24th, the exact opposite of Jesus’ birthday.  I like this little irony the church cooked up:  “let’s put John’s birthday six months before Jesus’ (which is true historically) but the irony of John’s Solemnity is how it makes John small.  John’s got smallnicity.  We should be thrust into smallnicity.  There’s a lot of talk about being like Jesus, but we should consider being like John.  At least it has a bit more potential for success.  After all, it is hard to become the most famous person in human history.  But to become nothing – I can aspire to that.  St. Therese d’ Lisieux aspired to this goal… “that I could achieve sainthood by becoming nothing, a grain of sand trampled underfoot.”  Actually Therese thought Jesus was small, trampled underfoot by the world.  True – crucified...

Today is Pentecost.  I am offering a prayer.  At church, I am giving Katherine Krause’s prayer for those who suffer and in pain.  She wrote a fine prayer. I am intrigued by yet another Eastern Orthodox vantage point on life. Here is an excerpt from Alexander Schmemann about suffering and dying:  Here is a man suffering on his bed of pain and the Church comes to him to perform the sacrament of healing [anointing with oil].  For this man, as for every man in the whole world, suffering can be defeat, the way of complete surrender to darkness, despair and solitude.  It can be dying in the very real sense of Man and of Life in him.  The Church does not come to restore health in this man, simply to replace medicine when medicine has exhausted its own possibilities.  The Church comes to take this man into the Love, the Light and the Life of Christ.  It comes not merely to “comfort” him in his sufferings, not to “help” him, but to make him a martyr, a witness to Christ in his very sufferings.  A martyr is one who beholds “the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56).  A martyr is one for whom God is not another – and the last – chance to stop the awful pain; God...

I got my Bible and I’m speeding alongI got my Bible and I’m speeding alongI got my Bible and I’m speeding alongI smash the gas and I can’t do nobody wrong I threw a stick away up in the airI threw a stick away up in the airI threw a stick away up in the airHe got hit in the head but I don’t scare I turn my back and I walk awayI turn my back and I walk awayI turn my back and I walk awayThat’s about it, that’s all I got to say ‘cept, as I walk I pump my fist in the airAs I walk I pump my fist in the airAs I walk I pump my fist in the airI got my Bible – I’m an...