Veterans Day

From the Office of the Suffragan Bishop for Chaplaincies of the Episcopal Church





A Prayer for Veterans Day

Governor of Nations, our Strength and Shield:
we give you thanks for the devotion and courage
of all those who have offered military service for this country:

For those who have fought for freedom; for those who laid down their lives for others;
for those who have borne suffering of mind or of body;
for those who have brought their best gifts to times of need.

On our behalf they have entered into danger,
endured separation from those they love,
labored long hours, and borne hardship in war and in peacetime.

Lift up by your mighty Presence those who are now at war;
encourage and heal those in hospitals
or mending their wounds at home;
guard those in any need or trouble;
hold safely in your hands all military families;
and bring the returning troops to joyful reunion
and tranquil life at home;

Give to us, your people, grateful hearts
and a united will to honor these men and women
and hold them always in our love and our prayers;
until your world is perfected in peace

through Jesus Christ our Savior.

This prayer may be used as a congregational litany with the following responses to each stanza:

1. We thank you and praise you, our Strength and Shield!

2. We thank you and praise you, our Strength and Shield!

3. We than you and praise you, our Strength and Shield!

4. Watch over and keep them, Blessed Savior.

5. Hear our prayer in His Name. Amen.

Compiled by the Rev. Jennifer Phillips, Vicar, St. Augustine’s Chapel, University of Rhode Island campus. Her prayers appear in supplemental liturgical materials for the Episcopal Church and in her books of prayers including “Simple Prayers for Complicated Lives.”

And I'm sure we would have in our prayers especially today Frank Buckles, a West Virginia neighbor of ours who is by all records the last surviving American veteran of the Great War--and one of the last two or three in the world. Click here for a newspaper story from a year or two ago.

With thanksgiving and continued prayers for all those in our extended St. Andrew's parish family who have served in the uniform of our country, and for those who serve now.

Bruce Robison

Annual Memorial Service

Annual Memorial Service
Forbes Road Nursing and Rehabilitation Center
November 8, 2009

I Thessalonians 4: 13-18; Revelation 21: 1-4

Dear friends: Grace and peace to you, this afternoon, from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. In this fall season, as we are just a few weeks from the observance of Thanksgiving and from the seasons of Advent and Christmas, we would open our hearts and our lives to receive and know the blessing and peace and comfort of our Heavenly Father.

I know we come from many different backgrounds and traditions of faith and life. But we would stand in the mystery of God’s deep and generous love today. To know that above and beyond all our differences, all the limitations of our human efforts to see and know and understand his way, the God who creates us and sustains us will seek us out to meet us where we are today, as we seek his pardon and his love and as we commend those whom we have loved but see no longer in this earthly life to his gracious and abundant and eternal love. May this time of remembrance and memorial indeed be a time of the opening of our hearts to him, as we commend as friends and members of this community here at Forbes, as our mothers and grandmothers, fathers and grandfathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, to the arms of his mercy, and with a sure confidence in his care, and with a reasonable and holy hope of eternal life shared with those whom we have loved.

Last Sunday in our church as we observed and celebrated All Saints Day we sang as our opening hymn one that begins, “For all the saints, who from their labors rest, who thee by faith before the world confessed, thy name, O Jesus, be forever blessed. Alleluia.” And my favorite stanza of that hymn: “But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array; the King of glory passes on his way. Alleluia, alleluia.” And we would have that word in our thoughts this afternoon: triumph—the “saints triumphant.” And we would know and trust that in all that we bring to time of memory, all the memories, feelings, experiences of the past—that what we are most to be about today is the celebration of a great victory. A victory that was accomplished at the Cross of our Savior and that moves out like the ripples when a stone is dropped in a pond, in wider and wider circles into every corner of the world and into every faithful life.

In the 14th chapter of St. John’s gospel Jesus tells his disciples, “In my Father’s House are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again, and bring you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.”

And what a great word that is—assurance and promise. You know, in some more contemporary translation of the Bible this passage has Jesus say, “in my Father’s house are many rooms.” And maybe for a translator that makes some sense. But for me, and in the imagination of our hearts together this afternoon, let us choose the old word, and to hear the truth in that.

“In my Father’s house are many mansions.” Because I know deep down that that is what he has in mind for us. What he has had in mind for us from the moment he first knew us, each one of us, even before we were in our mother’s womb. A mansion is something more than ordinary. A residence of elegance and abundance and spaciousness, rich in every appointment. A place of wonder and grandeur. And that is what he has in mind for us. Certainly our resurrection life in God’s coming kingdom is beyond our imagining right now. But if we can picture this, we won’t be far wrong: that he has prepared for us a home above and beyond any home we have ever seen. More wonderful than anything we can imagine.

The readings from scripture are certainly rich in words of expectation for us today. “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together”—picture this!—“shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.”

This great reunion, with one another, with Christ. Not just for an hour or a day, but for an eternity. When sorrow and tears will have come to an end. Pain and suffering. The brokenness of illness and age. I don’t know how to picture it exactly, but this is all about joy and laughter, health and abundance. Think of how Adam and Eve must have felt in their first hours in the Garden, before the great tragedy of sin entered the picture. The world and all life an eternity of delight. That’s what God has in mind for us: that we will live with him in mansions of glory.

And one of my favorite images and passages in all of the Bible, in the Revelation to St. John, the 21st chapter: “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband; and I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”

We come here this afternoon I know with many feelings, thoughts, and memories. Some warm and tender—and I know some that might not always be so much in those categories. Remembering also the hardness of life in this world. The challenges. Dreams unrealized. Remembering all the ways, and this is so true for each one of us—all the ways we have fallen short of what we would hope for in ourselves. Things we wish we had said and done. Things we wish we hadn’t said, hadn’t done. Remembering is not any easy task.

But to remember here, for our loved ones and for us, the great concluding line, “the former things have passed away.” All is forgiven. All is understood. No recrimination. No hurt. The Shepherd has gone out to find the sheep, and to return again rejoicing.

Would you bow your heads with me in prayer.

Dear Friends: It was our Lord Jesus himself who said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Let us pray then for those whom we remember today, that they may rest from their labors, and enter into the light of God’s eternal Sabbath rest.

The golden evening brightens in the west; soon, soon to faithful warriors cometh rest; sweet is the calm of paradise the blest. Alleluia. Alleluia.

O Almighty God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, who by a voice from heaven didst proclaim, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord: Multiply, we beseech thee, to those who rest in Jesus the manifold blessings of thy love, that the good work which thou didst begin in them may be made perfect unto the day of Jesus Christ. And of thy mercy, O heavenly Father, grant that we, who now serve thee on earth, may at last, together with them, be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Bruce Robison

Twenty-Third after Pentecost, 2009

(RCL 27B) Ruth 3: 1-5; 4: 13-17; Mark 12: 38-44

I don’t think there’s a more beautiful story in the Bible than the story of Ruth.




Boaz and Ruth, Gustav Dore, 1865





We begin with Naomi, who with her husband moves to a distant foreign land for business. They have two sons, who grow and are married to young women of that country. In time, many years pass, and a disaster strikes. The business is wiped out, and in short order Naomi’s husband and both her two sons die. Now a tragically impoverished widow, Naomi resolves to return to the land of her ancestors, perhaps to throw herself upon the charity of her distant relatives, if any of them still remember her. She tells her two daughters-in-law to go back to their families—and the first does, though with tears of sorrow. But the second, Ruth, says no. This astonishing act of personal loyalty and commitment, cutting against all the social norms and expectations of the day. “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God.” Just breathtaking.

And so the two return together, without resources, connections, hope of any kind. Two women alone—what a risk: in that society the most profound vulnerability imaginable, destined almost certainly for a life of poverty, begging in the streets, prostitution. Survival itself an issue.

All a dramatic story, as we missed the first part with our observance of All Saints Day last Sunday, but of course I’d encourage you to go home and read it on your own. And in any case with that summary, this week coming to the comedic happy ending as we’ve heard read this morning. The result of Ruth’s faithfulness, a new beginning.

What seemed a story that could only be a progression from darkness into deeper darkness is suddenly a story of life and hope and joy, restoration, redemption, transformation, and renewal. And of course as we would know at the end of the story, that Ruth and her kind and generous new husband Boaz are to be the great-grandparents of King David, and so, also, we would know this morning, ancestors of David’s greater son, Jesus. What a story for the family tree!

And the moral of the story is that this is a young girl who had nothing going for her. A foreigner! And that was perhaps the editorial edge intended by the storyteller, as the story of Ruth is written in the context of Israel after the exile, when a deep theological anxiety about gentiles and intermarriage was sweeping through the returning Jewish community.

Here Ruth: a gentile indeed. No wealth, power, position, prestige. No diploma on the wall. No bank account. No father to be sure she would be treated with dignity and to provide a dowry so that she could be married to a respectable man. All she had going for her—all she had going for her, was the goodness of her heart. Her faithfulness. Her love.

And the good news of the story, the message for us, is that that turns out to be enough, and more than enough. In fact the only thing that would really count. The only treasure that would open the heart of Boaz.

Ruth makes herself entirely vulnerable, first in following Naomi, and then in following Naomi’s instructions and lying down at the feet of Boaz. Without resources, without defense. And in that vulnerability, it is her goodness and love, the purity of her heart and her intention, that end the long night of suffering and will make possible the dawning of a new day.

In the same way that all the intention of God for the healing of creation and the renewal of life will hinge on the answer that young Mary will one day give to the Angel Gabriel. It’s up to her to decide, yes or no. So here, it all depends on Ruth, willing to risk everything to follow the direction that God is whispering in her heart. She is free to choose, and she chooses the way not of safety and security, but the way of love.

I guess that’s all connected, the story of Ruth, with the parable of the Widow’s Mite in the reading from Mark. The Pharisees in their flowing robes make a great show of their religiosity, but in truth they put nothing at risk. We might say, they only put at risk their “discretionary income.”

But the Widow—she just puts it all out there. What she has, she gives. And whatever might happen next—well, that will be up to God, because she has nothing left of her own. This is what love is. Not calculating, but letting go.

Some can talk a good game. Wear the right clothes. Put on the impressive show. But what matters is the heart. Who we are when nobody else is around.

One young woman, long ago and in a land far away. One elderly widow, alone in the Temple. What it’s about when we say, with Psalm 96, “O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness.” And it’s all about love.

Not about keeping of rules, duty, standards—a grudging obedience. An effort to meet the minimum standard. Not about impressing others with an outward show.

All about love turning the heart, filling the sails, holding nothing back, without personal agendas or clinging to grievances.

That these two would be icons for us of Christian life, what we would pray to begin to see as we look in the mirror in the morning. Why we are drawn to be followers of Jesus, to be members of his family. Imperfect as we all are in this along the way. The kind of people God made us to be. Faithful love as a way of life. Faithful love as a state of being. As thanksgiving and generosity and sacrifice and devotion without restraint, and in abundance. Love as the secret to unfold the mystery of the Cross. Love as the air we would breathe all together in the new life of Easter. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.

Bruce Robison

All Saints Day, 2009

Revelation 21: 1-6 (RCL B)

Grace and peace, and certainly a word of welcome and thanksgiving on this day of major significance in the calendar of the Church Year, celebrating on All Saints Day the great “capital letter” saints and heroes of our Christian heritage, and then on the day after, All Souls Day, the greater multitude of saints, all faithful departed, and especially those whom we have known and loved.




A season of remembrance in the Christian family.—And of course here at St. Andrew’s for a number of years now a day we have observed and celebrated meaningfully and beautifully with the gift of music.


So I begin with thanks, to the members of the orchestra this morning, and to our choir, with visiting friends, to our Assistant Organist and Composer in Residence, Ayo Oluranti, conducting this morning, to Pete Luley of course, our Organist and Choirmaster, to our own Joanne Luchsinger, who is the executive director of the Festival Orchestra, to Dr. George Knight, chairman of the St. Andrew’s Music Guild, and of course with special thanks to the members of our Friends of Music, for the generous contributions that make this morning possible, for our whole St. Andrew’s All Saints Music Festival. And last but not by any means least Jinny Fiske and all those who have contributed to our wonderful hospitality. This the “seventh annual.” It is all just truly a blessing.

In a very profound way I think our preacher this morning is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and certainly this beautiful Mass speaks to us and unfolds the meaning and depth of our worship in a way that is deeply communicative, but also beyond words. And as we gather around Word and Sacrament, there is in this music a space created in us to receive the miraculous and living presence of the Word made flesh, the Bread of Heaven and the Cup of Salvation.

In the old pageant story of Christmas Eve the doors and homes of the little town of Bethlehem were closed and locked, until that one Innkeeper was able to find a place for the child to be born. May we each, and I know each of us in our own way, find a door in ourselves to open, this morning of All Saints Day, and to welcome him as he would be born into our lives.

In the midst of that, I would this morning highlight for just this one moment and phrase as we have heard it this morning in the reading from the Revelation to St. John the Divine, as St. John in his mystical vision is transported to the highest reality—not of another place, but I think the better metaphor is “another time”-- another time, the great future destiny of all creation. Heaven and earth passed away, the New Jerusalem, the glorious day of God’s new creation dawning, and the word from the throne of heaven proclaims, “Behold, I make all things new.” --“Behold, I make all things new.”

There is some irony in that the great themes of this All Saints Day so often very naturally turn our attention to the past. To the great heroes of faith in ancient days, and to the memories of those whom we have loved, but see no longer. Those recollections are of course good, and we would pray always that we would be inspired and comforted in them.

But simply to say that the powerful invitation this morning is not to keep our eyes in the rear view mirror, but instead to be inspired and comforted and energized with this great vision forward, of God’s future, and of our place in God’s future.

“But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array; the King of glory passes on his way. Alleluia!”

In the Biblical witness this isn’t about our “going up to heaven” to rest on clouds and play harps day after day into eternity. The New Jerusalem comes here, and I love this phrase, coming to us from God “a bride adorned for her bridegroom.” A restoration and renewal of this world, this great cosmic reality of God’s creation. As we heard from the angel in the great story of the Ascension: in the same way that he departed, he will return. Or as St. Paul says, it’s not so much that we go to meet Jesus, but that with the fanfare of great trumpets he returns to us, and we rise up to meet him. All of us, as we confess in the creed: the quick and the dead. Here. Christ at the Cross unlocks the door, pushes back the stone to let in the light of the first morning of the world.

A restoration and a renewal that we all of us, the living and the dead, are raised up for, all together, and into a fullness of life, an abundance of life, that will complete the highest and best of our character, our values—as we are able even now to catch a glimpse, in the renewal of life in baptism, in the deeper healing of our spiritual brokenness in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. A glimpse in the effort to create and live in the beauty of holiness, to work for justice and peace, in the turning of our hearts in kindness to friend and stranger. In every offering of patient love.

It is of course beyond all words and imagery and any concept we can grasp. But it is even so, the basis of our greatest hope. All Saints just another word for us, for Easter. All this and all our lives now in Christ we might even think of as raw materials to be taken up by God in the fullness of time. Certainly the great acts of witness and service by the heroes of days gone by. But equally in the quiet and unseen corners of every faithful life and every faithful heart. The old body not cast away, but renewed in resurrection. So that the work of the grave is overturned. So that death has no victory. “Behold, I make all things new.”

This all an invitation to us to begin our new lives here and now, to roll up our sleeves and to get to work, creating, forgiving, blessing, healing, loving. To say, Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.

Make me and make us here and now a part of your future. Your future being born now in us. Where there is hatred, to sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. And certainly, in it all, where the new Sunday morning and new life is dawning in the midst of our lives, may everything we say and do be the music of heaven.

Bruce Robison

Saturday, October 31, 2009

Holy Matrimony
Emily Rene Hasse and Adam Daniel Giardina

Emily Renee Hasse and Adam Daniel Giardina

Song of Solomon 2:10-13, 8:6-7; Ephesians 5: 1-2, 21-33

Adam and Emily, what I want to say first to you, and I know I’m speaking for all the family and friends gathered here this afternoon in this wonderful setting, is thank you. It is for us all, and for me personally, a privilege and a joy to be sharing today with you, to be with you as you exchange the vows and promises, the words, and the commitments of the heart, that will make you one in Christ, as husband and wife. It’s a great day!

You and we have been thinking about it and planning, for a long time, and when we started this date seemed a long way off—but now, time has flown by, and here we are. Congratulations to you, of course--as I know this season of your friendship and deepening relationship has been rich in so many ways, and as I know that the story that is yet to be told of the life and family you will share as husband and wife will be a great one.

The first lesson that you selected, from the Old Testament book of the Song of Solomon, is a wonderful and very appropriate reading for this day. It is a love song, a poetic expression of the deepest passion and compassion of the human heart, as we know that in our deepest and most intimate relationships, and as we would understand through that--that we are for at least a brief moment in this world catching a glimpse of the deep love, the passion and the compassion, that is at the heart of God’s life, and that we are all ultimately destined for.

This day, the commitments you bring, the words and promises, speak about who you are today, and also about who we are all destined to become, this moment like a window, through which we begin to see God’s hope and dream for each one of us since the creation of the world.

Many waters cannot quench love, no flood can sweep it away; if a man were to offer for love the whole wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned. The rarest thing of all, the most precious, the most fragile, the hardest to find and the easiest to lose, yet somehow also the most durable, the most patient, the most forgiving, the most welcoming.

It is a beautiful poem, a beautiful image, for this beautiful day, and, I would simply offer the thought that the gift of this moment is one that doesn’t ever need to wear out or to be exchanged. It’s the best gift of all, the richest of all blessings, and with care will last for a lifetime.

You know, in the Old Testament Book of Exodus there is one of my favorite stories, about a moment of life-changing experience, a “vocational” moment, life changing, transformational moment-- in a way kind of like a wedding. Young Moses is working for his Father in Law, tending his sheep out in the wilderness, and one day he sees something off in the distance that looks strange to him. He moves closer and finally comes to this great big tree or bush that is on fire, fully engulfed in flames, burning and burning—but no matter how long it burns, it doesn’t burn out. He watches for a while, amazed at the sight, and then all at once a great, deep voice comes from the flame.

(I like to think it was the voice of James Earl Jones.) “Take off your shoes, Moses, for the ground on which you are standing is holy ground.” Holy Ground.

In that moment, in his encounter with God at the Burning Bush, Moses comes to understand his destiny—and all the great story of the Exodus, and God’s plan for his Chosen People, is now to be the story and meaning of his life. A turning point, and a new beginning. The ground on which you are standing is holy ground.

Now, Emily and Adam, we don’t need to take that literally, and you can keep your shoes on. But we would remember even so that in the vows and promises you make today, in God’s sight and in the presence of these friends and family members, the ground under your feet is consecrated, and made holy. That God’s holy presence is with you, surrounding you, above you, and beneath your feet, with richness and blessing. The prayers and blessings of this day don’t just happen here, in this one moment of a wedding in Jennerstown, Pennsylvania, but they go out with you into your marriage and life together, from this day forward, and will be around you and under you and with you all the days of your life--wherever your life takes you, holy ground. God had great plans for Moses—and today, this afternoon, he has great plans in mind for you.

And it is my and our best prayer for you that in God’s love you will continue to experience his love and his blessing always, and that your life together will be a catalyst, an inspiration, for that sense of God’s goodness to be known by others. That you will be blessed, and that you will be a blessing.




May God bless and keep you in this new life that you begin today, and with joy and peace in all the days ahead.



Now as Adam and Emily exchange the vows that will make them husband and wife, I would ask all of us first to bow our heads for a moment to offer a prayer for them, for their protection and their blessing, their joy, in all that God has for them in the days and years ahead.

Bruce Robison

Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles

October 28: Simon and Jude

O God, we thank thee for the glorious company of the apostles,
and especially on this day for Simon and Jude; and we pray thee
that, as they were faithful and zealous in their mission, so we
may with ardent devotion make known the love and mercy of our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee
and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

"In the various New Testament lists of the Twelve Apostles (Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:16-19; Luke 6:14-16; Acts 1:13), the tenth and eleventh places are occupied by Simon the Zealot (also called Simon the "Cananean," the Aramaic word meaning "Zealot") and by Judas of James, also called Thaddaeus or Lebbaeus. ("Judas" in New Testament contexts corresponds to "Judah" in Old Testament ones. Note that masculine names ending in "-ah" when translated from Hebrew directly to English usually end in "-as" when the translation passes through Greek, since in Greek a terminal "-a" is normally feminine, but a terminal "-as" is normally masculine. Thus we have "Elijah" => "Elias," "Jeremiah" => "Jeremias," etc.)

Some ancient Christian writers say that Simon and Jude went together as missionaries to Persia, and were martyred there.



If this is true, it explains, to some extent, our lack of historical information on them and also why they are usually put together."

And a tip of the hat on this day to two younger members of St. Andrew's Church, brothers Simon and Jude Sweeney!

Bruce Robison

All Saints Music Festival: Friday by Candlelight

At St. Andrew's Church, 5801 Hampton Street, Highland Park
Friday Evening, October 30, 8 p.m.




Soprano Sara Botkin is joined by Scott Pauley, lute, in a program of sixteenth and seventeenth century song.

Reception Follows. Free.