Taize Homily by Jason Rios. June 14, 2009

            I admit I got off a little easy today. One of the purposes of these lay homilies is for parishioners to reflect openly about their spiritual journeys. Few, if any, other gospel readings would give me a better jumping off point than the one we just heard about the mustard seed.

            I am one of a rare breed known as the 'cradle Episcopalian.' I was baptized, received first communion, and was confirmed all in the Episcopal Church and all before I was thirteen. The way I saw it, my faith was not merely a seed but already a mighty shrub. Ironically it was during my high school years at St. Stephen's Episcopal School in Austin that I began to question my faith in Christianity, and in Jesus. My teachers there taught me to think critically and to ask questions, and I turned these new skills towards a place never before interrogated: my faith. I was very effective and efficient at deconstructing my religious upbringing. Symbolically, I removed my participation in worship services piece by piece, until I no longer even said the ‘Our Father.' I wandered around spiritually in some sort of vaguely defined agnosticism. I had removed religion as a stool to access spirituality, but neglected to put something in its place.

            Despite my best efforts, the mustard seed of faith remained, and what kept it alive was music. Even when I would not say a single line of the Nicene Creed, I would sing. I have felt an intense and emotional connection to music throughout my life. I started playing the clarinet at age eight, and singing-soprano at the time-- at age eleven. During those years in high school and college when I was spiritually adrift, it was my love of music that kept pulling me back into church on holy days.

            I came to St. Thomas for the first time four years ago, and what drew me in initially was the music. I feel blessed to have spent four years now with the St. Thomas Choir making beautiful music. What kept me here though, was the message that here critical thinking and religion were not incompatible. In fact, I was encouraged to doubt, to 'live into the questions' as one parishioner said in her own homily, quoting Rilke. I began to reconnect with my faith, and I did it through my singing. Bit by bit, the pieces that I had removed were put back into place, but only after deep thought and questioning. There are still some elements of my Christian faith that I am critical of; there are still times when I don't say the whole Nicene Creed. The mustard seed is not yet grown into the greatest of shrubs. But what has grown is sturdier and stronger than anything that had come before. That critical attitude has made my faith so much richer and deeper.

            And now when I sing, I am singing to God, and I am singing with God, because God lives in the hearts of every person who comes in through those doors and up these stairs. God lives in the voices of every person who opens his or her mouth to sing-on key or off, quietly or thundering, from memory or for the first time. When I sing it is my gift to Jesus, and it is his gift to me. It is both deeply personal and a blessing to share with my brothers and sisters. That God is not the distant old man with a beard; God is real and here  in each and every face I see during my day. In every kind word, and listening ear, and loving action. For me it is singing, but you can be reminded of the real and present God any where you find empathy and love for your fellow human beings. It is in those places and in those actions that we speak to God and God speaks to us. It is in those places where our seeds grow.