On the southwest coast of Ireland there is a national park comprising the entirety of the Iveragh Peninsula, a long promontory sticking out into the Atlantic Ocean, with a mountainous spine running down to sea cliffs and sandy beaches. It is a very beautiful spot, and while we were there Lee and I decided to drive the highway, the Kerry Ring, that goes all the way around the peninsula.

Now, the thing about going to a very beautiful spot in Ireland at the peak of tourist season is that you're not the only one who has that idea. There were lots of people that day wanting to drive the Kerry Ring. There were cars and trucks and SUVs--which are still kind of rare in Ireland but are gaining popularity as Ireland's economy booms--and there were tourbuses, huge coaches with mammoth sight-seeing windows, carrying dozens of German and French and Italian and Japanese tourists, all on the highway of the Kerry Ring. And Irish highways are different from American highways: this highway had two narrow lanes, and no shoulders to speak of, and there was an immense rock wall on one side, and a sheer drop to the sea on the other--and cars and trucks and tourbuses all trying to coexist in this narrow space. And we were all driving on the left hand side of the road. It was a beautiful day in a beautiful place--but I have to admit that before long my hands on the steering wheel were as white-knuckled as they could be and my nerves were in no state to appreciate the beauty.

So when I saw a turnoff to a smaller road leading to the Skelligs, I took it. The Skelligs were a place I really wanted to visit. They're islands, well just big rocks, really, not too far off shore in the Atlantic. I had read that centuries ago Christian monks from the mainland built small, beehive-shaped stone huts on these rocks, and they would paddle their coracles, their skin boats, out to the islands and live in the huts for days, sometimes weeks, at a time, fasting, watching, praying, meditating, living in a place that brought them very close to the edge, but also filled them with the wonder of life. Having read about them many years ago, I wanted to see the Skelligs for myself while we were there.

So we turned off the Kerry highway, and drove several kilometers beside a long estuary, where a river flowing from the mountains met the tide coming from the sea; and we left the car in a carpark at the base of a trail, and we walked way out a point where we could stand on the sea cliff and see at least two of the Skelligs just off the shore. It was a warm, kind of humid day, and there was a bit of haze on the ocean--not enough to be fog, but enough to make it look like the wild, rugged Skellig Rocks were floating just above the surface of the water, as if they didn't really belong to our world at all, as if they were apparitions from Faery or glimpses into heaven. It was astonishingly beautiful. And as we walked the trail, with the expansiveness of the ocean open before us, and the high blue dome of the sky open above us, and the green green fields stretching up to mountains open behind us--in all that openness I began to feel like my soul was opening, too, and all the stress and anxiety of a crowded highway and a crowded life and a crowded spirit uncoiled, and I felt opened to God's presence announcing itself exuberantly in all that beauty and in all that joy.

In our Gospel lesson today, some people bring to Jesus a man who is deaf and who cannot speak. And Jesus says to him "Ephphatha. Be opened." And the man's ears are unstopped, and his tongue is released, and he is opened up to a new healing presence of God in his life. And Jesus' word of healing is so powerful that the man isn't the only one who is opened, but everyone around is opened as well: when they see what Jesus has done, their ears are opened to hear God's living Word resonating in Jesus' voice, their tongues are released to proclaim good news about Jesus to everyone they see. Even when Jesus tells them not to talk about him, they are so opened that they can't help but talk about him all the more. Jesus says "Be opened," and everyone who hears is opened to a new power and presence of God in their lives.

And of course the point of the story is that Jesus says "Be opened" to all of us. To us, here at St George's today, Jesus speaks through this Gospel lesson, and the living Christ says to us "Be opened" in our lives, in our work, in our church, too. God's call to us today is to let our ears be unstopped, so that we can hear God's living Word resonating in all the voices and all the words we hear; God's call to us is to let our tongues be released, so that we can tell good news in all the words we speak and all the actions that speak louder than our words. God's call to us is to let ourselves be opened, so that we can be like water springing up in dry places, as Isaiah says--so that we can be doers of the word, first fruits of grace, as James says--so that we can share this abundant life we have found in Christ with everyone to whom we open our hearts, as Jesus does.

My sabbatical included a lot of moments of being opened in various ways. There were moments of being opened to the presence of God, like the time at the Skelligs. There were moments of being opened to ideas and insights in study and reflection. There were moments of being opened to other ways of conceiving and doing church. At General Convention I got to experience a breadth of liturgical variety wider than any one parish church could offer, but which gave me lots of good ideas to bring home. And visiting other local churches Sunday by Sunday let me experience how different communities can take the same Prayer Book and use it to create very different worship.

One thing I noticed while visiting other churches is how many congregations in our area make it part of their practice to invite everyone to communion. Not just to invite every baptized person, but to invite everyone. Now, this wasn't really new to me. I'd known some churches were doing this. I'd talked to clergy colleagues about their practices in their congregations. I'd wondered if it was right for St George's. I knew it was controversial. But in my own mind I was always sitting on the fence about it. On the one hand, it is hard to ignore centuries of church teaching and tradition which say the proper order is baptism first, and then communion, that's how it's done. On the other hand, it is hard to ignore all those Gospel stories in whihc Jesus doesn't insist someone has the right membership before he will share himself with them. When the people brought Jesus the man who was deaf and couldn't speak, Jesus didn't ask if he were a committed disciple before he would heal him. When Jesus fed the five thousand--a miracle which all four Gospels recognize as a kind of Eucharist--Jesus didn't say "All of you who have been baptized by John the Baptist or one of my disciples sit on the right, and all of you who haven't been baptized sit on the left, and you on the right get to eat." All through the Gospels, Jesus shares himself, Jesus communes, with everyone who comes to him--and it's hard to ignore the thought that the church which follows Jesus should do the same. Both these points of view were in my mind, and they weren't new to me.

But what was new to me over sabbatical was the feeling experience of being in so many communities where open invitation to communion was part of their standard practice. What was new to me was the experience of the presence of Christ at a table where everyone had a place--members, visitors, seekers, strangers, people off the street, the curious, the familiar--everyone. What was new to me was the felt depth of faithfulness to Jesus in a place where the invitation was as open and as fearless as Jesus himself.

So I came back from sabbatical thinking "Maybe it's time to have that experience at St George's." And when I was reading and praying over the Gospel for today, it was as if I could hear Jesus' words directed right at us, directed right at our communion table: Be opened. So we're going to try it. If you look at page 6 of your bulletin, you will see printed there "All are welcome to share the bread and wine of communion." All are welcome. Starting from today, our communion table is opened; we'll try it and we'll see if it bears fruit. If it work for us, if it opens us up to grow into a greater presence of Christ, then we will know the Spirit is in it and it's what God wants us to do. If it doesn't work for us, then we'll know Spirit isn't in it, and we'll ask forgiveness for making a mistake, and we'll stop. In the Anglican tradition, this process of trying something and seeing if the Spirit is in it is formally known as "reception," and it is the way our church makes many of its big decisions. I think God is calling us to receive this new practice of openness, and I ask you to try it with me and see if God is in it for us. I think this can be a way for us to grow into a greater participation in God's mission to feed a materially and spiritually hungry world.

Jesus says "Ephphatha. Be opened." And the Spirit of Christ comes to us to help us be opened: to be open to the presence of God in a beautiful day; to be open to the presence of God in guests at our table; to be open to hear the living word of God resonating everywhere; to be open to speak good news of God in everything. Jesus says "Be opened."

Let's see how open we can be.