• About

Seeking and Serving

~ seek and serve Christ in all persons

Seeking and Serving

Monthly Archives: September 2013

Varieties of gifts…

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

body, Christ, church, gifts, God, variety

-courtesy of dwellingintheword.wordpress.com

-courtesy of dwellingintheword.wordpress.com

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.  To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.  To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit,  to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit,  to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.  All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.  For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.  -1 Corinthians 12.4-12

This Saturday, our parish is hosting its Annual Fall Fair.  The event is pretty huge.  We start our work as early as the late winter, and the final pieces come into place in this last week.  Everyone has a role – whether it is accumulating items for and assembling raffle baskets, clearing out closets for attic treasures, asking for donations for raffle prizes, making crafts or baked goods for sale, running the food truck, helping with parking, laying out spaces for vendors, coordinating all the vendors, or helping put up signs for the event.  And the list is much, much longer.  Everyone seems to find a role a play, no matter what their age or ability.  It is truly amazing to watch.

Though this last week of preparation can be crazy, what I love watching is the body of Christ at work.  I really see the fullness of gifts in our parish, and I am blown away by the way that everyone offers their varieties of gifts.  It makes me so proud to watch our parishioners work hard together and I cannot wait to see the fruits of their labor on Saturday.

What is especially great about this week is that this week is a microcosm of what life is like every week at St. Margaret’s.  Though I might not see as many people through the office and on the property in a given week, we really do offer all our gifts throughout the year.  Our teachers teach our young children, our graphics designers help with our artistic work, our folks called to prayer and pastoral care pray for our parishioners and visit the sick, our gardeners tend our garden and take the produce to the hungry, and our altar guild prepares the Table.  Without any one of these gifts, St. Margaret’s would not display the fullness of Christ; and at the same time, we are humble enough to know that St. Margaret’s is not yet complete – that we are missing members with gifts that we do not have.  And so, we are always wondering who God will bring through our doors, how chance encounters might enrich our corporate life, and how God is ever inviting us to grow the body of Christ.  We are a community who needs our varieties of gifts – which means we need you too.

Homily – Matthew 24.42-47, Theodore of Tarsus, September 19, 2013

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

busy, church, God, Jesus, Theodore of Tarsus, vigilance

We’ve all seen the bumper sticker: Jesus is coming – look busy!  We usually chuckle when we see the sticker, but only because our chuckle masks some of our fears.  We know that Jesus will return, and we know that we must account for our lives – that alone can make us afraid.  We also know that we tend to fill our lives with stuff: work, leisure, TV, and general business.  Though our busyness is rarely about living a Christ-like life, we somehow fool ourselves and hope to fool God into thinking our busyness is meaningful.

That is why our Gospel lesson today is so scary.  Jesus tells us to keep awake, to be ready, to be at work – as awake as a man who knows a thief is coming to his house and stands ready to protect his family.  Jesus promises the hour of his return is unknown and so this constant vigilance is required.  And yet, we have no idea how to sustain that kind of vigilance and stamina.

Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, seemed to know how to live the life of vigilance with ease.  Born in 602, he became a bishop at age 66 – when most of us are readying for retirement.  A learned monk residing in Rome, Theodore was called to England at a time of plague and strife between the rival Celtic and Rome customs.  But he managed to enter this place, establishing a school where both Irish and English Churches trained; he visited all of England, fostering unity; and he honored traditions of both groups.  He worked tirelessly to organize the Church and died at age 88.

What I like about Theodore’s story is that he shows us not that we should be crazed, vigilant Christians, but that God can use us at any stage of life when we are willing.  Amen.

Homily – Psalm 78.3-7, John Henry Hobart, September 12, 2013

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

faith, God, homily, John Henry Hobart, passion, scripture, story

The portion of the psalm that we read today tells a familiar story from Scripture.  From the beginning of our being a people of God, we have been instructed to tell the story – to pass from one generation to the next the salvation story of our God.  In the early days, before there were written Scriptures, I think it was actually easier.  People communicated through oral histories – the stories were burned in their brains and were as natural and familiar as breathing.  Even once the histories were written down, only a few could read, so the oral histories were essential.

Today we have lost that sure familiarity with Scripture.  It is a rare Episcopalian who can quote Scripture to anyone.  Though we have multiple copies of the Bible lying around, very few of us have ever read the Scriptures cover to cover – and if we have, we are surprised when we hear certain stories.  So given our lack of familiarity with Holy Scripture, it is no wonder that our ability to share the Good News is difficult for us.  We struggle not only to pass along the story to our children, but especially to pass along the story to total strangers.

John Henry Hobart, whom we celebrate today, had no such reservations.  Born in Philadelphia in 1775, John became a priest in 1801.  After serving in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Long Island, he was eventually consecrated Bishop of New York in 1811.  In his first four years as Bishop, John doubled the number of clergy and quadrupled the number of missionaries in the diocese.  Before his death in 1830, he planted churches in almost every major town in New York State.  He helped found General Theological Seminary and helped name Hobart College. John revitalized the church, and his zeal was respected by all.

Though John lived more than 200 years ago, his story still speaks to us today.  Along with our scriptural ancestors, these figures invite us to remember with zeal the God who loves us, who gives us life, and who saves us.  John and our ancestors invite us to reignite our passion for Christ and to let that passion overflow without self-consciousness or fear.  Why wouldn’t we want to share the Good News of all that God has done for us?  Our invitation is to remember, reconnect, and revitalize our faith today.  Amen.

Homily – 1 Peter 4.7-11, Matthew 20.1-16, Gregorio Aglipay, September 5, 2013

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Gregorio Aglipay, homily, Jesus, justice, love, sacrifice

Today we honor Gregorio Aglipay, priest and founder of the Philippine Independent Church, a church in full communion with the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion.  Gregorio was born in 1860 and orphaned at an early age.  He worked as a boy in the tobacco fields during the Spanish Occupation and bore hard feelings toward the Spanish colonists.  He was eventually ordained a Catholic priest, but eight years later the Philippine Revolution began.  At that time the church and state were deeply intertwined, so any revolutionary activity impacted both.  Gregorio sided with the Filipino nationalists and rallied fellow priests to support the revolution.  Of course, he was eventually excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church, but Gregorio formed a new national church that eventually came into full communion with the Anglican Church.

Gregorio’s story feels very familiar to Americans.  We too have fought against our colonist roots; we too have had to sort out the complexities of church and state, especially as Anglicans; and we even know the stories of people forced to work in the fields.  But those stories are from a long time ago, and many of us distance ourselves from the nastiness of those times.  This is why I find the Epistle lesson and Gospel lesson so interesting today.  Here you have two stories:  one of loving one another and one of a sense of justice.  The two are interrelated: had the early workers seen the late workers through the lens of love, their protest would have been nonexistent.  But the kind of love the epistle asks for is hard:  being hospitable without complaining; serving one another; looking not to oneself, but to God.  This kind of love is the most difficult – something we want to do, but rarely accomplish.

Part of me wonders how much Gregorio embodied this love.  He did revolt against the colonists and Roman Catholic Church – how much love did he really have for them?  But I think where he showed love was through his self-sacrifice.  The easy way would have been not to fight.  The Roman Catholic Church even offered him a bishop’s position with enormous resources at this personal disposal.  But Gregorio understood that true love meant sacrificing himself and the easy way of life for something much harder and scarier.

This is the sacrificial, non-self-serving life Jesus invites us into today.  It will not be easy or clean.  Our only assurance is that if we are all in this loving journey together, the journey is a lot less scary.  Amen.

Homily – Psalm 34.1-9, Luke 1.46-55, St. Mary the Virgin, August 15, 2013

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

angry, bless, God, homily, Jesus, Lord, praise, prayer, St. Mary the Virgin

Today we honor St. Mary the Virgin, mother of our Lord Jesus Christ.  What I find so fascinating about our lessons today is that they are filled with praise.  Mary’s song, or the Magnificat, we heard in Luke, the words from Isaiah, and even the psalm are all about our praise of God.  But if you think about Mary’s life, Mary could have easily and justifiably been quite angry with God.  Not only is she a young bride to an older man, she enters into marriage being pregnant in a traditionally shameful way.  Then her life with Jesus, though with moments of joy, is full of pain:  Jesus pushes her away, she watches him die on the cross, and suffers through his life and the days after his death.  The song of Mary could have been a song raging against God.

More often than not, I think our prayer life with God is like this.  We get angry with God when God doesn’t seem to be responding to our petitions.  We dwell on the things that are going wrong in our lives, in the lives of our loved ones, and in the world.  When we come to God in prayer, it is rarely for thanksgiving; it is usually with petitions and frustrations.

But today, Mary shows us another way.  She sees in her pregnancy blessing not a curse.  She sees the magnificent big picture of what God is doing in the world through her, not to her.  She can dream about what this Messiah can do, and she stays by his side, knowing God can do more – even in the throws of death.  Mary is able to do what the psalmist does: “I will bless the LORD at all times; his praise shall ever be in my mouth.”

This is our invitation today – to find our way back into praising and blessing the LORD.  I was recently reading about a spiritual discipline of prayer where the person looks back on each day and offers to God at least one thing they are grateful for.  The practice seems so simple, but already the practice is changing my prayer life and my attitude toward life in general.  This is the shift Mary invites us into today – to bless the LORD at all times and to let God’s praise ever be in our mouths.  Amen.

Sermon – Luke 16.1-13, P20, YC, September 22, 2013

26 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

dishonest, friends, Jesus, manager, master, money, relationship, Sermon, wealth

If you were following today’s gospel lesson closely, you are most likely wondering whether you heard Jesus correctly, as his words make little sense.  Jesus tells another one his parables about money.  When a scheming, dishonest, self-serving manager is about to get fired, he goes and does the unthinkable.  He forgives debts which are not his debts to forgive, hoping in the end to make enough friends who might support him once he is out of a job.  And so when the master returns and finds out what has happened, we expect judgment to reign down on him even greater than before.  But in a shocking turn, the master commends the manager for acting shrewdly.  In response to this turn in the story, Jesus says to the disciples, “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal home.”  We hear Jesus basically telling the disciples to use dishonest wealth in the same way as this manager, and our response is confusion, disbelief, and maybe even disappointment.

After years of economic downward spiral, after watching banks and individuals cheat their way to the top while pushing down the poor and middle-class, many of us find Jesus’ words confusing if not altogether offensive.  We want nothing to do with a life that encourages scheming and plotting behavior and the embracing of dishonesty.  Some part of us feels a bit betrayed by Jesus’ strange advice and we are not entirely sure how to proceed.

So for those of us stuck in a bit of a confused haze about dishonesty, money, and relationships, we are going to take a step back and look at what is actually happening in the parable so that we can understand Jesus’ comments a bit better.  First, we have a poorly-behaving manager.  The manager has squandered away the master’s money.  When he is caught, the manager takes a good look at himself and admits some honest truths – he is not capable of doing manual labor and he is too embarrassed to beg for money.  Having been honest about who he is, he connives his way into a solution:  he will engender goodwill among his neighbors by doing financial favors for each of them – forgiving portions of their debts in the hopes that they will sometime very soon return the favor.  Both the master and Jesus recognize the shrewdness or wisdom in the manager’s behavior because the manager uses his wits to get out of a devastating position.

After understanding exactly what Jesus is complimenting, next we need to understand what Jesus is saying about money.  When Jesus says to “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth,” Jesus is not saying to start behaving unethically.  Jesus is claiming that money itself is inherently a means, not an end.  This point is a little tricky for us.  We all have varying philosophies about money.  Some of us manage to care very little about money, with money holding very little power over us.  Some of us struggle with money, sometimes remembering how money can be used for good, but most times feeling like money creates stress and anxiety in our lives that we cannot seem to shake.  And others of us become narrowly focused on money – either in how we can acquire more or what ways we can spend and enjoy money more.  What Jesus knows that we often forget is that money is inherently “dishonest.”  Money creates systems of injustice and hierarchies of power; money can destroy marriages and friendships; and money can be the ruin of many a person.  So when Jesus says to make friends through dishonest wealth, he does not mean to become a dishonest people; he means that money is inherently luring us into dishonesty, and we can either throw our hands up in the air in resignation and a refusal to be associated with that dishonesty, or we can use that dishonest wealth as a means to something much more important – relationship with others.

So if we understand what the manager is actually doing, and we can see money as a means to an end, how do we get to the step of being comfortable with using something bad for good?  Jesus is not telling us to manipulate people with money in order to be in relationship with others.  Most of us believe the old adage that you cannot buy friends – or at least not good ones anyway.  But Jesus is not suggesting we try to buy friends.  Jesus is suggesting that instead of categorizing everything into good and evil, honest and dishonest, we become a bit shrewder in our thinking.  Jesus encourages his disciples to learn from the dishonest manager because the dishonest manager takes a pretty awful situation and manipulates the situation into something good.  The kind of shrewdness Jesus is encouraging is the kind of activity that we might call, “thinking outside of the box.”  If the disciples are to live in this world and thrive, they are going to have to think outside of the box and get creative not only with money, but all sorts of things.

As I have been struggling with this text this week, I did one of the things that I often do in Bible Study.  I started looking at other translations to see if I could make more sense of Jesus’ words.  This week, I found the most help from a translation called, The Message.  Now as ample warning, The Message is a very contemporary paraphrase of the Bible, which takes a lot of theological liberties that I am often uncomfortable with; but I do often find that the language from that paraphrase opens up the biblical text enough for me to start seeing the text with fresh eyes.  The Message translates Jesus words in this way:  “Now here’s a surprise:  The master praised the crooked manager!  And why?  Because he knew how to look after himself.  Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”

What Jesus is trying to say to us today is layered.  First, money has a corrupting force in our lives.  Jesus talks about money incessantly in scripture, from telling people to give away all their money, to scolding people about storing up their money in larger barns, to reminding people not to stress about money, to this odd text about money.  As Luke concludes today, Jesus tells us that we cannot serve God and money, because of the all-consuming way that money can corrode our relationship with God.

Second, we cannot escape money.  Money is a part of our everyday lives, and as we all know is necessary for functioning – for food, for shelter, for clothing, for comfort.  Even those monks and nuns who take on a vow of poverty still rely on the money of others for support.  Money, with all its potential for corruption, is inescapable in our lives.

Finally, once we understand the power and place of money in our lives, Jesus reminds us that when we are wise, keeping God at the center, we can use money as a means to goodness in our relationship with God and with one another.  The manager “transforms a bad situation into one that benefits him and others.  By reducing other people’s debts, he creates a new set of relationships based not on the vertical relationship between lenders and debtors (rooted in monetary exchange) but on something more like the reciprocal and egalitarian relationship of friends.”[i]  This kind of work is not about charity per se, but about making friends.[ii]

A commercial has been circulating around the internet lately.[iii]  In the video, a boy is caught red-handed trying to steal a bottle of medicine and a soda.  A woman is berating him in front of a marketplace, wanting to know why he would take these things.  He confesses that the items are for his mother.  A local merchant steps forward, and hands the woman a handful of money to cover the cost of the stolen items.  The man then quietly asks the boy if his mother is sick.  When the boy nods yes, the merchant has his daughter also bring a container of vegetable broth and other items, and sends the boy on his way.  The next clip of the commercial shows the merchant thirty years later, still working in his shop.  He collapses and is taken to the hospital.  The daughter becomes completely overwhelmed as the medical bills add up, even selling the shop they had once run together.  As she is found crying near her father’s bedside, she finds a revised copy of her bill.  The amount due is zero.  We find out through the video that the doctor who forgives the bill is that same boy who stole medicine thirty years ago.  He writes at the bottom of the bill, “All expenses paid thirty years ago with three packs of painkillers and a bag of veggie soup.”

Jesus knows how money corrupts our world.  But Jesus also knows that we can shrewdly utilize our money as a tool to create relationships that glorify God.  This is Jesus’ invitation for you today:  to examine how your relationship with dishonest wealth can be used for goodness.  Amen.


[i] Lois Malcolm, “Commentary on Luke 16.1-13,” as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx? commentary _id= 1783 on September 18, 2013.

[ii] Thomas G. Long, “Making Friends,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 30, no. 4, Pentecost 2007, 55.

[iii] As found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUM4Mb9rUTU on September 20, 2013.

For everything there is a season…

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

busyness, change, church, Ecclesiastes, hope, possibilities, season

I have a parishioner is quite passionate about football.  Actually, I have several of those, but this one in particular schedules her meetings and plans around when a particular New York team will be playing.  There is no negotiation involved, unless you are simply willing to meet without her.  Not being a professional football fan myself, I do not entirely get it; but I find her resoluteness both amusing and oddly helpful.

Football season is not the only thing I find myself juggling these days.  This past week, we returned to our full Sunday schedule at church.  We went from a summer of one Sunday service and a leisurely coffee hour, to two Sunday services, a welcome back event in between, and a coffee hour afterwards.  After that, I had a church meeting and went to the hospital to bring communion to a parishioner.  There are times – usually around late May – when all I can think about is stepping into the slower Sundays of summer.  But by early September, I am eager to get back to this crazy schedule.

seasons

Image courtesy of http://inflowandbalance.blogspot.com/2009/11/importance-of-seasons.html

I think part of me longs for the change because everything else is changing – schools are gearing back up, sports are beginning, and coolness is in the air.  I also long for the change because the church feels more alive at this time.  The busyness is not tiring yet, but invigorating.  A summer’s worth of planning comes to fruition, and then the “so what?” begins.  I love seeing how changes are received, what works, and what needs tweaking.  I love seeing the pleasant surprise on people’s faces when a new change works out better than expected.  And I love the collective wisdom about making things work.

This time of life reminds me of the first verse of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”  Like the seasons of creation change, sports seasons change, so too the church changes seasons.  I very much enjoyed the summer season in church these last few months.  But now, I am looking forward to the possibility that this season, this time, has to offer.  The possibilities are great, and my hopefulness is high.  I hope you will join us in this season at St. Margaret’s to see what this season brings you.

Sermon – Luke15.1-10, P19, YC, September 15, 2013

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

belonging, church, faith, God, Jesus, party, people, Sermon, sinfulness, welcome

One of the cool things about wearing a collar around in public is the very interesting conversations that I get to have with total strangers.  For me in particular, many of the questions are not just about being a priest, but also about my gender.  Most people come from religious traditions that have not exposed them to female priests, and so they have all sorts of interesting questions – and to be honest, I think most of them are trying to figure out if the Roman Catholic Church started ordaining women without them noticing.

But once we get past the surface stuff, I usually end up asking them about their own faith experiences.  All sorts of emotions flit across peoples’ faces – from discomfort, to mistrust, to guilt, to simply hesitancy.  Just this week I had a long conversation with a woman at Staples who had a cemetery connection to St. Margaret’s; but as soon as I asked her about what church she currently attends, the stammering and eye-contact avoiding began.  I was truthfully just trying to see if the woman could use a church home, but I think she interpreted my question as judgment.  These kinds of reactions happen to me a lot, and I think the reason is that people have a lot of assumptions about church based on past experiences or even stereotypes.  There is a sense that they need to have their life more together before they even darken the door of a church; that certain people will not be accepted in church; that if they do not agree with everything that others believe they will not be welcomed; or that church is full of a bunch of hypocrites.  There is even a video that we posted on our Facebook page this week about the reasons people give for not coming to church, and all those fears and suspicions are articulated with vulnerability and honesty.

So on this “Welcome Back Sunday,” as we think about what the church is and who belongs, who do we get in our Scripture readings today?  First, Jeremiah tells us of a people so far steeped in sinfulness, that refuses to repent and return to God, being utterly destroyed.  If you remember, God invited Israel back into covenant relationship in our lesson last week – to be molded into a new people by the potter.  But the people did not listen, and now their sinfulness and unwillingness to return to God has led to judgment.  Then, in our Epistle lesson to Timothy, we hear about Paul, an apostle who admits that he was once the most horrible persecutor of believers in Christ.  If you remember, Paul used to be named Saul.  He was a faithful Jew who was persecuting the Christians because he believed them to be proclaiming a false Messiah.  Only after his dramatic conversion experience does he become Jesus’ apostle.  Finally, in our Gospel lesson, we hear about a sheep that has wondered off from the flock.  Though the shepherd has 99 other sheep to worry about, he leaves them in the wild to find the one that is lost.  If I had to pick three people to feature for an advertising campaign for the church, whose attractive features I could promote as being representative of the appealing nature of the church, I doubt the Israelites, Paul, or the lost sheep would be on the top of my list!

Of course, that is the funny thing about churches.  As much as we want people to know that all are welcome, we also are always trying to put our best foot forward.  We do choose pictures of happy, young, diverse people in our advertising because we want people to believe that we are all those things.  And in some ways those things are true, certainly of St. Margaret’s.  We are a group of people who are happy to be here, and we do have young families and some diversity.  But what our glossy advertising glosses over is that we are also all humans here.  We all have our flaws, and we all fall into separation from God and from one another at times.  There have been times when each person in this room, like the Israelites, has fallen so far into sinfulness or separation from God that we do not even know how to begin to make our way back.  There have been times when we have been as hateful and judgmental as Paul – at times our hatefulness directed toward others; or worse, at times our hatefulness directed toward ourselves.[i]  And there have certainly been times when each of us has wandered away from the flock – maybe because we just could not relate to church anymore, maybe because we were hurt by or angry at the church, or maybe because life just got the best of us.

We sometimes think about church as having insiders and outsiders.  Even in the gospel lesson, we see that division.  At the beginning of the gospel lesson, we hear the Pharisees and the scribes grumbling about how Jesus welcomes the tax collectors and sinners.  Jesus spends the rest of the lesson explaining that insiders or outsiders are totally different in Christ.  In fact, when that one lost sheep is found what happens?  A party!  Now, if we had been the shepherd, and if we had even considered the ridiculousness of leaving 99 healthy sheep at risk, our next response upon finding the sheep might have been to scold or punish the sheep.  Or if losing the sheep had been our fault, we might have been privately relieved upon the sheep’s return or quietly told a few close family members.[ii]  But no, this shepherd shouts on the mountaintop and invites all the neighbors in to celebrate.  A party ensues because in Jesus’ world, every person is important, valued, and loved – no matter where they are or where they have been.

When I was in high school – I know this might surprise you – but I was a bit of nerd.  Although I developed a wide variety of friends, I never quite felt like I fit in wholly to any one particular group.  I sort of patched together a network of friends, but no one group make me feel fully accepted and like I could be fully myself.  One summer, I went away to a six-week program that gathered talented high school students from all over the state.  My focus area was math, but other focus areas included literature, choral music, art, Spanish, and dance.  I left home that summer not knowing anyone who would be in the program, and yet as the summer went on, I found like I had found a place where I belonged.  Finally, I was meeting people like myself, who also felt slightly off from the rest of their high school classmates, who introduced me to all sorts of music, expression, and life.  I came back for that following school year knowing that I still did not have a group like that at high school, but there were people out there who knew me and loved me fully.  That sense of belonging, and total acceptance kept me going for years to come.

As I think back to that summer at Governor’s School, I realize that they taught me what church, at its best, is really like.  At church, all are welcomed in – the person thought to be beyond saving, the judgmental persecutor, and the one who feels lost or who has strayed away.  But those descriptions do not fit just one person.  The truth is we have all been each of those persons at some point in our lives – and I am sorry to break the news to you – but we will all be each of those persons again at some point in our lives.  Sometimes we are the lost person who will be feted, and sometimes we are the flock or the neighbors who will celebrate someone being found.  In fact, the reason why we can be those celebrating is because we know the feeling of being the one who is celebrated.  Because the roles are ever shifting, we know what the experiences are like on all sides.

That is the beauty of a church community.  We are all welcome because we have all been, are currently being, or will be in the future in any of the roles we hear about in Scripture today.  And the party just is not the same without each one of us there.  That party is the same party we hold every week, when we gather around the Eucharistic table, having confessed our sins, having embraced one another at the peace, and then gathering around the table to receive the celebratory food of Christ – knowing fully that each of us is welcome no matter where we are on the journey – because we have all been there.  Amen.


[i] Stephanie Mar Smith, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 66.

[ii] Mary H. Schertz, “God’s Party Time,” Christian Century, vol. 124, no. 18, Sept. 4, 2007, 18.

Welcome Back…

12 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

church, community, faith, home, hurt, Jesus, journey, love, seeker, Sunday, welcome

This coming Sunday is what we call “Welcome Back Sunday,” at St. Margaret’s.  The Welcome Back is not meant to acknowledge that parishioners have been away all summer, despite the fact that I have heard anecdotally that Robin Williams once said that Episcopalians are the only people God trusts enough to take the summers off from Church.  No, Welcome Back Sunday is a time that we are welcomed back to the program year and all the fullness that the program year offers.  For us, Welcome Back Sunday means returning from one Sunday service to two services, the return of educational and formation opportunities, more fellowship activities, and generally more life and energy around the church.

To prepare for Welcome Back Sunday, invitations have been sent out to our neighbors, our website has been redesigned, a welcome breakfast has been planned, a full line-up for the fall is all set, and in general we are hyping up parishioners to get back into the swing of the program year.  We have been sharing videos about Welcome Back Sunday – my personal favorite being this one.  But despite the fact that I am energized and excited about what this program year has to offer, I am aware that for many, Church is still an experience that many keep at arm’s length.  Perhaps you never grew up in a church setting, perhaps you began to feel unwelcome in church, or maybe the Church has actively hurt or disenfranchised you.  Whatever the reason, for many Church is seen as an irrelevant experience to your everyday lives.

For those who have been hurt, I completely understand why you keep your distance.  Having been severely judged by someone who claimed to love the Lord, I understand why you would keep up your guard and be suspicious of any church enthusiasts like myself.  But I must say, there is a part of me that aches to share the joy, love, and sense of wholeness I have found through the Church.  Yes, the Church is flawed, and full of sinful people, but at its very best, the Church is a place where people can vulnerably step forward with their struggles with God and be invited along a spiritual journey in the context of a community of seekers.  I think that is why my heart aches when I hear songs like Macklemore’s “Same Love.”  In it, he sings about the ways that Church has deeply wounded our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.  His words make me want cry out to the world that the Church has another way of being too – a way of love.

So this week, if you find yourself without a Church home, without a place to ask the hard questions about God, or without a community who lets you be you in the journey, come to Church.  If you are in Plainview, I hope that Church will be St. Margaret’s.  But if not, I hope you will look for a Church that lives into what Jesus dreamed of for the Church – a community of faith living the way of love.  Whether it has been a week since you have been to church, years, or you have never been to church, I say to you, “Welcome Back.”

Sermon – Jeremiah 18.1-11, P18, YC, September 8, 2013

12 Thursday Sep 2013

Posted by jandrewsweckerly in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

change, covenant, God, Jeremiah, potter, pottery, Sermon, transform, vessel

I am a huge fan of pottery.  I have been given many gifts of pottery, my favorite being a chalice and paten upon my graduation from seminary.  When most of us think of pottery, we immediately think of a beautiful finished product:  the smooth texture, the radiant glaze, or the hands that carefully formed the bowl or other item.  We imagine the potter at his wheel, gracefully shaping clay into a work of art.  We might even recall the intimate scene from the movie “Ghost” where Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze romantically shape a piece of pottery together.

But the more I have read about potters and pottery this week, the more I realize how flawed this romantic image is of a potter.  First of all, potters begin their work with about a two pound chunk of clay that they then have to knead and work into a more elastic form.  They eventually have to throw the clay onto a wheel and get the clay centered.  This work is so difficult that new potters can take hours just to get the clay centered before they even begin the messy work of forming the clay.  Once they figure out the centering, then there is the work of using water, the spraying of wet clay everywhere, and of course the endless mistakes.  Exerting too much or too little pressure, making a wall too thin, or creating an unintended shape can mean starting all over.  One woman watched a man form a beautiful bowl, only to have the whole thing collapse when he tried to take the bowl off the wheel.  The man destroyed five bowls before he finally removed a perfect bowl properly – each time having to start from the messy beginning.[i]

This much more realistic version of a potter making pottery is what the Lord uses as a metaphor today for how God will treat the Israelites.  The Lord sends the prophet Jeremiah down to the potter’s house to hear God’s words.  Jeremiah says, “So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel.  The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.”  Jeremiah immediately recognizes the metaphor God is trying to communicate.  God is the potter and Israel is the vessel.  Clearly Israel has veered off course – in fact, Israel has already fallen at this point in history, and Judah is the only group of God’s people left who are still in active covenantal relationship with God.  So this people, who have journeyed from Sinai to the present, who have lived a covenantal life of reciprocal obligation and blessing, have hit yet another point in life where they have fallen away from their covenantal promises and face the option of being destroyed and discarded or being taken back to that compressed version of clay and being shaped into something more pleasing to God.[ii]

Knowing what we know about the potter’s work, we immediately see that this will not be easy work for God’s people.  Life as they know life will be collapsed, and new life with God will take a very different shape.  That transformation will be messy and uncomfortable, and in fact may take multiple attempts at reshaping.  Though the Israelites are offered a way out of destruction, the way out will be painful, disheartening, and disorienting.  All that is familiar will be changed, and though God is holding the Israelites in God’s hands, those hands do not promise to be gentle or permissive.

I have been thinking a lot this week about St. Margaret’s journey with the potter these last fifty years.  We were first centered as a rag tag team of Episcopalians at a local American Legion Hall.  Then the potter reshaped us time and again with various vicars.  When we called our first rector, we started all over again, finding new life and new ministries, God’s hands exerting pressure on us in various ways.  Even as we faced difficult times with our second rector, God’s hand was ever with us.  I am sure many of us felt like we were being compressed down into a clay heap, only to start being shaped again by God in these last couple of years.

Of course, all of that sounds a bit too much like the glossed over version of some of our favorite hymns.  In “Spirit of the Living God,” we hear, “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.  Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me…”  Similarly, in “Have Thine Own Way Lord,” we hear, “Have thine own way, Lord!  Have thine own way!  Thou art the potter, I am the clay.  Mold me and make me after thy will; While I am waiting, yielded and still.”  Those are the old timey hymns I grew up singing, and I always remember singing them with heartfelt desire.  Of course, now that I know a little bit more about the pottery-making process, I am not sure how wholeheartedly I could sing those hymns.  Those hymns are calling on God to do exactly what God suggests in Jeremiah – that God will reshape us, remold us, and require us to be pliable, cooperative subjects in the process.

Since I entered the search process here about two years ago, we have been talking about change.  Change is a word we throw around a lot, that most of say we are ready for, but the majority of us secretly and not-so-secretly hate.  We know that change is necessary and inevitable, but we will fight change with every ounce of our being – even sometime unconsciously or at least without malicious intentions.  And yet change is what we have all been undergoing for the past two years, and the change does not seem to be stopping.  If we were to imagine St. Margaret’s on God’s Pottery Wheel, we might be able to think about the ways God keeps adding water to us, keeps exerting pressure, and keeps pushing us this way and that way.  It is entirely possible that God has even crumpled us down into a heap again and started afresh with us within the last two years.  I know we have all felt that potter’s work.  Every single person here, including me, at some point in the last two years has groaned under God’s constant shaping and molding.  This kind of shaping is not pretty, is messy and painful, and quite frankly is hard.  Most of us do not prefer to stand, “waiting, yielded and still.”  We prefer that God back off and just go ahead and declare us a beautiful bowl, and be done with us.

Now you have probably learned by now that I always like to give us a bit of good news on Sundays to take home.  I am going to try to give you a little taste of good news, but I have to warn you that today’s good news is a little bitter sweet.  The good news is that the metaphor the Lord gives to Jeremiah is one of promise.  God does not say that the potter takes the spoiled vessel and throws the vessel into the trash.  The promise to Israel is that God, despite all their sinfulness and evil ways, still gives the Israelites another chance to return to God and to the covenantal promises they have made to be in relationship with God.  But God does not promise that their misshapen selves get to stay misshapen.  They will still need to bend to the potter, and be willing to be shaped into something new and beautiful.

This is the colored promise for us as well.  God does not abandon us when we resist God and the changes God wants to make in this community.  God does not lose hope on our complaining selves that would much rather do things the way we have always done them.  God promises to keep God’s powerful hands around us, holding us with the seasoned hands of a potter.  God will be with us.  But God is also going to keep pushing us, and keep painfully shaping us, and artfully bending us into beautiful vessels that can glorify God and show Christ’s light to our community.  So maybe this week, we need to pick up our Lift Every Voice and Sing hymnals and start singing “Have thine own way, Lord!  Have thine own way!  Thou art the potter, I am the clay.  Mold me and make me after thy will; While I am waiting, yielded and still.”  Perhaps if we sing that old hymn enough, we might actually start yielding to the potter who loves us, is always with us, and who desires for us to be a beautiful vessel of God.  Amen.


[i] Christy Jo Waltersdorff, “Centering the Clay,” Brethren Life and Thought, vol. 50, no. 1-2, Wint. – Spr. 2005, 53.

[ii] Bruce C. Birch, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 29.

Recent Posts

  • The Grace of Seasons…
  • Sermon – John 17.20-26, E7, YC, May 28, 2022
  • How long, O LORD?
  • Sermon – John 13.31-35, Acts 11.1-18, E5, YC, May 15, 2022
  • Sermon – Acts 9.36-43, John 10.22-30, E4, YC, May 8, 2022

Archives

  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012

Categories

  • reflection
  • Sermons
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Seeking and Serving
    • Join 343 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Seeking and Serving
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...