On Redefining our Work and God’s…

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bring, Christ, church, culture, evangelism, faith, friend, God, invitation, invite, success

This Sunday our church has planned “Bring a Friend Sunday.”  The day is the culmination of a series on evangelism, and we had imagined that bringing a friend would be a perfect way to conclude the series.  Some people have excitedly shared with me whom they plan to bring with them this Sunday, others have expressed a tinge of anxiety, while others have not mentioned the day (or their fears about inviting friends) at all.  We have been using a series of videos to inspire us, distributed postcards and other invitation tools, and created fun social media posts.

But our class this past Sunday had me wondering if we were approaching our event all wrong.  In his book Transforming Evangelism, David Gortner talks about the fact that evangelism is not a program or an effort to “get more people in the pews.”  Instead, evangelism is about creating an ethos of sharing the good news.  That ethos involves doing our own inner work about our own journey in Christ, and cultivating the skills for evangelism, such as practicing gratitude, listening for the holy in other’s stories, strengthening a sense of humility, and knowing the sacred stories that speak most powerfully for us.

We concluded our session with a talk by Michael Harvey, who argues that evangelism is not about bringing people to church, but creating a culture of invitation.  He suggests that events like “Bring a Friend Sunday” place “success” in the wrong place.  In fact, he says the most important work we can do is invite others.  “Whether someone says yes or no is God’s bit.  That is not our bit.  Our job is to just offer a simple invitation,” says Harvey.  By both worrying about inviting and labeling “success” as acceptance, we confuse our work with God’s work.  Instead, Harvey suggests that faith communities focusing on faithfulness, not some measure of “success.”  Whether the friend you invited comes or not, the church says, “Well done!”

So, I’m officially changing the name of this Sunday to “Invite a Friend Sunday.”  If you come to Hickory Neck this week and tell me you invited a friend, I’ll have a gold star waiting for you.  I want to hear about your experience in invitation, whether the experience was different than your expectations, and what it was like knowing that the invitation was more important than the return.  I suspect we will all grow in Christ in the process.  I cannot wait to hear about your experiences in invitation!

Photo credit:  davisstreetbaptist.org/how-to-invite-people-to-church/

Sermon – Acts 2.1-21, Pentecost, YC, May 15, 2016

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Babel, church, context, culture, Episcopal, hearing, Holy Spirit, languages, love, Pentecost, pentecostal, Sermon, tongues, understanding, wind

Though I often share with people that I grew up in the Methodist Church, what that story fails to capture is my earliest experiences in church.  You see, before my father became a United Methodist minister, he, my mother, and I worshiped at a Pentecostal church.  So my first memories of church are quite different from my current experiences in church.  I remember the pastor putting his hand on a person’s forehead and the person crumbling to the ground, presumably slain in the spirit or healed of a malady.  I remember sitting in the pew once with a friend of my parents’ when the woman leaned over to me and whispered, “I’ll be right back.”  She then proceeded to run up and down the aisle, her hands waving in the air.  I do not remember anyone speaking in tongues, but I would not be surprised if that happened.

I have always found the fact that Episcopalians like Pentecost so much fascinating because we are about as far from Pentecostal as any church could get.  I have yet to find an Episcopal Church that encourages running up and down aisles, speaking in tongues, and being slain in the spirit.  That does not mean we do not move.  In fact, we stand, kneel, sit, cross ourselves, bow, and sometimes even genuflect.  You might find a few of us lift our hands in praise, but most of us keep our hands tightly to our sides.  You might find a few of us who will say an unprompted “Amen!” aloud, but they will likely get a few glares.  We are likely to, rather proudly, wear red on Pentecost.  But that is the extent of most Episcopalians “Pentecostalism.”  We like things much more ordered, predictable, and civilized.  In other words, if we are really being honest, Episcopalians are not all that big on Pentecost.

Our aversion to Pentecostal experiences are not all that unfounded.  All one has to do is look at the first Pentecost that we read about in Acts today.  The day the Holy Spirit comes down from heaven is a pretty disorderly, unpredictable, uncivilized day.  Wind whips through people’s hair, fire bursts into flames on people’s heads, and a cacophony of noise ensues that both makes no sense at all, and yet makes perfect sense to each person there.  Although that chaos may sound very similar to anyone with small children in the house, that chaos is not exactly what we have come to expect as civil Episcopalians.

But if we are to get our heads around Pentecost, we have to understand what was really happening on this feast of Pentecost.  The feast of Pentecost was known to most Jews as the feast of Weeks, or Shavuot.  Shavuot is the third of the three great festivals of Judaism.  Shavuot was a joyful celebration, in which the first fruits of the harvest were offered to God.[i]  But Shavuot was not simply an agricultural festival.  Shavuot, or Pentecost, was fifty days after the Passover.  At Passover, the Jews celebrated the saving of the Israelites from the death that came upon the firstborn of the Egyptians.  Fifty days after that dramatic event, the Israelites arrived at Mt. Sinai to receive the law from Moses.  And so, in addition to thanking God for the first fruits of the harvest, praying that the rest of the harvest might be equally bountiful, Pentecost was also “about God giving to [God’s] redeemed people the way of life by which they must now carry out [God’s] purposes.”[ii]

The parallels in and of themselves are uncanny.  At the Passover, the people of God are saved as death passed over their homes.  In Christ, the people of God are saved once again as Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.  At Shavuot, the people of God are given the new way of life, specifically through the vehicle of Torah, or the Ten Commandments.  At Pentecost this day, we are reminded of the New Commandment given through Jesus that we love the Lord our God and love our neighbors as ourselves.[iii]

So if this day is all about us being given the way of life that we must now live, what do we learn in this chaotic, uncivilized day?  Most remarkably, we see people speaking in tongues they do not know, and yet, all understanding in their native tongues.  That does not mean that all the languages suddenly became one – like making English the official language of Christianity.  Instead, “Pentecost gives power to the band of Jesus followers to speak the languages of the world, to tell the gospel in every language.  The early church [is] to bear witness to the ends of the earth in the languages of the people of the world.”[iv]

I have been thinking a lot about speaking other people’s languages this past week.  Having just moved from Long Island to Williamsburg, I have been keenly aware of language differences over the last month.  Of course, some of our differences in language are more about dialect than anything else – our vowels sound different, or r’s are sometimes dropped.  But a more poignant difference in our language is around culture.  On Long Island, communication is usually concise and incisive.  That may sound rather appealing, but the first time someone tells you how they really feel about you, and the way that they feel is pretty negative, the language can feel like a slap in the face.  Of course, that is not to say Southerners have the market on ideal communication.  I remember many a time growing up when someone said, “Bless your heart,” and their words had nothing to do with a blessing.

As I have been ruminating on those differences this week, I wondered whether those differences go beyond region and perhaps are at the root of many of our challenges today.  I have wondered if part of our country’s problem in communicating with one another is rooted in the fact that we are not speaking the same language.  Of course, most of us can speak English in this country, but even though we speak the same language, we do not speak from the same cultural reality.  There are experiences that I have as a woman that my male brothers will never fully understand.  There are experiences that my African-American brothers and sisters experience that I will never fully understand.  There are experiences that our young adults are having through technology that us older folks will never fully understand.  In some ways, I wonder if in America, we have become more like the people of Babel than the people of Pentecost.

Luckily, we are not beyond God’s power to make our Babel-like ways right.  There are all sorts of tangible ways we can work toward understanding others’ languages.  We have a pretty incredible collection of young adults in this parish.  Being a part of community means that we can reach out to our young people to hear their stories and trials – just as they can learn about our own stories and trials.  Being a part of community means that we can join any number of the outreach ministries of Hickory Neck and learn quite quickly what language and cultural context poverty creates.  Being a part of a community means that we can read authors whose cultural contexts are completely different from ours and learn more clearly why movements like “Black Lives Matter,” might have arisen in the first place.

That is the true invitation of Pentecost:  to step boldly into the chaos of differing languages, knowing that the Holy Spirit will bring about true understanding.  Of course, stepping into that cacophony is scary.  As N.T. Wright says, stepping into the cacophony means getting “out there in the wind, letting it sweep through your life, your heart, your imagination, your powers of speech, and transform you from a listless or lifeless believer into someone whose heart is on fire with the love of God.”[v]  That kind of transformation may not sound like what you were hoping by wearing red today.  But that kind of transformation offers the promise not of calming the cacophony of language all around us, but helping us hear in the midst of the chaos.  God, whose very existence in the form of the Trinity is three distinct persons, yet one, invites us to live as a community differentiated in persons, but untied in love.[vi]  That Pentecostal community will be loud, messy, and hard.  But that community will be life-giving, renewing, and beautiful.  Our invitation today is to step into the wind of the Spirit.  Amen.

[i] Margaret P. Aymer, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 15.

[ii] N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone, Part 1, Chapters 1-12 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 21.

[iii] Aymer, 17.

[iv] Aymer, 17.

[v] Wright, 22.

[vi] Michael Jinkins, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 18.

Speaking my Language

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church, communicate, culture, hear, Holy Spirit, language, new, North, Pentecost, South, speak, tongues

Photo credit:  stbarts.org/worship/pentecost-languages/

As many of you know, I was raised in the South.  My San Diego-native husband tells me that when he met me in high school, I had an endearing North Carolina accent.  But after going to college with people from all over the country and living in Delaware, I found that my accent faded.  I tended to pick up phrases and patterns of speech from those around me.  Of course, one call from my Alabama-native mother, and all bets were off.  But about four years ago, my family moved to Long Island with our then two-year-old.  Surrounded by Long Islanders, she quickly started pronouncing vowels differently and dropping r’s.  I am not sure how much of the dialect I assimilated, but my ears certainly adjusted.

What I came to finally understand about all these dialects is that much more important than the sound of words are the culturally different ways people communicate with one another in different regions of the country.  My experience on Long Island was that people were very direct and incisive with their words.  Being from the South, this was more of a shock than the dialect.  In the South, people are indirect and subtle with their language.  Though I was raised to interpret conversations in the South, if I am honest, I found the Long Island way of communicating refreshing.  Although I sometimes felt like I was being slapped in the face by the brutal honesty of another person, when I went home, I knew where I stood.  That was not always the case in the South.  People are almost always polite, but hidden in the politeness are sometimes feeling of resentment or hurt, which cannot be addressed if you do not know how to hear the subtlety.

This Sunday, the Church is celebrating Pentecost.  If you remember the story from Acts, those gathered begin speaking in tongues.  The miracle was not in the speaking of tongues, but in the understanding of tongues by everyone gathered.  Each heard their own language and the message was clearly understood by all.  Having recently returned to the South, I find myself wondering in what ways the Church could be speaking more clearly.  I am not suggesting that one region of the country has the market on clear speech.  What I am suggesting is that as a Church, we are not always great at communicating the power of Christ in our lives.  We either get lost in “church speak,” or we try to academically explain matters of the heart, or, out of fear or discomfort, we do not speak at all.  As we honor the miracle of the work of the Holy Spirit over two thousand years ago, our invitation at Pentecost is to honor the ways in which the Holy Spirit can continue to enliven the church to speak understandably to a new generation.

Homily – Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, November 26, 2013

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culture, differences, faith, God, interfaith, praise, sacred, secular, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day

I grew up in the South, where being a person of faith meant you were either a Baptist or a United Methodist.  It was not until well after college that I began to meet and really get to know a few individuals of other faiths – learning about both their cultural and religious experiences.  I even had an interfaith clergy support group back in Delaware – during which much of our time was spent discussing differences and similarities in polity and worship.

So I was thrilled when I heard there was an interfaith group here when we moved from Delaware to Plainview two years ago.  I was looking forward to who would be in the room, and finding an instant support group of fellow persons of faith.  So you can imagine my surprise when I, southerner that I was, went to my first meeting and realized that as a Christian, I was a minority in the room.  I do not think I have ever been in a room of clergy when I felt like there were significant portions of the conversation that I just did not understand – whether it was a particular holiday, a way of doing business, a language barrier, or knowing what to order at Ben’s.  I had always thought that interfaith differences were not that significance – if we are all persons of faith, surely that identity creates enough common ground for us to work together.  But the truth is that among the clergy, and perhaps among you as persons of faith, we are so steeped in our religious identity and culture, that we forget how particular that experience is to us – and how foreign that experience is to others.

That is why I love this service so much.  We have found a holiday that we as Americans can all recognize and celebrate – regardless of our faith background.  And yet, we as a community of faithful people gathered here tonight claim this day not as just a secular day to eat copious amounts and gather with family and friends, or even a day we can all commonly agree upon because we are Americans.  We claim this day as a sacred day – because we know that true thankfulness belongs to God – the source of sustenance and life itself.  In the Episcopal Church, we have a special liturgy set aside for Thanksgiving Day.  I never knew that until I became a priest.  In fact, at my first cure, I remember learning about the service and being totally annoyed, thinking, “What, I have to work on Thanksgiving too?!?”  But after my first Thanksgiving service, I knew why the Episcopal Church had set aside time for worship:  because the world around us tries fill this day with “stuff” other than true thanksgiving.  We slave over food, we fret about misbehaving family members, we jostle for position around the TV for the Macy’s parade or the football game, and some of us even go out shopping, especially as the stores try to lure us out of our homes to spend money.

But the community of faith makes another way for us.  The community of faith says that if we are going to dedicate an entire day to thanksgiving, let’s talk about what giving thanks is really about – to whom we really need to give thanks.  Tonight, we turn to scripture.  The palmist says, “It is good to give thanks unto the Lord, and to sing praises unto Thy name, O Most High.”[i]  We say together, “Praise God!  Bless God’s name!  For God is good; God’s steadfast love, [God’s hesed] is eternal; God’s faithfulness is for all generations.”[ii]

To be honest, praise and thanksgiving is not necessarily something that we are always good at doing.  We are really good at complaining to God, or asking God for things, or worrying to God.  But we often forget to truly praise God, to thank God for God’s abundant love and faithfulness.  I am not sure if our prayers to God tend toward being self-centered or we just are simply a culture who tends to complain or want something from God.  And I am not saying those kind of prayers do not have a time and place.  Our God can take all of that from us and more.  But when we turn our prayers to prayers of thanksgiving, we may be amazed at how we, and all that we are worried about, are transformed.  Centering ourselves in gratitude and thanksgiving puts even the direst of situations in perspective.  We remember not only that God is with us, but we also see those around us differently.  Our hearts grow in love and compassion simply by praising and thanking God.

Of course, there are practical implications to giving thanks to God.  Somehow that annoying uncle or nagging mother seems a lot more lovable when our hearts are rooted in this kind of thanksgiving.  Somehow that fallen soufflé or that dry turkey seems much less important than the fact that we have food at all – let alone shelter, warmth, and electricity.  That is the power of thanksgiving for us as a community of faith.  When we turn to God, from whom all blessings flow, we turn our hearts toward generosity as well.  We find ourselves buying extra food to feed our neighbor.  We find ourselves making time to serve others – whether making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with our interfaith brothers and sisters, or in some other way.  We find ourselves focusing less on ourselves, and more on the wonderful creation God has given to us – and in turn we find ourselves much more well-taken care of than when we were wrapped up in ourselves.

And so tonight, we set the tone for this national holiday.  We proclaim a true day of Thanksgiving – for the abundance of food, for the privilege of rest, for the blessing of life – but mostly for the God that gives us such life, who cares for us more than we deserve, and who loves us more than we can imagine.  We give thanks for a God beyond our full comprehension or knowing, and we give thanks for the interfaith community who, despite all our differences, collectively reminds us to whom we belong.  May your Thanksgiving holiday be a sacred time with the God who created you, sustains you, and loves you.  Amen.

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[i] Ps. 92.1

[ii] Ps. 100.4-5