Sermon – Malachi 3.1-4, A2, YC, December 5, 2021

Tags

Advent, Christmas, community, dread, good, Good News, Handel, Malachi, music, preparation, questions, reformed, Sermon

The professional choir at the parish I served as a curate would perform Handel’s Messiah every Advent season in preparation for Christmas.  I remember my first Advent the Rector told me about the performance with excitement and anticipation, and all I could remember thinking was, “Oh goodness!  Do I have to go??”  Do not get me wrong, I love Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus as much as anyone, but that piece is only about three-four minutes long and is only half-way into the three hours of singing that Handel’s Messiah takes. 

Music is a funny thing in Advent.  Most people I know do not really love Advent music.  Unlike familiar, comforting, endearing Christmas carols, Advent hymns are “discordant, unsung, and unpopular in many congregations.”[i]  I have known choir members whose skin crawls from Advent music, and I imagine many of you are here today because the idea of a whole service dedicated to Advent Lessons and Carols which we will hear at 10:00 am sounds like torture. 

The problem might be that Advent music is not as catchy as Christmas music.  But I think there is a deeper truth to our distaste of Advent music – the music of Advent points to the themes of Advent:  of apocalyptic demands to be alert, doing acts of righteousness to be right with God; of judgment so stringent to be compared to a refiner’s fire and fullers’ soap; of needing to bear fruit worthy of repentance so as not to be chopped down and thrown into the fire; and of bringing down the powerful from their thrones and lifting up the lowly.  None of that is quite as catchy as a holly, jolly Christmas.

Perhaps the issue is that Advent music tries to do the same thing scripture does.  In 1741, Handel wrote to a friend of his masterpiece Messiah, “‘I should be sorry if I only entertained them.  I wished to make them better.’  The composer challenges [us] to go beyond feeling good to doing good.”[ii]  The same was true for Malachi.  Malachi brings good news of a messenger coming to prepare the way of the Lord and that we will be purified enough that our offerings will be pleasing to the Lord as they once were before.  But Malachi also reveals the fearful questions of the people.  “But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?”  These are just two of the twenty-two questions in the fifty-five verses of Malachi.[iii]  But they are questions we all ask if we are paying attention during Advent.

I remember when I was pregnant with my first child, women poured pregnancy stories over me.  There was a camaraderie the stories built, the state of our friendship altered because we were now going to share something we had not before.  But what I always noticed about those stories is whenever I expressed my nervousness about labor, their eyes darted away, and they made wistful promises about how anything resembling pain would be forgotten.  The more their warm countenances shifted to wary, twitchiness, the more I suspected labor would be a painful reality.

The same is true for the infant we will welcome once again on December 24^th.  As much as “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” as much as we sing of “Silent Nights,” and as much as we dream of “Joy to the World,” that celebration comes with a price – the price of preparation, of messengers making the way for joy, of fire burning away all that corrupts us.  Advent is not about entertaining us, but, much like Handel hoped, is to make us just and better, so that we might be right with God when that infant is placed in the arms of the Church.  Advent is for Malachis, for Zechariahs, the father of that coming messenger, and for you and for me.  And although we may feel like we have been refined enough to last a lifetime in this last year and a half, the refining God is doing now in each of us means, as one scholar assures, we will “be re-formed in God’s image, and [that re-forming] will be good.  No matter how we feel about it now.  No matter what we may be afraid of now.  When we are refined and purified as God promises, it will be good.”[iv]  As much as we may dread that awful music or loathe those heavy, foreboding stories of Advent, we do so together, knowing that we are being refined tougher, so that, together as a community, we will welcome the Christ Child with open, ready arms.  Amen.

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[i] Deborah A. Block, “Pastoral Perspective, Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 1  (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 30.

[ii] Block, 30.

[iii] Block, 26.

[iv] Seth Moland-Kovash, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 1  (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 31.

Sermon – Ephesians 4.1-16, P13, YB, August 1, 2021

Tags

bishop, call, community, discernment, equip, exceptional, fear, gifts, God, good, ministry, Peter, preach, Sermon

In your senior year of seminary, you are given the privilege of preaching for the entire community.  I remember the week I was to preach, I was sitting at lunch with some classmates and a professor and I confessed to the table that I was a little nervous.  There is little worse than preaching to a room full of preachers; we tend to be a tough crowd.  But I will never forget what my professor said in response to my anxiety.  “Just remember what that old hymn says, Jennifer.  ‘If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul, you can tell the love of Jesus and say, “He died for all.”’”  At the time, I remember thinking how reassuring his words were – all that mattered was I preached the gospel. 

But sometime later, as I thought back to his comments, I had the distinct thought, “Wait a minute.  Was he saying I was not going to be as good a preacher as Peter?”  Suddenly I was confused by my professor’s words – was he trying to center me for preaching, or just trying to gently tell me not being a good preacher was okay.  I felt the emotional whiplash that seems to be a unique gift of Southerners – a little akin to a solid, “Bless your heart.”

What the words of that professor unearthed in me was a fear we all experience.  Our society tells us we need to be good at all the things – at being exceptional in our workplaces while also being an exceptional parent and spouse; at being a high-performing student and accomplished athlete (and musician, performer, and artist); at volunteering in so many places in retirement that we are working harder than we were working for compensation! 

But that is not what Paul, or the person writing in the name of Paul,[i] tells the Christian community.  Our epistle writer says, “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.”[ii]  Paul argues that mature Christians understand that they have been equipped with gifts for ministry.  However, as scholar Clark-Soles says, Christians “do not need to imagine themselves as pan-gifted, and there is no reason to compete with one another.  Our job is simply to recognize our particular gifts and use them for the development and augmentation of the body.”[iii] 

Nine months ago, I began to sense God was asking me to live into the maturity of my gifts – perhaps being called to serve as a bishop in the church in a land called Iowa.  The decision to be open to that process was not an easy one because my gifts have also been very much affirmed in this slice of heaven here called Hickory Neck.  A day after the election, with the news that I will in fact not be serving as a bishop, I find myself singing that old tune again, “If you cannot preach like Peter, if you cannot pray like Paul…” 

But this time, the recollection of that hymn does not sting in the same way the song stung in seminary.  Former bishop Porter Taylor says, “while the passage [in Ephesians] affirms the diversity of individual gifts, it asserts that these are always to be used for the good for the whole, ‘to equip the saints for ministry.’…To grow in one’s ministry, therefore, is to align oneself with God’s intentions, both individually and corporately…”[iv]  What Bishop Porter, the epistle to the Ephesians, and even the election yesterday remind us all of is that God equips each one of us here to the work of ministry – sometimes as preachers, sometimes as evangelists, sometimes as pastors, sometimes as teachers, sometimes as bishops – but always for the good of the whole and of the greater community.  Even though I was not elected yesterday, my hope is that the process was a good reminder for all of us that our work is to constantly be assessing what gifts God is giving us, how those gifts are evolving over time, and how we can use them for good.  Our one baptism is an invitation, whether we are Peters or Pauls, to share the love of Jesus.  The rest is in God’s hands.  Amen.

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[i] Paul V. Marshall, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 304.

[ii] Ephesians 4.11-13.

[iii] Jaime Clark-Soles, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 305.

[iv] G. Porter Taylor, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 304.

On Seeing Goodness…

Tags

creation, gathering, God, good, goodness, grace, gratitude, pandemic, sacred, seeing, worship

Photo credit: http://www.dirtyandthirty.com/dirt-of-the-day/finding-good-world/

After six months of waiting, planning, praying, and organizing, my parish finally held our first in-person socially distanced worship service.  We had prepared our members and guests for how different Socially Distanced (SD) Worship would be, even producing an instructional video.  And when the day finally came, our volunteers were amazing – sanitizing, directing, monitoring, and executing a beautiful morning of worship. 

I have been reflecting on the experience of finally being back in the worship space with other people, and I realized what we have been saying all along was true:  it was not the same as worship before the pandemic.  Certainly, the service was familiar:  the liturgy, beautiful music, the physical patterns of standing and sitting, and the reception of communion.  But the little things were different:  the inability to physically embrace or shake hands (something that felt sorely needed after such a long separation), the absence of touch during the Eucharist (an act that has always felt intimately and sacredly physical), the general tentativeness of all gathered (the desire to keep each other safe creating an underlying tension).  We had said SD Worship would be different, and it was.

But SD Worship was also good.  You could feel the palpable relief of everyone to finally be back in the space we love.  I watched as our deacon became much more animated while preaching with people in the room.  I heard sounds I had not heard in the last six months – a familiar lector reading the lesson, the organ and a violin making an otherwise spoken service feel whole, and voices responding in a room that has been mostly empty on Sundays.  It was definitely not the same.  But it was certainly good.

One of the things that has impressed me during this pandemic is the ability of parishioners, neighbors, and friends to see goodness.  When a health crisis occurs, in the stress of restarting schools virtually, in the inconveniences of wearing masks and staying home, I still encounter people who can name goodness in this time.  My invitation for you this week is to find something good and holy about this most unusual time each day.  Try to imagine the way God responds in creation at the end of each day, saying, “It was good.”  What is good in your day today?  Where are the moments of grace, the occasions of gratitude, the sacred for you this week?  I hope you will share them, as your moment of goodness may be what someone needs to help them see goodness in their life too. 

Sermon – John 9.1-41, L4, YA, March 22, 2020

Tags

blind man, cause and effect, comfort, Coronavirus, faith, God, good, grace, hope, Jesus, journey, light, questions, see, Sermon, sight, sin, suffering, theology

I must confess to you:  I have been dreading talking to you about this text all week.  The presence of cause and effect in this text is overwhelming.  The text says multiple times that the reason the blind man is blind from birth is because he sinned (and since it was from birth, there is the implication his parents sinned, and the blind man is being doubly punished and exists in double sin).  Those gathered insist that Jesus must be sinful too because he does not follow the law – he heals on the Sabbath, and he cannot possibly speak for or act for God as a sinner.  Jesus also says those gathered are sinners for they cannot see God.  Even at the beginning of John’s story, even Jesus says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

I have not wanted to preach this text today because I do not at feel comfortable with the cause and effect nature of this text, especially what that cause and effect nature seems to imply about suffering.  Can Jesus really be saying this man was made blind so that God could be revealed?  Is this text saying God causes suffering – pain, disability, ostracizing from community, poverty so deep that only begging will ensure survival?  That concept is a huge hurdle for me because that is not at all my theology of suffering.  And I especially do not like hearing that theology of suffering this week – a week when we are watching the cases of Coronavirus creep up in our country and double in our county and have begun asking the same sorts of questions the people in this passage are asking:  Where is God in this?  Why is God allowing not only this terrible virus to happen, but the accompanying societal upheaval?  Is God causing this suffering for some greater good?  This kind of health crisis pulls at all of us and in our innermost, private places, and makes us wonder, even if we cannot say the words aloud, “Did God have something to do with this virus?”  Or sometimes we find ourselves not embarrassingly asking the question, but boldly shouting at God, “What in the world are you doing?  Why aren’t you here fixing this?  How could you do this?!?”  The absolute LAST passage I want to hear when we are asking these bone-deep theological, desperate questions is a text that seems to imply God causes suffering for God’s own glory.

That is why I am especially grateful for biblical scholars who can journey with us in interpreting scripture.  Biblical Scholar Rolf Jacobson took a look at that same verse that has been nagging me all week, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”  Luckily Jacobson is better at Greek than me.  He explains that the writers of the New Revised Standard Version inserted text into the English translation that simply is just not there.  In the original Greek, the words “he was born blind,” are not there.  Instead of the text saying, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him,” the text actually says, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned [period].  In order that God’s works might be revealed in him, we must work the works of him who sent me…”  According to Jacobson, Jesus is not saying the man was blind so God could be revealed.  Jesus is saying no one sinned.  But given the situation, God has given his disciples the opportunity to do something good to reveal God’s goodness.[i]  In other words, God does not cause suffering.  But God can use us in the midst of suffering for good.

I don’t know about you, but that has shifted my understanding of this text completely.  All of the arguing about who sinned, what laws you must follow to be holy, and who should be in or out are a distraction.  The same can be true of us.  When we start trying to logic our way through fault, or sin, or blame – even blame on God, we lose our way; we become blind like those gathered and arguing in our text today.  Instead, this text is inviting us to ask different questions.  Instead of whose sin caused this virus, we can ask, “How can I be a force for good in the midst of this virus?”  Instead of why God is doing this or allowing this to happen, we can ask, “Where are the opportunities to see God acting for good in the midst of suffering?”  Instead of where is God in this, we can ask, “Where am I finding moments of God’s grace in this?”  I am not arguing our questions and demands of God are not valid at this time.  In fact, I think our quiet doubt of and our raging anger at God are perfectly normal – and maybe even necessary for honest relationship with God.  What I am arguing is this text is not a reinforcement of our sense of darkness, but instead an invitation into light – an invitation to seeing when we may feel blinded.  My prayer this week is that we stumble into those moments of light this week – that we find those moments of grace upon grace that give us renewed comfort, hope, and faith.  May God bless you in the journey toward the light.  Amen.

[i] Rolf Jacobson, “Sermon Brainwave #713 – Fourth Sunday in Lent,” March 14, 2020, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=1240, on March 19, 2020.

Sermon – Matthew 4.1-11, L1, YA, March 1, 2020

Tags

cosmic, devil, evil, good, immature, Jesus, journey, Lent, mature, practice, Sermon, spiritual discipline, temptation

There is an ongoing debate among people who have way to much time on their hands about  the efficacy of most spiritual disciplines during Lent:  whether we are giving up chocolate, alcohol, or swear words; whether we are taking up health improvements, like getting more sleep, walking daily, or practicing yoga; or whether we are committing to something more traditional like fasting, daily prayer, or the reading of scripture.  The argument is that these disciplines domesticate Lent, making Lent akin to New Year’s resolutions instead of the sacred practices the ancient church intended.  There’s even a book entitled, A Grown-up Lent: When Giving Up Chocolate Isn’t Enough, whose title alone insinuates that most of our disciplines are immature, are not “grown-up” enough to be considered worthy of Lent.

Now there are myriad articulations about why our practices are not enough, but one of the reasons articulated uses today’s gospel lesson as their defense.  In today’s gospel, we hear Matthew’s version of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness.  On the surface, Matthew describes three temptations:  the temptation to satiate a physical need (after forty days, Jesus is hungry and could turn stones to bread to satisfy this physical hunger), the temptation to prove God loves us (Jesus might want to know that God has his back before he takes on this whole savior role), and the temptation to gain political power (any messiah might assume their cause is always better aided by powerful force).  By reading about Jesus’ temptation today, we might easily deduce the reason we assume Lenten disciplines is because we are mimicking Jesus’ temptation for these next forty days.  Like Jesus was tempted by hunger, a desire for comfort, and a desire for power, our disciplines highlight our daily temptations and our desire to not submit to the forces of evil.

But this gets to the heart of why so many are critiquing our spiritual disciplines during Lent.  Theologian Stanley Hauerwas argues, “…the temptation Jesus endures is unlike the temptation we endure, for the devil knows this is the very Son of God, who has come to reverse the history initiated by Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden and continued in the history of revolt by the people whom God loves as his own, namely, Israel.”[i]  In other words, although we are surely tempted by Satan in our own time, today’s temptation of Jesus is about a cosmic battle – the very battle between good and evil, the very evil that is wreaking havoc on the civility and humanity of our country today, making us turn against one another and abandon our baptismal promises to respect the dignity of every human being.  Some would argue that our giving up chocolate, or our eating fish on Fridays in Lent does not get us any closer to routing out the evil seeking to destroy the fabric of our church, our community, and our country; our focusing on physical health does not battle the things we confessed in the Great Litany today:  pride, vainglory, hypocrisy, deceits of the flesh, and dying suddenly and unprepared.

Now, while I get the academic protest about the simplistic nature of our disciplines, here is what I know.  A week ago, after a wonderful celebration of the end of Epiphany, and after a glorious honoring of the spirituals of our religious tradition, I lost my voice.  Despite my croaking despair with my doctor, he told me, rather unsympathetically, no matter what my job was, no matter if a big event, like, say Ash Wednesday with its three services, one ecumenical potluck, and Ashes to Go, were on my agenda, in no way was I to use my voice.  In essence, I was forced into silence on a week where I needed to lead.  Or, I suppose put more spiritually, I was gifted the opportunity to truly embrace the classic invitation of Lent: fasting (in this case from speaking) and meditating on God’s holy word (since I certainly could not speak God’s word).  The irony of this gift was not lost on me – an extrovert prone to powering through any challenge being forced to slow down and keep quiet is what Lenten disciplines are all about, right?  Take our biggest spiritual struggles, and then use disciplines to help ourselves correct behavior and get right with God – this is classic Lenten stuff!

I can tell you, this past week has been a profound week of learning.  All of those things we confessed in the Great Litany were in my face this week.  Nothing attacks one’s pride, vanity, and envy like watching other people do the job I was made to do but could not do in my weakness.  And while I was able to patiently be silent, working alone from my home office on the day before Ash Wednesday, I realized about half-way through Ash Wednesday my vocal chords were hurting not from physically trying to speak, but from tensing them in the desire to speak – my longing to speak manifested itself in a anticipatory tension of use, which became dangerously close to having the same effect of actually using my voice.  When I finally realized what was happening, why I was feeling worse, I had to mentally force my throat to relax, my shoulders to release their tension, and my mind to accept I could not simply do everything I normally do, simply removing one minor part – that of speaking.  No, being mute on Ash Wednesday would mean taking on another way of being.

I tell you all this not because Lent is all about me and my laryngitis.  I tell you all this because although I understand the academic critique of Lenten disciplines, I also see with fresh eyes the very blessing of Lenten disciplines.  Perhaps the critique is true that giving up meat, or taking up Pilates, or even reading a devotion is not going to help us battle the spiritual forces of evil; but taking on those practices will shake up our senses in really meaningful ways.  Daily resisting of patterns, or daily assumptions of new patterns, creates in us a retraining of our bodies so we can begin to see, hear, taste, smell, and touch God in new ways.  And that shaking – whether big or small – shakes up other things in our lives.  We begin to see more clearly where we have had a blindness of heart; where we have delighted in inordinate and sinful affections; where we have hardened our hearts again our black, Latino, young, old, Republican, and Democrat neighbors; where we have even held in contempt God’s word and commandments.  These disciplines are not juvenile – these disciplines, when embraced and practiced open up renewed relationship with Christ, with ourselves, and with our neighbor.

In essence, what spiritual disciplines do is help us fight the devil.  Now I know that might sound extreme, but stick with me a bit.  Hauerwas argues, “The devil is but another name for our impatience.  We want bread, we want to force God’s hand to rescue us, we want peace – and we want all this now.  But Jesus is our bread, he is our salvation, and he is our peace.  That he is so requires that we learn to wait with him in a world of hunger, idolatry, and war to witness to the kingdom that is God’s patience.  The Father will have the kingdom present one small act at a time.  That is what it means for us to be an apocalyptic people, that is, a people who believe that Jesus’ refusal to accept the devil’s terms for the world’s salvation has made it possible for a people to exist that offers an alternative time to a world that believes we have no time to be just.”[ii]

So, I say, give up chocolate.  Read your devotional.  Play Lent Madness.  Pray before the kids or pets wake up or after they go to sleep.  Commit daily acts of kindness.  Take that daily walk.  You may feel like you are doing something simple.  But in our simplicity, we are participating in the cosmic work of Christ.  In bringing intentionality into those things we can control, we bring intentional focus on those things we cannot control – those things only God can fight for us.  Our forty-day journey is not the same as Christ’s.  But taking this journey aligns us with the work of Christ, and helps us claim the light in a world overwhelmed by darkness.  May God bless our Lent, and make our Lent holy.  Amen.

[i] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew (Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2006), 51.

[ii] Hauerwas, 55.

On Cellos, Love, and the Incarnation…

Tags

awe, cello, child, Christmas, God, good, incarnation, Jesus, love, Mary, parent, wonder

Photo credit:  https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/instruments/cello/

Yesterday, my elder child performed in the school’s Christmas concert.  She had been pretty excited and anxious about the concert for weeks.  They worked very hard in class, and she had been practicing daily at home.  She was determined to learn the special songs so she could play them.  Over these last months, she has asked me to sit nearby occasionally and listen; other times, I could hear the songs of the cello floating down the stairs.  But none of that prepared me for what I saw yesterday.  Yesterday, she sat tall in her chair, attentive, and calm.  Suddenly, her arms look graceful and light.  Her movements were like that of a dancer, able to beautifully coax out a tune from her curved instrument.  I was stunned by her beauty, having never fully seen it before as she plugged away at home.  My heart warmed, and was filled with love for the nimble creature – a child who certainly gives me a run for my money in fierceness, stubbornness, and independence, but also who I keep discovering I love more than I even understand.

As I have been thinking about that surge of love and awe for my child, I began to wonder if that was what Mary felt on that night Jesus was born.  Her pregnancy was so fraught.  From her bizarre conception story, to working out marital details with Joseph, to the encounter with her cousin Elizabeth, to the government’s census that forced her to travel while very pregnant, to replaying the conversation with the Angel Gabriel, knowing wondrous, awful, amazing things were to happen with her child.  Though she seemed to embrace her role fully, I sometimes wonder whether she was able to feel love for the child who had brought so much chaos to her life – at least not until she laid eyes on him.  I suspect only then, did her sense of purpose become intertwined with a sense of deep love – a sense of awe bigger than herself.

I think that is how God loves us.  At times, I suspect God, like any parent, has a wicked eye roll and has mastered a deep sigh in response to our behavior.  But I also imagine God has this deep sense of awe, wonder, and love for us – for the ways in which we can be beautiful to one another, the ways in which we use our gifts for good, and the ways in which we glorify God.  I believe the entire Incarnation is due to this deep love – a love even deeper than we experience in those fleeting moments of insight with our children and one another.  That realization is how I head into Christmas this year.  Not thinking about cute babies, or crazy birth narratives necessarily, but in humbled awe of how much God loves us.  When we catch a glimpse of that love, we do not really need anything else this Christmas.  In this last week before Christmas, I invite you to consider the best gift that is waiting for you this year.  Everything else is just trimming.

Photo credit:  https://thefellowshipoftheking.net/2015/12/24/lovely-lady-dressed-in-blue-marys-role-in-the-incarnation/

Homily – Luke 18.9-14, P25, YC, October 27, 2019

Tags

abundance, alongside, bad, community, good, identity, Jesus, light, love, ministry, parable, passionate, pray, shine, stewardship, walk

Today’s parable from Jesus is one of those short parables that seems pretty straightforward at first glance.  Jesus describes two men who go to the temple to pray.  One is a Pharisee – a law-abiding, God-fearing man who offers a prayer of thanksgiving, albeit one that is full of self-righteousness, comparing himself and his choices favorably against those of others – suggesting in a sense that others are outside of God’s favor and grace.  The other is a tax collector – a corrupt collaborator with the government who, full of shame, humbly confesses to God his sins.  Jesus tells us the tax collector, “went down to his home justified rather than the other.”

Our temptation is to hear this text and conclude something quite simple:  the Pharisee is bad and the tax collector is good; bragging about yourself is bad and being humble is good; being a faithful person who misjudges God’s abundance is bad and being a self-aware sinner is good.  The problem with reading the text in this black-and-white way is we miss little details.  With such a stark reading, we can find ourselves walking out of church today thinking, “Thank God I’m not like the Pharisee!”  And before we even notice, we realize we are praying the same prayer as the Pharisee from the parable!

But this week, I stumbled on a little translation difference that shifted this parable for me.  In verse 14, Jesus says, “I tell you, [the tax collector] went down to his home justified rather than the other…”  But scholar Matt Skinner argues the preposition, “rather than,” should be translated instead as “alongside.”  So, verse 14 becomes, “I tell you, [the tax collector] went down to his home justified alongside the other…”[i]  Skinner argues there is much more nuance in this parable than we often allow.  That both men are praying, both men have faults, and both go home justified in different ways.  Sure, the Pharisee limits the extent of God’s grace, and he is unaware of his sinfulness in such exclusion, but the tax collector is no innocent.  Both men go home justified alongside each other.

One of the things we have been celebrating this stewardship season is our identity.  When we say, “We are Hickory Neck!” we say we are a people who have raised over $170,000 for local charities, who have over 50 volunteers on a given Sunday, who support one another through spiritual offerings like Lectio Divina, Book Club, Bible Study, and Jam Sessions, who nurture children and young families, who welcome newcomers, who work hard, and who have fun.  We are all those things are more – I imagine each of us here has a mental picture about what we mean when we say, “We are Hickory Neck!”  One of those things is that we walk home justified alongside each other.

That is what I love about this community.  This is a community that is passionate about Jesus and take’s Christ’s light out into the world.  This is a community that is passionate about caring for one another – where all can feel loved and affirmed, and all can find a place to thrive.  This is a community that is passionate about serving our neighbors – those young families looking for a sense of belonging and affirmation, and those retirees looking for a new sense of home.  This is a community that is passionate about liturgy, music, having fun, sharing sorrows, honoring history, dreaming about future possibilities, and laughing – lots of laughing.  This is a community that is passionate about investing our individual resources into Hickory Neck so Hickory Neck can bless others as Hickory Neck has blessed us.  We are Hickory Neck!  We are a community who walks alongside each other.

But that’s just me.  I want to know what gets you excited about Hickory Neck.  I want to know what saying “We are Hickory Neck!” conjures in your mind.  At your tables is a list of ideas from our Stewardship Committee.  Reread those ideas, and then talk with the people at your table about what you think of that is not on the list.  Write them down as you talk, so the Stewardship Committee understands what is important to you as we support and fund ministry.  You have about five minutes to chat and make notes, and then we’ll regather with a word of prayer…

Let us pray.  God of abundance, we come to you as self-righteous, sinful followers, who regularly mess up.  But our heart is with you.  We want to be agents of your light and your love.  Help us to love you abundantly.  Help us to support your kingdom generously.  Help us to walk alongside one another, shining your light for others so they may give glory to you.  In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

[i] Matt Skinner, “Sermon Brainwave #686 – Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 30),” October 19, 2019, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=1192 on October 23, 2019.

On Festivals, Fitness, and Fun…

Tags

church, community, faith, festival, fun, God, good, grace, joy, love, muscle memory, passion, spiritual

Photo credit:  Charlie Bauer; permission required for reuse.

This week is one of my favorite weeks of the year.  This is the time when our church community transforms our property for our Annual Fall Festival.  Leading up to this week, there is a lot of organizing, delegating, preparing, and a fair amount of stress.  But this week, everything snaps into place.  The setup crew knows exactly what to breakdown and where it goes.  The Attic Treasures crew knows just what layout works and the room is magically converted to look like the same inviting space.  Later, our parking crew will come out and lay out where cars can park, tents will be erected, and all kinds of goods will be placed.  Having done the festival for nineteen years, we know the drill and seem to operate from muscle memory.

I love this week for several reasons.  One, I love seeing the community come together – both parishioners and neighbors alike, to make for a fun week of memories, laughter, and new experiences.  I love seeing people’s passion for helping others unfold in a way that is loving, affirming, and fun.  And I also love seeing people step up, taking on things that are a burden on their time, but doing so for the greater good.  The week truly is inspiring, and I love inviting the larger community into our joy.

This week – or perhaps next week after the dust has settled – I invite you to consider what other parts of your faith life might need to be flexed enough so that you have muscle memory around them as well.  Perhaps it is just making Sunday worship a part of your weekly experience with God – letting the routine of liturgy create a common pattern for you, while also seeing how the routine of liturgy creates surprising moments of grace and joy.  Maybe your muscle memory can form around inviting people to church.  I find the more I talk about a thing I am passionate about, the more talking about it becomes easy.  Or maybe your muscle memory will be around creating practices that feed your soul – our monthly book group, our yearly Women’s Retreat, a weekly Bible Study or Choir rehearsal.  If any of these practices create even a portion of the joy we experience during Fall Festival week, I expect you are in for a real treat.  I cannot wait to hear about it!

 

Sermon – John 2.13-22, Exodus 20.1-17, L3, YB, March 4, 2018

Tags

beautiful, bless, body, flesh, God, good, honor, incarnation, Jesus, Lent, ministry, repentance, righteous anger, sacred, Sermon, sinful, temple

Today’s gospel lesson is one of those lessons in Scripture that is so vivid we find looking away difficult.  All four of the gospels have this story, and three of the gospels use this story to convey Jesus’ righteous anger about how the practice around temple worship and obligatory sacrifice has led to monetary abuses.  Matthew and Luke even have Jesus calling the whole enterprise a den of robbers.  The story evokes images of Jesus flipping tables, or in today’s version, swinging around a whip like Indiana Jones.  We often recall this text when looking for evidence of Jesus’ righteous anger at injustice.  We are so familiar with this text we can almost hear the sermon about a call to justice in our heads.

But this week, the gospel has been speaking a different sermon to me.  You see, John’s version of this story is a bit different from the other three gospels.  First, John places this story in a very different place in his narrative.[i]  Unlike the other gospels who place this story toward the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, John places this incident in the second chapter, right after the miracle in Cana.  And in John’s version, Jesus does not lay into the moneychangers in quite the same way.  Instead of financial injustice, Jesus seems more concerned that those gathered have missed something critical – in the obligatory administering of sacrifices at the physical temple, they have missed the fact that God is no longer tied to the location of the temple – and instead is found in the temple of Jesus’ body.  For John, the incarnation, the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, is central to the entirety of the good news and in this story specifically.

I realized this week that when I think about the Incarnation, I immediately think of the baby Jesus.  Somehow, like a child you do not see for a few years, my image of Jesus incarnate gets stuck in the manger.  And because the adult Jesus sometimes feels so superhuman, I forget about the earthy, gritty flesh of his body – the body that touches to heal, stoops down to wash feet, eats and drinks with others, cries wet tears, and breathes a last breath of the cross.  In coming to know the Messiah who heals, teaches, brings about justice, and is transfigured before the disciples, I forget the enfleshed Jesus – the human body in which God dwells – the only temple we need to draw nearer to our God.

We are in a season of flesh.  Lent is that season when we experience Jesus in deeply enfleshed ways.  What our disciplines or our practices do for us in Lent is help us remember that we are a people of flesh and our God was willing to take on that flesh to transform our lives.  We do not often talk about the profound reality of an enfleshed God, but I stumbled on a hymn this week that opened up the reality.  Brian Wren’s hymn Good is the Flesh says, “Good is the flesh that the Word has become, good is the birthing, the milk in the breast, good is the feeding, caressing and rest, good is the body for knowing the world, Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”  The hymn goes on to say, “Good is the body, from cradle to grave, growing and aging, arousing, impaired, happy in clothing, or lovingly bared, good is the pleasure of God in our flesh, Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”[ii]  Now I do not know about your own spiritual journey, but I do not think I have ever heard Jesus’ flesh being described so vividly.  The closest I have come has been in imagining the vulnerability of that enfleshed body in the cradle.  But capturing what being enfleshed means for all of life – from cradle to grave – somehow opened up John’s words about the temple of Jesus’ body.  God takes something we often associate with sinfulness – and transforms that flesh into something good.  “Good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,” are powerful words that shift how we experience the fullness of Christ’s humanity.

Once we reconnect with the goodness of God’s flesh – the incarnation of Christ – then we begin to see all of Jesus’ ministry not stuck in a manger but immersed in the flesh of life.  Karoline Lewis reminds us Jesus’ fleshy life was important, “Because a woman at a well, whose body was rejected for the barren body it was, experiences the truth of neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem; because a man ill for 38 years, his entire life to be exact, whose body has only known life on the ground, is now able to imagine his ascended life; because a man born blind, is then able to see, and to see himself as a sheep of Jesus’ own fold; because Lazarus, whose body was dead and starting to decay, found himself reclining on Jesus, eating and drinking, and with his sisters, sharing a meal once again.”[iii]  Not only is Jesus’ incarnation good, making flesh good, Jesus’ ministry is about blessing, healing, and restoring physical bodies.

Once we connect with the goodness of God’s flesh, and the power of Jesus’ fleshy ministry, we are forced to see something we do not always feel comfortable with – the goodness of our own flesh.  Now I do not know about you, but my experience in church has not been one in which the church tells me how good my body is.  In fact, today’s inclusion of the ten commandments usually reminds me of the opposite – of the myriad ways my body is sinful:  from the words that come out of my mouth, to the ways in which I hurt others and take things with my body, to the ways in which I covet things and other bodies.  And those sins do not even touch the ways in which I learn the message that my body is imperfect – how my body is not the right height or shape or gender, how my body is not fit or strong enough, how my skin color, hair, or nails are not quite the ideal.  But if God takes on flesh and says, “Good is the flesh,” and if that enfleshed God engages in a ministry of blessing flesh, then surely part of what we remember today is how good and blessed our own flesh is – how God made our flesh for good.

Now, here comes the tricky part.  Once we realize “Good is the flesh,” that ministered to the flesh, that our flesh is beautiful and revered, then we are forced to make yet another leap – that the flesh of others is also beautiful.  Those bodies we would like to subjugate, regulate, and decimate are no longer able to be separated from the goodness of God’s flesh or our own flesh.  Barbara Brown Taylor argues in An Altar in the World, “‘One of the truer things about bodies is that it is just about impossible to increase the reverence I show mine without also increasing the reverence I show yours.’  In other words, once I value my own body as God’s temple, as a site of God’s pleasure, delight, and grace, how can I stand by while other bodies suffer exploitation, poverty, discrimination, or abuse?”[iv]

This week, we enter that kind of work.  As we welcome guests through the Winter Shelter, we affirm the goodness of all flesh – of God’s flesh, of our flesh, and especially the flesh of those who have no shelter, who work hard all day but cannot secure housing, who live lives of uncertainty, of insecurity, of scarcity.  Once we recall the incarnation of Christ, the dignity of our own incarnation, our work immediately becomes to honor the incarnation of others.  We certainly accomplish the work of honoring flesh this week through the Winter Shelter.  But as we keep walking our Lenten journey, we will struggle with our bodies.  Even our collect today says, “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.”  But our invitation this Lent is to also struggle with claiming our body as good – and using the goodness of the flesh to bless other flesh.  Our repentance this week is not just of the sinfulness of the flesh, but we repent this week of the ways in which we do not honor how “Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”  Amen.

 

[i] Joseph D. Small, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 92.

[ii] I found this hymn in the commentary by Debie Thomas, “The Temple of His Body” February 28, 2018, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=1675 as found on March 1, 2018.

[iii] Karoline Lewis, “Body Zeal,” February 26, 2018, http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5071 as found on March 1, 2018.

[iv] Thomas.

On Saints and Community…

Tags

All Hallows' Eve, All Saints Day, care, community, connect, feast, God, good, Halloween, joy, sacred, saints, secular

Photo credit:  kanecountyconnects.com/2016/10/complete-list-of-halloween-trick-or-treat-hours-in-kane-county-communitys-2016/

I have never been one for promoting the spirituality of All Hallows’ Eve.  I have done children’s liturgies before, but I always suspect that the lure of trick-or-treating is too strong to encourage people to fast on October 31^st.  As an adult, I have never been that into Halloween either.  I never dress up or throw big parties.  As a parent, I take the kids out, and we have candy to pass out at our home, but besides the promise of candy being around, I do not get too invested in the holiday.

But last night, something powerful clicked for me.  We live in a neighborhood that is very easy to walk with kids, and our youngest is old enough that she is starting really enjoy door-to-door trick-or-treating.  As we walked, I realized something new was happening.  Everyone in the neighborhood was genuinely engaged.  Adults made eye contact with one another, smiling and greeting with a heartiness I had not seen before.  Older members of our neighborhood were delighting in the children, making connections over costumes and candy.  Most of the time, I think of our neighborhood as being the place where we live.  But last night, our neighborhood felt like a community:  a community of people who care about each other, want to connect with each other, and are happy to share a little bit of joy in a sometimes very disappointing world.

Though our neighborhood was doing something entirely secular, there was something sacred about our interactions last night.  Though we were not fasting for All Hallows’ Day, our honoring of each other was a way of preparing me for today’s feast day.  Our connections last night made me realize how connected we are to the saints:  people who seem totally unlike us, whose lives feel disconnected from our own, and yet, whose stories bring us comfort, encouragement, and assurance.  The communion of saints makes us realize how much larger our “community” really is, and how full of goodness and hope it can be.  If you are longing for that kind of connection to the saints, or even a connection to a modern community, I hope you will join us tonight as we celebrate All Saints Day.  Come feast on the holy meal, share a good word, and look into the eyes of those who see you for what you are:  a beautiful child of God to be honored and celebrated!