Sermon – Matthew 3.13-17, E1, YA, January 12, 2020

Tags

Annual Meeting, bold, consent, courage, experimentation, fun, gifts, God, humility, Jesus, John, joy, playfulness, resistance, Sermon, trust

This sermon was delivered on the occasion of our Annual Meeting at Hickory Neck Episcopal Church.  

As I have been preparing for our Annual Meeting, I have been thinking how grateful I am to have John as our companion today as we look back at a year of ministry and look forward toward what is to come.  In general John is not my favorite character in scripture.  He always seems a bit extreme – sort of like that overly enthusiastic street corner preacher to whom you carefully give a wide berth and with whom you avoid eye contact for fear of having to explain how your understanding of Jesus is a bit different from theirs.  But today, I find resonance with John.

When Jesus asks John to baptize him, John’s immediate response is to resist.  John’s response is the classic, “But that’s not how we’ve always done it,” response.  This year, Hickory Neck had countless opportunities to respond like John.  When our Sunday School program elected to repurpose an unused classroom that had become storage because our Godly Play program had grown so much, we could have resisted the change and associated work involved.  When our Curate suggested we try out Ashes-to-Go on Ash Wednesday, we could have easily come up with myriad reasons why our property was not suited for such a program.  When our Praise Band decided to take a break from worship leadership and try Jam Sessions as a way to cultivate praise music in our community, we could have easily resisted their discernment and their creativity.  When the Kensington School offered to take over the children’s station at our Fall Festival, we could have easily gotten in the way or resisted their leadership.  When our Outreach Committee suggested we take on a week of the Winter Shelter by ourselves, separating from our long-time two-week sharing pattern with St. Martin’s, we could have resisted the change because we have never done Winter Shelter that way.  The opportunities to respond with John-like resistance have been overwhelmingly present over the last year.

Fortunately for us, Hickory Neck is a community who, like John works through innate human and communal tendencies toward resistance to change, and instead, embraces consent.  When John initially resists Jesus, Jesus comes back to John with an invitation to trust him.  John and Jesus engage in an open relationship of dialogue.  And, Matthew tells us, quite simply, “Then John consented.”  Matthew’s simplicity can belie how tremendous John’s consent is.  John’s consenting means letting go of control, letting go of the comfort of familiarity, letting go of the confidence that you are right and the other is wrong.  Those three little words, “Then he consented,” reveal John’s trust, John’s courage, and John’s humility.  John’s consent is not passive or weak.  John’s consent is bold!

That is what I have seen in Hickory Neck in this last year of ministry.  We have been bold!  When your Vestry formed this time last year, they took on a year-long process of visioning and strategic planning.  You will learn more about that process in the coming months, but I can tell you the Vestry has exhibited a lot of trust, courage, and humility as they looked at who we are and where we are going.  Hickory Neck has been bold in other areas too.  When our Parish Life team decided to resurrect the Shrove Tuesday Talent Show, I was uncertain how the Talent Show would go.  But we spent the night laughing, playing, and glorifying God in bold ways.  When the Kensington School invited us to teach Godly Play as an elective class, I was almost certain we would not have anyone sign up.  But out of 70 students, about a third of whom are ineligible due to age, we have over 20 students who regularly come to listen for God.  When our Musician decided to organize Evensongs, helping us prepare for a pilgrimage in England, I wondered whether many people would come to hear the traditional musical offering.  But when over 100 people, half of whom were visitors, attended, we saw how we are a community who can celebrate all kinds of music.  Or when we decided to totally transform this space for Flip Flop Mass, even the staff were not sure what we were doing.  But the joy and delight on worshippers faces afterwards taught us we had found something unique, meaningful, and fun.  Hickory Neck has been embracing bold responses to God all year long!

Part of our willingness to be bold this past year has been rooted in Hickory Neck’s identity and values.  As our Vestry articulated our values this year, one of those values was curiosity – an embracing of experimentation, playfulness, and joy.  That value, which is not common among churches, I assure you, creates in us an inherent ability to do what John does – to consent to Jesus, to the movement of the Spirit in what might be happening next.  That is why I am confident 2020 holds the promise of many more expressions of boldness.  After a successful year of offering a Godly Play class at the Kensington School here in Toano, the director has asked us to offer a Godly Play class at their Williamsburg location – a location that has around 250 kids as compared to the 70 kids here.  We will need to find about four more teachers to enable such an undertaking, but such boldness could mean sharing the good news not only with our immediate Upper James City County families, but families throughout our region.  As we face the departure of our curate later this month, a full-time clergy position that cannot be financially replaced due to pledging, we could choose fear, resistance, or despondency.  Instead, our Personnel Committee, Vestry, and Staff have been creatively trying to figure out a new staffing structure – a way to think about ministry differently, employing the gifts of the entire community to achieve something different, but equally life-giving that can facilitate the achievement of the strategic priorities our Vestry has articulated.  When our dream of bringing more childcare to our community was realized, a group of parishioners realized that not everyone could afford that childcare.  Instead of feeling frustrated or stymied, a group came together to form a Scholarship Committee to figure out how to make childcare accessible to our neighbors.  That group has boldly discerned the need to create a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that can raise funds – and not just for children in our community needing care, but eventually, even for seniors needing help with care.  The process may take a while to coalesce, but the Committee is demonstrating to all of us how to live more boldly this year.

The reason John is able to consent comes out of his trust in Christ Jesus.  We know from Matthew’s Gospel that John is not always consistent in his trust.  Chapters later, as he sits in a jail cell, his trust in Jesus waivers.  But here today, at the banks of the River Jordan, John talks to Jesus about his misgivings, John articulates why he believes he knows what is best, and John takes into consideration the wisdom of another way from Jesus.  John chooses the boldness of the unknown path of Christ over the confidence of how things have always been.  John chooses the wisdom of the Spirit over his own long-accumulated wisdom.  John chooses to trust God is doing something new, and consents to going along for the ride.

The same is true for Hickory Neck.  Any of the boldness we are hoping to embrace this year is rooted in who we are:  a community anchored in deep, daily prayer, in meaningful, diverse worship, in varied forms of study and theological reflection, in life-giving, meaningful relationships with one another and the wider community, in the giving of care and support to those who need that care.  All of those activities, those things that shape who Hickory Neck is, create a foundation for us to have a deep enough relationship with Christ that when the Spirit invites us into something new, something seemingly out of our reach, something unlike the way we have done things, we have no problem looking into the eyes of Jesus, and consenting.  Now, being bold is not easy.  To be bold means we acknowledge we are leaving our comfort zones and a sense of security.  But when I look around our community – when I look at each of you and the gifts you bring to Hickory Neck and the ways God is working good through you, the idea of being bold with you isn’t so scary.  In fact, being bold is kind of exciting, invigorating, and fun.  I cannot wait to have more fun with you this coming year, and I am so grateful we have each other live into this new year of ministry.  God has great things in store for us, and I feel privileged to be able to stand with you as we consent to the movement of the Spirit together.  Amen.

Sermon – Luke 23.33-43, P29, YC, November 24, 2019

Tags

Christ the King, cross, fairness, humility, image, Jesus, justice, king, Mr. Rogers, need, Sermon, victory, want

Fifty-one years ago, Mister Rogers Neighborhood debuted on public television.  Many people criticized the show, saying the show was too slow and too boring to keep children engaged.  For critics, children’s programming needed to be loud, action-packed, full of silly gimmicks, perhaps with a few characters that were made fun of or teased.  Knowing how frenetic young children can be, television producers had decided to mirror young children’s behavior in their television programming.  But not Mr. Rogers.  In the midst of frenetic behavior, Mr. Rogers sought a different environment for his show – something slower and more thoughtful, something kind and engaging, something simple and attentive.  Critics said the show would never last, that Mister Rogers Neighborhood was not what children wanted.

On this Christ the King Sunday, the final Sunday of the Church year, this Sunday of jubilant triumph, we find a similar conundrum.  As we read from Luke’s gospel, we do not find Christ the King on a throne – we find him on a cross, leaders scoffing at him, soldiers mocking him, a criminal deriding him, and a crowd of people just standing there watching.  Nothing about today’s lesson connotes victory or royalty.  Jesus’ critics put a sign over his head that read, “This is the King of the Jews.”  The inscription is written as a declarative statement, but I wonder if there should have been a question mark at the end of that sentence.  This is the King of the Jews?  This is what royalty looks like?  This is what a savior is to you?

Of course, I am not sure the people of God were any surer about what having a king should be like.  The people of God never really had a king until they reached the Promised Land.  They saw the neighboring countries with their armies and their admirable kings, and they wanted one for themselves.  That was their first mistake.  God granted them a king to rule over them, but inevitably, the kings, like all humans, were flawed – some more than others.  Hence, there are four books in the Hebrew Scriptures about the kings who ruled and the judges who tried to correct their behavior.  Most of the kings were corrupted by power, money, and greed.  Many abused the people.  Even the most revered king, King David, was a mess.  He was the one who coveted Bathsheba, slept with her, and then killed her husband when he got her pregnant and realized he would not be able to get away with it.

Having been through a horrible patch of awful kings, the prophets predicted the coming of a Messiah – the king of kings and Lord of lords.  This king would be triumphant and would make the people of Israel dominant at last.  You can imagine that with such a great promise, the people of Israel are not too pleased with the man who finally claimed be the Messiah.  Nothing about Jesus says “king.”  He is nonviolent, hangs out with sinners of all sorts, and travels with a sorry band of misfits.  Even his grand entrance into Jerusalem where he is heralded as a king is not so grand – he rides in on a donkey, for goodness sake!  This could not possibly be the king Yahweh had promised them.

And yet, this is exactly the king God sends.  The Lord, who never wanted God’s people to have an earthly king anyway, makes a king that represents everything that is kingly:  a man who loves the poor and cares for the sick, a man who sees through the pretenses of the temple and calls for authenticity, a man who loves deeply and forgives infinitely.  So why are the people of God not excited about this king?  Why can they not love this countercultural king as much as the king they think they need?

In talking to a William & Mary student a couple of weeks ago, I was reminded of one of the first Political Science classes I took in college called Political Theory.  When we started reading the first book in our Political Theory class, I knew I was in trouble.  We read John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice.  In the book, he presents the best way to create a just political system.  He imagines gathering a random, diverse group of people who are essentially blindfolded about what their lot in life will be.  They have no guarantees about whether they will be old or young, rich or poor, male or female, member of a minority group or not.  In the midst of this blindness, the people gathered are given the task to create a set of rules to govern society.  Rawls’ basic argument is that if those people are truly blind about what their lot in life will be, they will be more likely to come up with a system of governance that is the fairest for all – since no one would want to take a chance on being the one victimized by an unfair system.  Although I appreciated what Rawls was saying, I was immediately annoyed at his argument.  How could we ever recreate a system of justice from scratch, and truly blind anyone enough to create such a system?  The entire premise seemed impossible, and thoroughly frustrating.  Needless to say, my focus in Political Science did not become Political Theory!

That being said, many years later, I think I may finally understand what Rawls was trying to communicate.  Our political system, or even this earthly life in general, is governed by a set of human-made standards that do not look out for the poor, create injustices, and benefit very few.  This is why so many of us get frustrated when we talk about justice or trying to make a difference – we see the system of injustice that fights against us and we can end up feeling helpless.  This is the very injustice that our king – Jesus – comes to fight.  Maybe Rawls saw this too.  Perhaps this world we can only achieve through blindness is the same world Jesus could see through God’s eyes.

In Rawls’ argument, when the blinded people make the rules, and then have their blindfolds removed, some are relieved to be well-off and others are dismayed to see themselves in poverty or at a disadvantage.  But all have some sense of acceptance because the rules they made do not make rich-life as advantageous and do not make poor-life as unbearable.  This is the kind of fairness into which Jesus invites us.  Jesus shows us a world where a humiliated man can look at his persecutors and forgive them.  Jesus shows a world where a man is willing to suffer for the salvation of others.  Jesus shows us a world where even a criminal can see truth in the last hour, can admit his guilt, and turn to Christ for leniency.

This is why we celebrate Christ as King today:  not because he is victorious in putting us in control over others, but because he invites us into a life that evens the playing field – the life of the kingdom of God.  There are certainly going to be days when we wish Jesus would just mount a mighty horse and triumph over evil.  Lord knows, in these days of political strife, of country-wide division and derision, of a time in our country where we say nasty things to one another, and the actions of the other side (whichever side we see as “the other”) are seen as the cause of all our troubles, we could use a Messiah, a king to come in and just “fix it” – to be a decisive, strong, powerful king to clean the slate.  But what Christ the King Sunday invites us to remember is we do not need a king on a throne; we need a king on a cross who enables us to create a world of fairness here and now – a world that is much more similar to the kingdom of God than the kingdom of humankind.

So why do we honor this not-so-kingly king today on the last day of the liturgical year?  I think the very best reason we close one year and prepare to start another with today’s gospel lesson is so that as we can more humbly approach the Christ Child.  If we can imagine ourselves gathered around that manger on that most holy of nights, not eager for vindication, but instead humbled by the path we will all walk with this king, then we enter into Advent with more reverence, less arrogance, and a healthy dose of gratitude.  This king – Christ the King – is the most sobering, challenging, merciful, joyous, steadying king for which we could hope.  He is not the king we always want, but he is certainly the king we always need.  Today we celebrate the wise gift by God of a true King – a king who makes us all better versions of ourselves, who helps us see there are no easy solutions, and who encourages us to embrace justice as fairness, not justice as vindication.  Our invitation today is to take a seat at the foot of the cross, to prepare our place in the hay surrounding the manger, to change out our shoes, to take off our jackets and zip up our cardigans, and to make a calm, quieter space for ourselves to hear how a real king can help us create not the kingdom we may want, but certainly the kingdom we need.  Amen.

On Walking toward Christ through Kindness…

Tags

Acts, Christ, faith, grace, humility, kindness, life, love, model, patience, receive, student, teacher, transform

Photo credit:  https://www.truefaithcogic.org/put-on-the-lord-jesus-christ/

Many people I encounter, both church-going and non-church-going, tend to think my role as a priest is to teach people how to live holy lives.  The expectation is not unfounded.  When I was ordained, the bishop asked me several questions in front of the congregation.  One of them was, “Will you do your best to pattern your life and that of your family in accordance with the teachings of Christ, so that you may be a wholesome example to your people?”  Not only does the Church anticipate I will teach my community how to live holy lives, the Church expects me to exemplify how to live a holy life.

The reality of that expectation sneaks up on me sometimes.  This week has been one of those times.  On Sunday, I challenged our church community to participate in Random Acts of Kindness Week, doing at least three acts of kindness this week, and reporting back next Sunday.  Just a few days in, two funny things have struck me.  One, I have felt a pressure to do kind acts myself.  As a servant leader, I need to set the tone with my own behavior.  And so, I have been plugging away – purchasing food for our local food pantry, collecting prom dresses and accessories for a program that helps low-income teens, and writing some kind notes.  But planned acts are almost easy.  It is the everyday inculcation of kindness that I am not as sure about.  Just two Sundays ago we heard the passage from 1 Corinthians, “Love is patient, love is kind.  Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”[i]  Although I may be performing kind acts, I have a bit further to go before I am living a life of kindness:  of patience, humility, flexibility, and generosity.

The second thing that struck me this week is how often I have been the recipient of kindness since we started honoring this week.  Already a parishioner has offered to cook me and my family a meal – just because.  Another parishioner sent me a thank you note for my kindness and work on behalf of the church.  Two classmates came to support me on Sunday, even though they have their own church homes.  And the kindness is not limited to people I know.  I have noticed people holding doors for me, waiting patiently for me as a pull out of a parking space, asking how I am doing (and really wanting to know).  I am not sure if people are inspired by this week, or if they are already living faithful lives of loving-kindness.  Either way, I find myself inspired by those around me, who are managing to be kind in the mundane parts of life.

If anything, this week is teaching me that the work of modeling faithful living will go way beyond a week.  And although the intentional acts I am doing this week are great, they are just a small part of transforming my entire life into a model of kindness and graciousness.  The other thing I am learning is that all of the modeling does not have to come from me.  In fact, I am also a student of Christ, still on the path to learning how to walk in Christ’s path.  The good news is that I have more than a week to master this transformation.  In fact, Hickory Neck will be taking up a Lenten kindness challenge this year.  I am so excited to see what forty days of living a life of kindness might teach me.  If they are as powerful as this first seven, then Hickory Neck is in for some incredible inspiration.  I cannot wait to hear what you are learning about this week too!

[i] 1 Corinthians 13.1.13

On Dreams, Change, and Gratitude…

Tags

baptismal covenant, change, church, community, courage, deferred, dreams, faithfully, Holy Spirit, hope, humility, investment, Jesus, kingdom of God, need, proud, tenacity, Thanksgiving, work

Photo credit:  http://debragaz.com/2016/10/17/we-can-walk-together/

This week, as the buzz of insects filled the air, the heat reflected off the pavement as the sun rose, and the smell of blooming flowers lingered nearby, I greeted families and watched an age-old tradition of parents dropping off children at school.  Some of the families were rushed, the parents trying to get off to work.  Some families took things more slowly, savoring the goodbye of the day.  Some families were worn down by anxiety and tears – of children and adults.  In the hubbub of greeting these families, reality hit me:  Hickory Neck did it!

You see, over ten years ago, the community of Hickory Neck Episcopal Church had a dream – to turn the blessing of property into a blessing for the community:  meeting a desperate need for childcare in our part of our county.  Countless hours were spent by many church members planning, calculating, and organizing.  It would take a tremendous investment to create a school from scratch, but the passion and vision were there.  Unfortunately, the preparation was complete right before the economic recession hit.  And the dream was deferred.

But the needs did not change – in fact they grew as the presence of young families, especially those transplanted away from extended family, grew in our neighborhood.  Hickory Neck’s dream was what a Search Committee invited me to participate in:  to help them take the dream off the shelf, and live out their baptismal covenant more fully in their particular context.  And so, the work began again.  After months of discernment and honest conversations, we realized Hickory Neck’s dream could still meet the needs of the community.

A year later, on a steamy September morning, I was struck with a sense of awe by the Hickory Neck community.  I have been a part of many congregations, and one thing I have learned is most communities resist change.  They might need change; they might want change; they might even say they are ready for change.  But in the deep recesses of their minds and hearts, they do not really want change.  Change is scary and could disrupt what drew them there in the beginning.  But Hickory Neck is different.  Hickory Neck is a community who has been fluid and flexible, who even when her dream began to morph and change, did not dig in her feet, but instead stepped out into the unknown and said yes to the Holy Spirit.  The humility, boldness, courageousness, creativity, and gumption of Hickory Neck brought me to my knees this week.

I am so proud of our community for trying a brave new way of ministry – one that comes from the congregation, will be nurtured by the congregation, and will eventually feed the congregation.  Though I have helped navigate logistics behind the scenes, the truth is, I feel so incredibly privileged to simply accompany Hickory Neck in the fulfillment of her dream.  In these last two and half years, Hickory Neck has given me hope in the future of the church universal.  If communities of faith can cast a vision that betters the surrounding community, journey through adversity to achieve that dream, and then actually live into that dream faithfully, then I think there is hope beyond measure for the kingdom of God.

A few weeks ago, a county official said to me, “You must be so proud of yourself for doing such good work at Hickory Neck.”  But I shared with him, “No, I’m so proud of Hickory Neck.  They are an inspiration to me every day.”  Today, I thank you, Hickory Neck.  I thank you for your witness of bravery, passion, and hard work.  I thank you for inspiring me to be a better priest.  I thank you for letting me be a part of this fantastic journey, in this fantastic community, doing the fantastic work of Jesus.  I am so proud of what Hickory Neck has already accomplished.  I cannot wait to see where we go next!  Oh, and if you are not already connected to Hickory Neck, I encourage you to stop by.  You are in for an incredible treat.  Don’t worry:  we’ve already saved you a seat!

Making it Work…

Tags

blessing, challenge, choose, commitment, God, grace, hard, humility, joy, marriage, strength, widsom, work

Photo credit:  marriage.about.com/od/proposingbeingengaged/

This month, my husband and I celebrated fifteen years of marriage.  Now I know fifteen may not seem like a big deal to some – it is certainly not 25, 50, or even the 64 years that one of the couples at church is celebrating this month.  But having worked with couples in premarital counseling for several years now, having worked with couples who were struggling with the strains marriage can bring, and having talked with couples who have had failed marriages, I know that marriage is not simply a gift.  Marriage is not just something that happens.  Marriage is something you work at, that you choose everyday (even on the days you would rather not), that is constantly tested, and that needs tending and loving care.  While wedding days are lovely, they are only the first day of many days that you will have to return to the commitment you made to make it work.

That being said, marriage is also a tremendous blessing.  It can be the place where you learn about the depths of love; your capacity for forgiveness (in part, because you are forgiven so often); where you can find the most honest, if not brutal, truth; where you can laugh more deeply than you ever have because that person knows what really produces a belly laugh; where you experience affirming, life-giving sexual pleasure; and where you find abiding companionship.  When we got married fifteen years ago, I was not entirely sure how things would go.  My own parents had gotten divorced just three years before our marriage began, and part of me wondered whether marriage could be done successfully.  I am so glad I made the leap anyway because marriage has brought joys (and challenges) that I never could have imagined.

I do not often talk about marriage because I work with a variety of people in all walks of life:  people who want to be married but have not found a partner, people who have lost their spouse to death, people who are divorced or who feel like the marriage is on the brink of failure, people who had abusive spouses, and people, who until very recently, were not allowed to be legally married.  At times, I have considered having a Valentine’s Day reaffirmation of vows celebration, as I have seen in other parishes, but shied away because I did not want anyone to think I was being insensitive to those for whom marriage is difficult.

All of that being said, my hope today is not to highlight how blissfully easy and wonderful marriage is.  Simply put, my hope is to honor how each day of marriage can be both a blessing and a challenge – and to thank God for the strength, wisdom, humility, and grace my husband and I have been given to get this far.  I pray for continued strength, wisdom, humility, and grace, as I pray for each of you on your various journeys in partnered, single, and dating life.  In the marriage liturgy of the Episcopal Church, we offer this petition at weddings.  Today, I leave it for my husband and I and all of you doing the work of marriage:  Grant that all married persons who have witnessed these vows may find their lives strengthened and their loyalties confirmed. Amen.  (BCP, 430)

 

 

Sermon – Luke 10.1-11, 16-20, 2 Kings 5.1-14, P9, YC, July 3, 2016

Tags

collaboratively, commission, detail, gospel, help, humility, insider, Jesus, joy, mission, Naaman, outsider, power, Sermon, seventy, side effects, story, terrifying, transformation, vulnerable, witness

I remember when I was on maternity leave I ended up watching a fair amount of daytime television – mostly because that was the extent of intellectual stimulation that my sleep-deprived brain could handle.  Not being someone who watches a lot of television, I was fascinated by one phenomenon in general:  pharmaceutical commercials.  There are tons of them and they are all filled with very convincing actors and stories.  The story is always the same:  the patient was sad, scared, or in pain, struggling with no cure; they or their doctor find a little-known drug; and, bam, they are returned to health and wholeness.  Sometimes the actor or narrator will mention a few possible side effects.  But in tiny print below the glowingly happy patient is a longer list of side effects that, quite frankly, sound terrifying – maybe even more terrifying than the disease or symptom they are trying to heal.  If you are not careful, you can miss the messy stuff altogether because everyone looks so happy:  from hair loss, to abdominal pain, partial paralysis, or in rare cases, even death.

That same sort of list of side effects is what our gospel lesson today glosses over too.  The severity of the situation is clearly grim when Jesus commissions the seventy to go ahead of him, proclaiming the kingdom and healing people.  Jesus is unambiguous.  He tells the seventy that they will be like sheep among wolves.  He takes away any forms of security:  no purse, no bag, no sandals.  He warns them that some people will not receive them well, and they will have to dust off their bruised egos and keep going.  He advises them to be gracious guests, eating whatever is put before them (even if it is Brussel sprouts).  Truly, this has to be the worst ad for a mission ever.

But here is the funny part.  The text jumps over the mission of the seventy and simply says, “The seventy returned with joy.”  We do not get details of all the side effects they experience.  We do not get to hear how hard eating what is put before them is.  We do not get to hear how scary traveling with no money or shoes is.  We do not even get to hear how many times they have to dust of their feet in protest from ill treatment.  No, the commercial just glosses straight to the end, “The seventy returned with joy.”  The reading today feels like all the bad stuff is just shoved into fine print so that we do not get a sense of what going out into the mission field really feels like – because, based on what Jesus says, the mission field sounds terrifying.

Feeling frustrated by the lack of detail this week, I found myself wondering how we might get a glimpse into the real experience of following Jesus and sharing the good news.  Then I stumbled back into the Naaman story and realized perhaps he is the key.  Naaman seems like an unlikely candidate at first blush.  He is a foreign national in the time of Elisha.  Jesus does not come onto the scene until hundreds of years later.  But Naaman has much more in common with the followers of Jesus – in fact, more in common with us – than we might imagine.

You see, Naaman is a mighty army commander.  Because of the Lord’s favor, Naaman has led the king’s troops to victory.  Naaman is not one of the Israelites, but he is someone with great power – a prowess we are familiar with as modern Americans.  In that way, he, us, and the seventy commissioned by Jesus are similar – we are insiders with power.  But despite his power, Naaman suffers from leprosy.  He has longed for healing and would use his power, influence, and money if he could.  But so far that has not led to success.  Instead, Naaman has to go another way.  As it turns out, Naaman has to go on a journey that is very similar in conditions to what the seventy must do.

In order to find healing and wholeness, Naaman must give up his power, sense of control, and must rely on others – especially those most marginalized in society.[i]  Basically, like the seventy, Naaman must give up his purse, his bag, his sandals, and must rely on the hospitality of others.  His story starts with a tip from a slave girl from Israel.  She learns of the commander’s leprosy and suggests he seek out the Israeli prophet, Elisha for healing.  So, Naaman gets a blessing from his king and heads off to the king of Israel.  Only, the king of Israel misunderstands Naaman and thinks he is being setup for failure.  Elisha, who is clearly not in the king’s court, saves the day, and sends word that he will help.  So, Naaman takes his bountiful gifts to this non-ranking prophet seeking help again.  But instead of greeting Naaman, Elisha sends out one of his messengers to Naaman with instructions for healing.  Instead of dusting his feet off at the apparent insult, Naaman gets angry.  But some of Naaman’s unnamed servants gently appeal to him to try the remedy anyway.  Naaman eats humble pie again, and is healed.

Naaman gives us a glimpse into the fine print of Jesus’ commissioning of the seventy.  Going without a purse, sandals, and relying on the hospitality of others takes a lot of humility.  Facing rejection, which Jesus guarantees will come, will take a lot of anger management.  Going in Christ’s name will mean accepting help from anyone and everyone – not the easiest of tasks for us, who as Americans prefer to be self-sufficient, independent, strong survivors.  We prefer to be people who help instead of people who need help.

I have been on a variety of mission trips over the years:  medical missions, missions building homes, missions building schools or community centers, and missions meant to build relationships.  On almost every mission trip I have joined, the team members came back feeling like they gained more than they gave.  This conclusion invariably leads to a discussion about whether money is best spent in direct aid than expensive overseas trips that seem to benefit us more than the people we serve.  While that conversation always needs to happen, what that argument fails to see is the power of Christian witness – that even if we do not turn communities around socio-economically, part of what we leave behind is the love and fellowship of Christ – the message that you are not alone in your suffering.  In part, being able to host us and show us hospitality gives those we serve more of a sense of worth and honor than being recipients of aid.

But in order for any of that to happen, we have to make ourselves vulnerable.[ii]  We have to put ourselves in the position of Naaman to receive aid and healing from the least likely persons.  True mission is not about the powerful and wealthy bringing their resources to the poor and downtrodden.  True mission is about the powerful and wealthy realizing their own spiritual poverty and creating an environment where rich and poor, healthy and sick can share healing, wholeness, and health in a way that recognizes we all have needs before God – and that God uses us all of us when we work collaboratively for healing and building up the kingdom of God.[iii]

Jesus was right to warn us with the possible side effects of sharing the good news:  vulnerability, insecurity, bodily danger, hurt egos, and long days.  Though the seventy do not show us what that looks like, Naaman certainly does.  He reminds us of the fine print:  that the side effects may lead to anger, feelings of abandonment, a loss of self-worth and importance.  But the benefits are still the same:  healing and wholeness for the whole community, redefining who is in and who is out of the community, and new purpose in the larger world.  The good news is that part of our prescription involves partners for the journey:  Jesus sends the seventy out two-by-two.[iv]  Even Naaman does not go alone, but takes others with him – others who keep him in check and support him in his sense of loss.  And the result is the same:  healing, transformation, and joy.  Those kind of results make the side effects worth it!  Amen.

 

[i] Stephen Reid, “Commentary on 2 Kings 5:1-14,” July 3, 2016, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2904 on June 29, 2016.

[ii] David J. Lose, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 219.

[iii] Adriene Thorne, “Moral Leprocy,” July 3, 2016, as found at http://www.onscripture.com/moral-leprosy on June 29, 2016.

[iv] Karoline Lewis, “The Security of Seventy,” June 26, 2016, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4683 on June 29, 2016.

Sermon – Proverbs 31.10-31, Mark 9.30-37, P20, YB, September 20, 2015

Tags

awe, capable, church, companionship, disciples, fear, God, grace, gratitude, humility, Jesus, joy, Lord, Mark, perfection, power, Proverbs, satisfaction, scolding, scripture, Sermon, strength, warrior-like, wife, woman, wonder

There are some Sundays when the scripture lessons appointed for the day are just right.  They speak truth to power or relate to a spiritual crisis in the community.  They shed light on a current event or they give pastoral words to aching hearts.  On those days, I am so grateful for the ways in which I see the Holy Spirit moving through the Church through the vehicle of scripture.  Today is not one of those days.  I read both our Old Testament and Gospel lessons this week, and my first reaction was, “Really?!?  THIS is what we needed to hear this week, God??”

The Old Testament lesson from Proverbs is actually one of my favorites – even though the lesson takes some deconstructing.  This passage is often referred to as the passage about the capable wife.  Now anytime the church starts talking about how women need to be wives and how those wives need to be “capable” I start getting defensive.  The good news is that the title is more the problem than the lesson itself.  The Hebrew word often translated as “capable” is better translated as powerful, strong, or even warrior-like.  This woman is a superhero.  She rises before dawn; manages a staff, ensuring her family has food and security; she purchases property and plants a vineyard with her own hands; she runs a thriving business, providing fine clothing for her family and the community; she is known for her wisdom and is happy and satisfied; and in her spare time, she is a shining example of philanthropy.  When you think about the traditional role of women in the patriarchal society of the time,[i] this woman is on fire.  She is an empowered woman, an equal partner to her husband, and is the master of both her home and her work outside of the home.[ii]  She is like Martha Stewart on steroids.

In the Gospel lesson, we find the disciples struggling yet again.  Jesus meets with the disciples and explains to them his fate.  And instead of asking Jesus what he means, they remain silent because they are too afraid to ask.  Actually, they do not remain silent.  Instead, they start bickering among themselves about who will be first in the kingdom.  I suppose that if the world is going to end, we might be similarly distracted.  But Jesus catches them arguing and shames them into true silence.  Not only does Jesus tell the disciples that they must strive to be last – servants of all; but also, Jesus tells them that in order to be a part of Jesus’ kingdom, they need to welcome children like they would welcome Jesus (which really could be interpreted as welcoming the poor, widowed, or disenfranchised).  So basically, Jesus tells the disciples they are a mess.  Not only are they not listening, they are distracted by their egos, and they are not attending to the one ministry he has called them to do.

So here is the challenge with these two lessons.  Basically, we take from the lessons that we are all too full of ourselves, we are distracted by the wrong things, we are not doing the work Jesus has called us to do.  And if we want to correct all of that behavior, we need to become warrior women and men – Martha Stewarts on steroids, showing everybody how it’s done.  Now I am not arguing that any of those points are not inherently truthful and are not lovely goals toward which we should strive.  What I am arguing is that I just did not want to hear them this week.  Here we are busting our buns to do the massive amount of work needed to pull off the Fall Fair.  Here we are busy kicking off the program year, with teachers preparing lesson plans, the choir readying music, and all our ministries being back on deck.  Here we are putting together last minute receptions for the bereaved, trying to complete a major construction project, and trying to ensure that we have enough funds to run our operations and enough energy to evangelize in our community.  And that is on top of all the work we are doing to get kids back to school, to reconnect with our community commitments after a summer hiatus, to make sure we are still performing well at work, to get our homes tidy and prepared for fall, and to squeeze in some football games.  In the midst of that chaos, the last thing I need to hear from church today is that my priorities are all wrong and that I need to work harder – a lot harder.  Thanks, but no thanks, Holy Scripture!

The good news is that there is good news.  For all the overwhelming work of the warrior-like woman in Proverbs and for all the scolding the disciples receive, the message from both lessons is clear and surprisingly manageable.  In Proverbs, the lesson concludes, “a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”  Now this is not the kind of fear we get when we talk about horror films, phobias, or abject worry.  The fear the passage is talking about is “awe, wonder, gratitude, and reverent humility before the Creator.”[iii]  Now fear of the Lord may sound like one more thing to add to the to-do list, but actually, fear is where the lessons are calling us to start.  You see, the disciples lacked a genuine fear of the Lord.  They were afraid in the more traditional sense – of what Jesus was talking about, of what would happen to them, of how they would ensure their own security.  They got wrapped up in themselves.  But if they had been wrapped up in awe, wonder, gratitude, and humility, all of the things Jesus had to instruct them to do would have come more naturally.  If they were in awe of Jesus, they would have easily been able to see how grateful they should be to have a Messiah who would sacrifice himself for them.  If they had been in wonder of Jesus, they would have simply been happy to be called a disciple, without worrying about their place or status.  If they had been full of gratitude, they would have already been welcoming children – and the poor, and the outcast, and the stranger.  The same sort of reversal is true for the warrior-like woman in Proverbs.  All of those amazing things she seems to accomplish in 24 hours happen only because of her reverence for God.  She is not favored because of all that she does.  She is able to do all that she does because she starts in a place of gratitude.  The rest flows easily out of that vantage point.

Today’s lessons are not about scolding us for how we get everything wrong, or about setting some impossible standard of perfection for us.  Instead, today’s lessons are about checking our baseline.  When our baseline is about awe, wonder, gratitude, and humility, we find living into Jesus’ instructions much easier.  When our baseline is about awe, wonder, gratitude, and humility, those astounding to-do lists and projects do not seem like burdens but gifts.  When our baseline is about awe, wonder, gratitude, and humility, church is not only a place we want to be, church is a place to which we are lovingly drawn.  That’s when that piece you were writing about stewardship doesn’t seem scary or even hard.  That’s when those sacred moments happen in Sunday School when a child or teen says something profound that stays with you all week.  That’s when you are up to your ears in stress about the Fair, and something funny – really funny – happens, and you and the other volunteers laugh so hard that you cry.  Holy Scripture today is not directing us down a path of guilt and shame.  Holy Scripture today is inviting us onto that path less travelled – the one that starts with awe, wonder, gratitude, and humility, and ends with grace, joy, companionship, and satisfaction.  I may not have wanted to hear our scripture lessons today.  But I needed to hear them.  My hope is that you can hear them in the spirit in which they were intended too.  Amen.

[i] Brent A. Strawn, “Commentary on Proverbs 31.10-31,” September 20, 2009, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=390 on September 18, 2015.

[ii] Telford Work, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 78.

[iii] Kathleen M. O’Connor, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 79.

Saintly Shout Out

Tags

God, gratitude, humility, important, lost, prayer, saints, St. Anthony

Yesterday I lost something very dear to me.  Normally, I am not that passionate about material possessions.  I try to stay detached so that I don’t get fixed on the “stuff” of life.  But there are a few things that mean a great deal to me, and this was one of them.  There was a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth yesterday (literally!), and ultimately, I remembered one of my favorite saints – St. Anthony.

Photo credit: http://www.stanthonyoakley.com/our-patron-saint.html

I know a lot of you are not familiar with or even in favor of praying with saints.  It was a practice I discovered in college.  Not having grown up in a tradition that prays with saints, it seemed mildly like praying to idols.  But once someone explained to me that the saints are more like companions in our prayer life – much like a dear friend who you ask to pray for you – I was able to ease my way into praying with saints.  I still think there is a bit of superstition to some of the saints.  St. Anthony is a classic example – he’s the patron saint of lost things.  I mean, it seems a little fishy to expect a saint to magically make your stuff appear.  But when you are desperate, you will try anything.  Hence, the prayers to St. Anthony last night and this morning.

The truth is, I am not sure praying with St. Anthony really helps you find things.  What I do know is that St. Anthony reminds you to pray – which is always a good thing.  If nothing else, when we slow down enough to pray, we find a sense of peace, and are reminded that God is with us, even when we are devastated and may never find the lost things that belong to us.  That prayer time also brings perspective about what is important in life, makes us question why we had not tended to prayer life in so long, and reconnects us with a real sense of gratitude – even in the midst of loss.  And my prayer time with St. Anthony also reminded me of how he might be helpful the next time I lose more important things – “things of the spirit,” as you will see in the prayer below.

The good news is that the item reappeared today and all the angst I felt is gone.  Now, I don’t know if St. Anthony helped.  All I know is that my gratitude is deeper and more humble today, and that I am grateful for a God who sits with me in the ashes.  Whether you pray with saints, with friends, or you just pray the old fashioned way, know that God longs to be in conversation with you.  Slow down, pull up a chair, and draw nearer to your God.

O blessed St. Anthony, the grace of God has made you a powerful advocate in all our needs and the patron for the restoring of things lost or stolen.  I turn to you today with childlike love and deep confidence.  You have helped countless children of God to find the things they have lost, material things, and, more importantly, the things of the spirit: faith, hope, and love.  I come to you with confidence; help me in my present need.  I recommend what I have lost to your care, in the hope that God will restore it to me, if it is His holy Will.  Amen.[i]

[i] http://www.catholicdoors.com/prayers/english/p00557.htm

On prayer and listening…

Tags

authenticity, Baltimore, God, humility, listen, oppression, prayer, privilege, race

As Christians, there are many things we say out of habit.  We say, “God bless you,” when someone sneezes, even if we do not actually mean to invoke a blessing on the person.  We say, “Peace be with you,” in church without necessarily thinking about what offering the peace really means for our relationship with the other person.  And we regularly say, “I’ll keep you in my prayers,” even if we do not really keep a practice of diligent prayers.

And yet, as I have thought about the chaos that has erupted in Baltimore this past week, the only thing I can say with confidence is that I am holding Baltimore in my prayers.  Everything else I have tried to say has been muddled mess.  If I talk too long about my sorrow around the violence, I find that I too easily slip into blaming – a slippery slope at best.  If I try to talk about race, I find myself getting tangled up in the ways that race is invariably tied to socio-economic status and the inability I have as a white person to speak authority on the experience of my minority brothers and sisters.  No matter what philosophical argument I try to make, I find myself entangled in a very complicated system of oppression and favor.

And so although “I am holding Baltimore in prayer,” sounds like what a person of faith says as a throw-away statement, I really mean it.  I mean it because that is all I feel like I can do with authenticity and humility.  I mean it because it feels like something I can actively do when I feel powerless in so many ways.  And I mean it because what I know in the depths of my heart is that the situation in Baltimore is making me more upset about my own privilege and power than anything.  And I can only work that out through prayer.  God and I need to talk – and I need to listen.

Photo credit: https://listeningprayer.wordpress.com/

My hope is that prayer will open up a listening heart not just for God’s word, but also a listening heart to my brothers and sisters.  When prayer is at its best, it is an exercise in listening – and if anything, I am acutely aware of how much listening we need to do right now.  The listening this week started for me with this article.  After it brought me to my knees in prayer, I stumbled on this article about what Martin Luther King, Jr. once said about riots.  These pieces and many more have reminded me once again of my obligation as a person of privilege to shut my mouth, and open my eyes and ears.  Though a posture of prayer does not excuse us from action, as Desmond Tutu once said, we cannot accomplish much without it.

Sermon – Philippians 2.1-13, P21, YA, September 28, 2014

Tags

community, ego, humility, Jesus, other, Paul, self, Sermon, spiritual discipline, together

Humility has always been one of the trickiest virtues for me.  I actually see myself as a pretty humble person, mainly because life has deflated my ego enough times that I learned pretty quickly to be humble.  In high school I was at the top of my class, and I remember how my classmates all thought I was pretty smart.  But when I got to college, everyone else had been at the top of their class too – and quite frankly, the workload was crazy hard.  Any ego I had started to build up in high school was immediately brought down to size.  Or, as I like to tell the acolytes, in one of my first Sundays as an ordained priest, I was serving the chalice.  We missed a latecomer, so I grabbed the chalice and rushed around the altar to serve them.  In my rushing, my elbow hit the side of the altar, and the wine splashed all over the stone floor.  The gasp from the choir in the chancel was audible.  For someone who holds the sacredness of liturgy dear, I was mortified; but there was nothing I could do.  So humility has never really been an issue for me.  But the weird thing about humility is owning the virtue.  As soon as you declare, “I am a pretty humble person,” haven’t you just negated your humility by bragging about your humility?

Of course, the quest for humility can go to the other extreme as well.  I have a friend who went through a phase of being a pretty fanatical Christian.  At some points I found talking with him to be so frustrating that I avoided him altogether.  He was so obsessed with being a humble Christian that you could never pay him a compliment.  I might say something simple like, “I’m so proud of how well you are doing in school.”  And his immediate retort would be, “Oh, well I had nothing to do with that.  All the credit belongs to God.”  There really is no good response to a retort like that without sounding sarcastic or rude.

But humility is what our epistle lesson today demands.  Paul addresses the community at Philippi with a letter from prison.  Worried that the community of Philippi stay on the right track, Paul tells them, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interest of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”  In three simple sentences, Paul’s instructions get harder and harder.  First, Paul tells the community not to let their egos get too big.  Paul wants the community to right-size itself by looking at their intentions and attitudes.  Second, Paul tells the community not just to be humble, but to put the needs of others above their own needs.  Here Paul is commanding the community not just to correct their attitudes, but to reorient their actions as well, focusing on others before themselves.  Finally, as if the other two were not hard enough, Paul takes his instructions one step further and tells the community to have the same mind as Christ Jesus.  Paul wants the community to be a humble as the man who sacrificed his own existence for the sake of humanity.  The more I read Paul’s letter this week, the more I wondered whether my fanatical friend had not been rooting his whole life in the mandate presented here by Paul.  Maybe my friend’s annoying, over-the-top humility was actually what Paul was suggesting.

The challenge with trying to take on any spiritual discipline, like taking on the mind of Christ, or becoming more humble, is that we tend to fret so much over the discipline that we get lost in ourselves – which is, in fact, the very opposite of what Paul invites us to do today.  In focusing on our weaknesses or lack of humility, and trying to work our way into a more humble way of being, instead, we find ourselves alone, struggling with God, but separate from others who may actually be able to help us in our quest for humility.  The secret to mastering humility is not by focusing on the self, but instead by focusing on others.  One scholar describes this method by explaining, “One does not ‘self-empty’ by focusing upon oneself.  One is emptied of self to the degree one is overcome by the needs, pains, hopes, and desires of others.  When concern for others takes one utterly beyond self-interest, beyond obsessions with achievements and self-obsessing guilt over failures, beyond self, then one receives the comfort of an Easter ‘yes’ so overwhelming, unconditional, undeniable, and absolute that [the ‘yes’] is experienced as unfailing and forever – a yes more potent and enduring than any imaginable no.”[i]

When I did my year of AmeriCorps service, I arranged to clean and lock up the Episcopal Campus House in exchange for a free room in the back of the house.  Since AmeriCorps volunteers get a very modest living stipend, the free housing was a huge help.  But one day, at the end of a particularly physically grueling day of work, I was talking to one of the clients that the Food Bank served.  He lived in a group home and was trying to transition to independent housing.  We were talking about my housing situation and he marveled, “Man, I wish I could find a situation like that!”  Truthfully, I had taken my housing situation for granted – occasionally I even resented having to clean toilets and mop floors.  But after that conversation, every time I mopped those floors I remembered how incredibly lucky I was.  I needed that client to help me get to a place of humility and gratitude.

That realization is what Paul is hoping the community at Philippi will have as well.  Paul knows that setting aside the self is difficult.  That is why he pushes us to look at the needs of others.  Paul knew that when the community of faith began focusing on others, they would forget about themselves.  They would gain the perspective needed to help them on the journey toward humility.  And as the community turned more and more outward, they would be turning more and more toward the life of Christ – a life always oriented toward the other.  The work of building individual humility and having a mind like Christ only happens in the context of community.  The work cannot be done alone.

In 1974, poet Adrienne Rich was awarded the National Book Award in poetry, having beaten out fellow nominees Audre Lorde and Alice Walker.  When she gave her acceptance speech, she shocked the literary community.  She began, “We, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Alice Walker, together accept this award in the name of all women whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world.”  The three women had sat down together before the event and written the statement.  No matter who won that night, this would be the statement of the winner.  When asked about the statement, they “said they believed that by supporting and giving to each other they could enrich each other’s lives and work more than by competing against each other.”[ii]  What these three poets did was refuse to play by the rules of the game.  Instead of accepting that there must be one winner, they declared that they had all won – despite what the award givers were proclaiming.

What these women did is what Paul was hoping the Church community would do.  By working together, these women resisted the temptation to lose their humility.  If any of them alone had won, they could have become puffed up with pride.  Conversely, if any of them alone had lost, they could have spiraled into the depths of self-doubt.  But together, they were able to claim a humble acknowledgement that God was working through each of them to do great things.  That is the true nature of humility – one found and expressed through community.  We are blessed to already have in place the kind of community that can support and encourage one another in the development of humility.  Our invitation is to trust this community enough to uplift us, to challenge us, and to help us grow.  We cannot face the journey alone; but luckily, we are not alone in the midst of this community.  Amen.

[i] William Greenway, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 114.

[ii] Entire story told by Mike Grave, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 113.