Sermon – John 10.11-18, Psalm 23, E4, YB, April 25, 2021

Tags

belonging, children, control, Good Shepherd, intimacy, Jesus, love, mutuality, parent, relationship, respect, Sermon, sheep, shepherd, vulnerable

As a new parent, I struggled during the toddler years – those years when the child is first asserting their will, realizing they want to be in control too.  And so, after trying calm coaxing and verbal reasoning, I eventually honed the art of muscling:  I realized I was stronger than my toddler, so I could just sweep them up and carry on doing what I knew we needed to do anyway.  Sometimes the swooping was playful, swinging the child around or letting them hang upside-down.  But more often, it was just a strong, steady sweep – getting us out of the grocery store during a meltdown, getting us out of the house and into the car for an appointment, getting us away from the television.  But that kind of parenting only works for so long – approximately as long as you can physically lift a flailing child, which for me, was not that long.  That is when parenting gets real.

I have been thinking a lot about the Good Shepherd this week, and the similarities between shepherding and parenting.  As children, or more aptly, as sheep, we want a shepherd who will take care of us.  The words from today’s psalm and John’s gospel lay out the idealized caregiver:  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not be in want[i]; the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.[ii]  When we think about what we want from God, especially after a long year-plus of a pandemic, of political divisiveness, of struggling with the institution of racism, we want a God who will cradle us in, and love and protect us unconditionally.  I suspect that is why so many churches have paintings, stained glass windows, and statues of Jesus carrying a perfectly clean, cute little lamb on his shoulder.

I confess, I do not know enough about shepherding, but even from watching the lambs in Colonial Williamsburg, I can assure you, those lambs are not perfectly clean and well-behaved.  There is something about our saccharine-filled images of the Good Shepherd that feel unrealistic to me.  As much as I want to crawl in the lap of a loving, protective Jesus, something about our images of the Good Shepherd does not quite capture reality.  This week, I watched a YouTube video of a man trying to rescue a sheep.  There was this long narrow ditch alongside a road, and the sheep’s hind end was hanging out of the ditch.  A man, carefully using his strength, managed to grasp the sheep’s legs and pull the sheep free.  The freed sheep bounded away from him, bouncing gracefully toward freedom – of course until he bounded back over the ditch toward the other side of the road, jumping head-first, right back into the ditch.  In your imagination, you can almost hear the deep, audible sigh of frustration by the man who had just helped him.

I think that is why I like verse 14 of John’s gospel so much, “I am the good shepherd.  I know my own and my own know me.”  The shepherd knows how to love unconditionally; but the shepherd also knows all our “conditions”:  the times when we stubbornly do things our way, the times when we refuse wisdom and jump right back into trouble, the times when we project our anger and frustration on others.  And the sheep know the shepherd:  the times when the shepherd will try to reason with us instead of muscling us to do the shepherd’s will, the times when the shepherd forgives us when we confess our sins, the times when the shepherd sighs deeply in disappointment at our refusal to lie down in green pastures.  There is an intimacy to that relationship, as one scholar describes, a “mutual recognition and a mutual belonging together.”[iii] 

Our invitation this week is an invitation into that mutuality and intimacy.  The invitation is not an invitation into a snowy-white, paternalistic, cradling love.  The invitation is into a messy, complicated, but respectfully intimate relationship where we are known, and we know our shepherd.  Through this real, honest, vulnerable place we find strength to then go back out into the world, allowing “the Shepherd’s voice to speak through us as we reach out to the lost and hurting we encounter on the way,”[iv] sharing the love of the risen, shepherding Jesus that has saved us from many a ditch!  Amen.

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[i] Psalm 23.1

[ii] John 10.11

[iii] Stephen A. Cooper, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 448.

[iv] Nancy R. Blakely, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 452.

Sermon – John 13:1-17, 31b-35, MT, YB, April 1, 2021

Tags

absence, church, digital, dignity, evensong, experts, grief, Holy Week, Jesus, love, Maundy Thursday, pandemic, serve, service, tension

One of the things I have learned over the years is the mixed blessing of offering pastoral care from personal experience.  The mother who lost an adult child both feels gratified to help someone else going through the same situation and angry that she is now an expert in grieving the loss of an adult child.  The man who has been through addiction is honored to help someone else through addition – and yet wishes he were not so personally knowledgeable.  The divorcee talking to a dear friend whose marriage has recently crumbled shares, “Welcome to the club you never wanted to belong to.”

As we started thinking about how to honor Maundy Thursday in a pandemic when many of the things we would normally do on this night are forbidden, we thought the same:  we already know how to do this.  We learned last year that when we cannot experience the intimacy of footwashing, the grief of the last holy meal before Easter, the dimming of the lights, the stripping of the altar, and walking out of this space in silence, turning to a totally different liturgy can create another kind of comfort.  We turn to Evensong in the hopes that another ancient tradition, one the Church celebrates almost everyday in the Cathedrals, Minsters, and colleges of the Mother Church in England, will ease the mourning of yet another loss during this time of pandemic.

But being experts in how to cope in a pandemic – either liturgically, emotionally, or spiritually – does not make the grief any easier.  We still feel the absence of what has been – almost as much as we feel the pending absence of Jesus when we will lay him in a tomb tomorrow.  Having figured out how connect with our community digitally, enjoying seeing people’s names pop up on Facebook, and loving hearing the sounds of our Choral Scholars coming through our TVs and laptops on YouTube, certainly has sufficed in these days – and in fact has brought many people into Hickory Neck who had never experienced Hickory Neck before.  But all of that does not negate our grief that a year later we are still in this liminal time of “not yet.”

So, what do we do with this internal tension that we are not yet where we are going, and certainly not fully who we have been?  I like to look at Jesus in our gospel lesson tonight.  Jesus knew what was coming on this night too.  He knew Judas, his beloved companion on his pilgrimage, was going to betray him.  He knew great tragedy was coming, abandonment by the other disciples would happen, and humiliation, pain, and death were inevitable.  Sitting in the upper room, in the tension of no longer being just a rabbi and not yet the risen Messiah, Jesus could have easily wallowed in grief.  Instead, in that overcrowded, tense upper room, Jesus gets up, takes off his outer robe, and ties a towel around his waist.  In the face of pending doom and tremendous transformation, Jesus bends down, and washes feet.  When the world is in chaos, Jesus does the work of humble service, of respecting the dignity of others, of an everyday deed of loving his neighbor.

We cannot possibly know when church will begin to feel familiar and comfortable.  We do not know which changes we have experienced in the last year will become permanent.  We cannot know the lasting impact of this pandemic on the fabric of our lives.  But we do know what Jesus says tonight.  In the face of the unknown, Jesus says to do two things:  to serve others as he served his disciples and to love one another.  Jesus makes everything quite simple tonight.  In the face of disorienting new realities Jesus says: serve and love. That is our invitation in this most sacred week – when our grief and frustration are sometimes paralyzing, engaging in the work of serving and loving are the actions that will give us strength for the days and weeks ahead.  Amen.

On Vaccines and the Cross…

Tags

Coronavirus, cross, dignity, freedom, Jesus, joy, love, neighbor, pandemic, respect, sacrifice, vaccine

Last week I got my first vaccine shot.  Although I am relatively young and healthy, our commonwealth updated the 1B category to include clergy.  So, when my email came to setup an appointment, I was giddy with excitement.  A flurry of joyful texts went out to friends, I had a permanent smile for the day, and there might have been some dancing.  The day of the vaccine was not much different.  Long lines usually bother me, but I have never smiled so much while just waiting.  Had we not still been in a pandemic, I might have hugged every volunteer and staffer who processed me through the various stages.  And though I have had hundreds of shots in my lifetime, I have never so eagerly proffered my arm for a shot. 

But it was not until I got in my car that I lost it.  Tears burst out of me as the emotions from a year of pandemic spilled out.  Not until that moment did I realize how much I had been holding in – trying to be strong for my family, my church, and even myself.  I still have over a month to go before I get my second shot and work my way through the waiting period, but that one little prick of a needle was the first real sign of hope for me.  I may finally get to see my family, after a year and a half of their absence.  I may finally be able to offer hospitality in my home to others without a sense of panic about safety.  I may finally feel a sense of freedom that has been absent for so long and whose value I never fully appreciated.  The tears that were streaming were the release of a year’s worth of weight on my shoulders.

Of course, even with the overwhelming joy of that day, I know our work is still not yet done.  But somehow the gift of that vaccine shifted the weight of that continued work.  Now my mask-wearing and social distancing is not so much out of fear or self-preservation.  Now my mask-wearing and social distancing can be a witness of Christ’s love for others.  From the beginning, I have said our safe practices were an act of loving our neighbor as ourselves and respecting the dignity of every human being.  But now those acts will not just be an added bonus to self-protection – they will be an act of agency, of choosing to care for others when the selfish thing to do might be to value newly regained freedom over all else. 

As we prepare for Holy Week, I am aware of the symbol we will be turning toward next week.  We will be walking toward the cross until the day of resurrection on Easter.  We will watch, and pray, and sing, and grieve as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ witnesses the ultimate form of sacrificial love.  In this season of COVID, the cross is our invitation to love like Jesus taught us.  I look forward to making that walk with you this year in new and profound ways.

Photo credit: https://signsofthetimes.org.au/2020/04/the-power-of-the-cross/

Sermon – Jeremiah 31.31-34, L5, YB, March 21, 2021

Tags

abundant, comfort, covenant, exile, faith, God, hope, Jeremiah, Jesus, Lent, love, lovingkindness, pandemic, ruin, Sermon

I do not know about you, but I entered Lent this year already done.  We talked about this reality five weeks ago, back on Ash Wednesday, when I told you that it was okay if you did not give up something this Lent – because we have already given up so much in the last year.  We have already fasted what feels like twenty Lents during this pandemic.  And then this week happened.  We started out with the words of the Vatican, declaring that although our LGBTQ brothers and sisters were still to be loved and welcomed in Church, their “sinfulness” would not be blessed within the covenant of marriage by the Roman Catholic Church.  I cannot tell you the pain and suffering those words created this week for so many who live in faithful, loving relationships and marriages.  Then, just a few days ago, a man in Atlanta murdered people of Asian descent, sparking off conversations about the rise of hate crimes against Asian Americans since this pandemic began.  Our own Sacred Ground circle, the group studying the institution of racism in our country – not just towards blacks, but towards indigenous Americans, Latinos, and Asians – just finished its ten weeks of work; and yet within the same week we are talking about racism yet again.  And then this week, as administered vaccines slowly rise in James City County, I see people becoming lax about masking and social distancing, some folks in public spaces barely covering their faces.  Even the test positivity rate – the one whose decrease has allowed us to enact regathering plans – is creeping slowly toward the numbers that will shut us back down again. 

That is why I found myself gravitating to Jeremiah this week.  Part of the attraction is the good news of the text, but a larger part of my attraction is empathizing with the Israelites.  Jeremiah writes in a time of desperation for the people of God. The Babylonians have razed the temple and carried King Zedekiah off in chains.  Effectively, the Babylonians have “destroyed the twin symbols of God’s covenantal fidelity.”[i]  Sometimes we talk about the exile so much that I think we forget the heart-wrenching experience of exile.  Being taken from homes and forced to live in a foreign land is certainly awful enough.  But the things that were taken – the land of promise, the temple for God’s dwelling, the king offered for comfort to God’s people – are all taken, leaving not just lives in ruin, but faith in question. 

But today, in the midst of the physical, emotional, and spiritual devastation, Jeremiah says God will make a new covenant.  God knows the people cannot stop breaking the old covenant, and so God promises to “forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.”  Instead of making the people responsible for the maintenance of the covenant, God goes a step further and writes the law in their hearts, embodies God’s way within the people.  The words of Jeremiah in the section called “the Book of Comfort,”[ii] and this new covenant by God, show a God whose abundance knows no limits.  God offers this new covenant to a people who surely do not deserve another covenant.  God has offered prophets and sages, has called the people to repentance, has threatened and cajoled, and yet still the people cannot keep the basic tenants of the covenant established in those ten commandments.  But instead of abandoning the people to exile, God offers reconciliation and restoration yet again.  And because God knows we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves, God basically says, “Here.  Let me help you.  Let me write these laws in your hearts so that you do not have to achieve your way into favor with me, but you will simply live faithfully, living the covenant with your bodies and minds.”  And when even that does not seem to work, God sends God’s only son.  God never gives up on us or our relationship with God.  Even all these years after Christ’s resurrection, God is still finding new ways to make our covenant work.  

That is where I find hope this week.  Despite how broken we may feel because of this pandemic, despite how our nation seems incapable of not harming one another due to the color of our skin, despite the ways we seek to limit God’s love and abundance, God is relentless with God’s lovingkindness.  In Jeremiah’s text, when the Israelites have hit rock bottom, God turns not to vengeance or even a notion of just desserts.  God picks up the covenant of love, not relying on our hard work to be faithful, but declaring how God will simply put God’s law within us, will write God’s law of love on our hearts, will be our God and we will be God’s people.  In essence, nothing we can do will drive God from us.  And that, my friends, is good news indeed.  God sees us in all our fullness – light and shadow alike – and loves us anyway.  In this continued time of strain and strife, in this long night of COVID, God gives us good news.  As one scholar affirms, “God will bring newness out of destruction.  God will bring hope where there is no hope.  God will bring life out of death.  God will make a way where there is no way.”[iii]  Thanks be to God!

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[i] Richard Floyd, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 122.

[ii] Jon L. Berquist, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 123.

[iii] Floyd, 124.

Sermon – Luke 23.18-26, People of the Cross, March 3, 2021

Tags

autonomous, cross, dependence, discipleship, hope, Jesus, love, need, pandemic, Sermon, Simon of Cyrene, Stations of the Cross, transformation, vaccines, vulnerability

This sermon was preached at New Zion Baptist Church, Williamsburg, Virginia, as part of the Upper James City County Lenten Ecumenical worship series. The series was entitled, “People of the Cross,” a journey with the characters of the Stations of the Cross.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of this pandemic, we have begun to fall into some dangerous patterns.  The more time we safely spend in isolation from others, the more the notion sneaks into our psyche that we do not need others – that we are solitary actors in the world.  The more safety measures become recommendations as opposed to mandates, we begin to think we have power over our destiny – freedom to wear a mask or not, freedom to spend time with people when we want, freedom to take a vaccine or not.  The more time we spend not gathering in our worship spaces, away from our communities of faith, the more distant we can begin to feel from God, slowly no longer watching those digital offerings or joining those Zooms because we are just tired of everything.

Sometimes I wonder if Simon of Cyrene was a man who thought of himself in similar ways.  Now, we have to remember where we are in Jesus’ story.  Jesus has already been betrayed by Judas, arrested in Gethsemane, been shuffled around by religious and secular authorities, undergone trial with Pilate, been sentenced to death, and is heading toward Calvary with a cross.  This is the point in Jesus’ story where we meet Simon of Cyrene.  We know very little about Simon.  He is only mentioned in the three synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and even in those gospels, his story is told in just a verse.  Matthew says, “As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry [Jesus’] cross.”  Mark says, “They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry [Jesus’] cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus.”  And finally, Luke, who we heard tonight, says, “As they led [Jesus] away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus.” 

That is all we have.  One verse from each synoptic gospel.  We learn a few things though.  Simon was not from Jerusalem – he was coming in from the country.  Simone of Cyrene was a father of at least two sons.  And we know he did not volunteer for the job of helping Jesus.  He did not have compassion, see a man struggling, and offer to help.  He did not see the incorruption of the state and fight back or bravely step in to mitigate the injustice.  All we know is he was compelled or seized and put to work.  And Luke adds that he carried the cross behind Jesus.  The rest of the story we just do not know.

But here is what we do know.  We know the times where we have collided with Jesus, sometimes against our will or even our knowing.  The phone call from the needy friend when you just need some alone time.  The homeless person, who seems slightly unstable, who you know is going to ask you for something, even if they just start with conversation.  That person being bullied on the playground or in the board room, that if you stand up for them, the bullies may turn their evil on you.  The pastor who asks you to take leadership on a new ministry when you are already feeling overwhelmed.       

Author and Dominican brother, Timothy Radcliffe, reminds us that we Americans have a strange relationship with “the ideal of a self-sufficient person who does not need anyone else.   We should stand on our own feet.   It is humiliating to need others, especially strangers.”[i]  That very kind of thinking is what has led us to where we are in this pandemic – where my behavior, my choices, my agency to mask, socially distance, and vaccinate are my own, made in a bubble of self-sufficiency.  But in the heart of Simon of Cyrene’s experience with Jesus, we see how our own American ideals crumble.  We are not wholly autonomous peoples of self-sufficiency and self-actualization.  We are people who need each other.  Jesus shows us in this strange, forced encounter with Simon that vulnerability is not a burden to be scorned, but the place where holiness is encountered – where we see God.

Of course, Jesus taught us this lesson before.  In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus told his followers that when they see a stranger, the least of these, and see they are hungry and give them food, they are thirsty and give them something to drink, when they welcomed a stranger, they clothed the naked, and took care of the sick, and visited the prisoner, they did these things to Jesus.  We know our wearing of masks is not for our own protection, but for the protection of others.  We know in our keeping distant from our loved ones, including from our beloved churches, we are protecting others.  When we get vaccines, we do not take them for ourselves, but for the power of herd immunization to stop the ravaging of our whole country. 

Julian of Norwich, the Middle Ages mystic, once wrote, “If I look at myself alone, I am nothing.  But when I think of myself and all my fellow-Christians joined together in love, I have hope.  For in this joining lies the life of all who shall be saved.”[ii]  Simon of Cyrene may not have wanted to be a part of Jesus’ story.  We may not want to be a part of the work of saving one another, this community, the commonwealth, or even this country.  And yet, here we are, a pandemic having stripped us of all notions of our self-sufficiency and self-actualization, being forced to look at each other in vulnerability and mutual dependence. 

We may not choose this reality, this time, this country in all its sinfulness, but this is where God has placed us.  But just like Simon of Cyrene, even in those times when we are forced into encounters with the holy One, our lives can be changed.  Several scholars have argued that Simon of Cyrene, in this forced encounter, in being forced to carry a stranger’s cross, becomes a disciple of that same stranger.  Pastor Patrick J. Willson argues, “Simon follows Jesus carrying the cross, thus becoming an icon of Christian discipleship. Luke’s vision is not that of an imitatio Christi; only Jesus is crucified. Simon follows the way Jesus has walked bearing the weight of the cross.  Jesus going before him makes discipleship possible.”[iii]

That is our invitation through Simon of Cyrene.  Simon’s story – his one moment with Jesus, his one verse in the entire canon of scripture – offers a powerful invitation to, even in this moment, take our cross of discipleship and follow Jesus.  We do not have to go with an eager spirit.  We may not even go willingly.  But the promise of going is radical transformation:  transformation from a people whose primary concern is for self to a people who know we will encounter Jesus when we finally realize that only when we look at ourselves as joined with fellow-Christians in love can we look to the world in hope.  Jesus humbled himself, making himself vulnerable enough to walk to Calvary and die on a cross for us.  Our invitation is to walk humbly behind and allow the weight of the cross to transform us into people of love and hope.  Amen.

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[i] Timothy Radcliffe, Stations of the Cross (Collegeville:  Liturgical Press, 2014), 30.

[ii] Julian of Norwich, Stations of the Cross:  A Devotion Using The Revelations of Divine Love of Julian of Norwich (Norwich:  The Friends of Julian of Norwich, 1998), 13.

[iii] Patrick J. Willson, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Pt. 1, Additional Essays (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2013), 4.

On Things Ludicrous and Holy…

Tags

best, Christmas, church, division, humble, indignation, joy, light, love, pandemic, praise, resurrection, separation

Photo credit: https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=18-P13-00051&segmentID=1

My children are preparing for their winter socially distanced holiday recital, and we have been flooded with a flurry of details, items to purchase, things to organize.  One of the flyers that came this week was for a t-shirt they could buy promoting the recital and the cause that will benefit from the proceeds.  The shirt says, “Best Christmas Ever.”

I was glad my children were not around when I saw the flyer because my immediate response was to scoff – out loud, in my house, looking at a piece of paper with indignation.  Best Christmas Ever?!?  Had the dance studio lost their minds?  What about this Christmas could possibly be the “best”?  Families are separated, some of whom have not seen each other in over a year.  The Coronavirus is rapidly spreading, with the death toll in the United States now over 300,000.  And despite a transition in political power, we remain as divided as ever, struggling to find peace among our brothers and sisters. 

After recovering from self-righteous indignation, I began to think about the approaching Christmas season, and what the Church, and I as her priest, have invited people to do.  We are still inviting our parishioners, friends, and neighbors to join the Holy Family on Christmas Eve and sing songs of praise and thanksgiving.  Although we honor grief and suffering at our Blue Christmas service on December 21, we are still making a claim for hope, for light, and for love.  Even with our church buildings closed again, we are still encouraging the church to gather in their cars for a drive-thru, or by their hearths with their devices to join with the shepherds as we go to see this thing that has come to pass.  Perhaps to an outsider, the work of the Church this next week seems as ludicrous as claiming this Christmas is the Best Christmas Ever.

This week, I find myself humbled.  I know the Church is going to ask a lot of you over this next week.  You may not feel like singing carols, or hearing the familiar story, or watching candles flicker as we pray.  And that’s okay.  But, if it is alright with you, we are going to keep doing it anyway.  The Church has always been full of resurrection people.  We cannot help ourselves once we know the Risen Lord.  And so, when the Christ Child comes next week, we will keep holding on to light, to joy, and to love.  We will keep holding on to the promise that Christ is with us always, even to the end of the age.  We will keep shining the light of the Christ Child, reflecting his light to all.  And we will keep believing and trusting for you until you can come to the place where you can believe and trust yourself.  You do not need to rush.  We will keep holding the light until you are ready to take it up yourself.

On Shifting Sands and Drishtis…

Tags

balance, control, family, focus, God, goodness, grace, imbalance, Jesus, love, pandemic, parenting, power, sand, weary, yoga

Photo credit: https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/pillars-of-power-yoga-using-drishti-on-and-off-the-mat

When you are doing balancing postures during yoga, one of the skills you learn early on is developing a drishti, or a focal point.  The idea is the more you focus your gaze on one fixed object, the more your body steadies itself.  I am not entirely sure why or how finding a drishti works, but I know from experience that a very wobbly body in a balancing posture is quickly steadied once focused on a drishti.  It is a strange sensation, but when the drishti is engaged, the gaze of the eyes has complete power over the entire body, creating a sense of self-possession, control, and power.

I was talking to a fellow parent this past week and when we talked about parenting during a pandemic, I told her I felt like I was standing on shifting sand.  Just when I would start to figure out a rhythm or start to feel like I had some modicum of control over family life, things would change – whether the formal arrangement with hybrid learning, the changing of teachers mid-quarter, or even my own child’s changing ability to adapt and thrive.  Just when I feel like our family is finding our balance, something makes us wobbly all over again.  That kind of uncontrolled imbalance, of attempting to stand on shifting sand leaves the body weary and fatigued.

But as I have been thinking about pandemic parenting and my learning in yoga, I’ve begun to wonder if what this wobbly parent might need is a pandemic drishti.  For some parents that might mean focusing on the blessing of your children – so that no matter what tempter tantrum they are throwing today, what argument you are having as a family, or what door they have slammed, you focus not on the anger and frustration of the scene immediately in front of you, but on the love you have for your child (even if it’s only the love you see when they are fast asleep).  For me, my drishti is the love of God surrounding us on every side:  the one who loves me when I fail as a parent, the one who loves my child as they receive another setback in expectations, the one who loves each of us when all we can see is the heat of anger and frustration in one another.  Once I focus on God’s love of us, slowly my demeanor starts to shift, my balance starts to return, and my steadiness strengthens.

This week, I encourage you to claim your pandemic drishti.  Whether you focus on God’s lovingkindness, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, or the ever-present blessing of the Holy Spirit, take whatever time you need to shift your gaze on God.  My guess is the more you practice steading your gaze on the goodness of God, the more your wobbling, weary body will feel grounded in goodness too.  We cannot control the shifting sand of these times.  But we can control our steady gaze in the face of a storm.

Sermon – Leviticus 19.1-2, 15-18, Matthew 22.34-46, P25, YA, October 25, 2020

Tags

Bible, election, faith, generosity, giving, God, image of God, Jesus, Leviticus, love, neighbor, pandemic, relationship with God, Sermon

This summer when we were doing our 90-Day Bible Challenge, many of our readers dreaded reading Leviticus.  We read all the fun stories of Genesis and Exodus, and then for chapter after chapter of Leviticus we had to read about how to make sacrifices, what numerical formula to use for different kinds of worship of God, the differences between burnt offerings, grain offerings, fellowship offerings, sin offerings, guilt offerings.  All the momentum of reading came to a screeching halt.  In fact, a seminarian once said of Leviticus, “I never realized I could fall asleep on a treadmill until I did so while trying to read Leviticus.”[i]

For the most part, our wariness of Leviticus is warranted.  But the reading we get from Leviticus today is from the chapter that likely helps us understand why all the other monotony is so important.  You see Leviticus focuses on how to be in right relationship with God.  All those repetitive instructions are meant to do what our reading today finally gets to:  to tell us we can be holy because God is holy.  All those instructions about worship are meant to enrich our relationship with God – to help us see what being holy before the Holy One looks like.  But this particular chapter does not just focus on that vertical relationship with God.  Chapter nineteen of Leviticus introduces something new – our horizontal relationship with one another.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  This too is what holiness looks like.

Of course, this should sound familiar.  In our gospel lesson today, when Jesus is asked what commandment is the greatest, Jesus pulls from his Jewish roots and the lessons of Hebrew Scriptures.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” a text straight out of Deuteronomy, and, he says, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” a text straight out the Leviticus text we read today.  As people of faith, we balance the vertical and the horizontal – one cannot be true, full, or authentic to one without the other. 

That concept is so simple, our eyes can begin to glaze over like all readers of Leviticus.  Love God, and love neighbor – got it!  Simple enough.  But there is nothing simple about this summary of the law and prophets.  All we need to do is look around us and see how hard these commands are.  Seven months into a pandemic, with cases rising again, our nation in political upheaval around issues of racial injustice, and a national election that has us so divided we cannot even conceive of loving anyone who advocates for the “other” candidate – whichever the other one is for you.  With each passing month of this pandemic, coming to God in reverence and praise sometimes feels impossible because all we feel is anger, frustration, and fatigue towards God – not holiness.  And forget about loving our neighbors – unless, of course, we mean loving our neighbors who agree with us, who are willing to bash the other side with us, who have done enough discernment to know our political position is the holy one.  As each day gets us closer to this election, Leviticus’ words about not slandering others, not seeking vengeance or bearing grudges, makes loving all our neighbors seem impossible.

So what do we do?  With all these feelings of impossible holiness, do we give up or stop trying?  In facing these feelings, Barbara Brown Taylor says, “Made in the image of God, human beings share in God’s holiness.  God has placed within them what they need to do God’s will.  God has furthermore placed them in communities of support, giving them teachings to guide them in their life together.  Wherever sinfulness comes from and whatever drives [sinfulness], [sinfulness] is less fundamental to human nature than holiness.  People can be sinful, but the Lord their God is not sinful.  People can be holy, for the Lord their God is holy.”[ii]   All the things that feel impossible now – loving God fully (despite our misgivings) and loving our neighbors fully (the ones we actually love and the ones we love to hate) is possible because we are made in the image of God – we share in God’s holiness.

I think that is why I am so grateful we are in stewardship season right now.  As we gather financial commitment cards today, we are claiming something about the resources God has given us.  We are taking our resources and investing them in our vertical relationship with God and our horizontal relationship with one another and our neighbors beyond these walls.  We commit to giving not because we are capable of generosity alone – we give because our God and this community inspire faith-filled generosity.  We look at a world that seems impossibly flawed and messy and say, “Yes.  I am holy because the Lord my God is holy.  My giving is a sign of my sharing in God’s holiness.”  Giving may not feel easy in this time of upheaval, in this time of economic turmoil, but giving is our way of saying, “I cannot do this alone, but with this community I am committing to faith-filled generosity.  I trust Hickory Neck will walk with me as I claim my holiness.”  Even though we are scattered, even though some of us are visiting this campus today, either for a quick drive-thru or a full service, and some of us cannot be here until a vaccine is available, we celebrate the holiness of one another today, the holiness of our God, and the holiness of our neighbors – all our neighbors.  Only in seeing that holiness can we be liberated to live lives of faith-filled generosity.  Amen.

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[i] Kathryn M. Schifferdecker, “Commentary on Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18,” October 25, 2020, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4626 on October 22, 2020.

[ii] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 195, 197.

On Empty and Overflowing Cups…

Tags

exhaustion, fatigue, generosity, God, grace, heart, Jesus, love, pandemic, tired, weary

Photo credit: https://stock.adobe.com/au/search?k=overflowing%20cup

I have always been a bit of a night owl.  It has served me well with small children, as I often get a second wind after everyone is asleep.  In college, it allowed me to stay up late to finish papers and studying.  Of course, I also found in college that the late hours meant my eyelids were sometimes heavier than they should be in lectures – with my notetaking become illegible as my body succumbed to the fatigue, as if my handwriting was in sync with my drooping eyelids.

That kind of fatigue – the sheer exhaustion of pushing our bodies and minds to work at maximum capacity – is the kind of exhaustion I am seeing all around me.  Whether it is fellow clergy trying to be constantly nimble and creative while managing the emotional and spiritual field of a pandemic, whether it is working parents who are feeling the crush of working and schooling their children simultaneously, whether it is essential workers who have been putting themselves in constant risk for months, unsure of their job security despite our desperate need for their services, or whether it our retirees who feel the weight of missing their extended family, the binding feeling of restrictions, or the loneliness that can come from social distancing, we are all tired: bone-tired, fatigued, emotionally, physically, and spiritually spent.  Add on top of that a pending heated election, the work of racial reconciliation, and the economic impact of a pandemic and it is a minor miracle that most of us are functioning.

In this time of weariness, I want you to know not only do I see you, but also our Lord and Savior sees you.  When we are this spent in all parts of our lives, we may not feel Christ present with us in the same way.  But it is during these times that Christ is most available to us, surrounding us with grace and light.  It may be in the form of a healing phone call with a loved one, the stunning beauty of a tree turning vibrant fall colors, an online set of prayers or worship service, a good, hearty, unexpected laugh, or the kind word of a stranger, but God is with us in this, seeing our pain and weariness and sending us loving gestures every day.

Today, I invite you find some small way to let that loving generosity into your heart.  Maybe you give yourself a couple of minutes before bedtime tonight to make a mental list of things for which you are grateful, maybe you write down those moments of grace from the last week, or maybe you call someone to share with them your reflection.  My guess is once you create that moment for grace, you will start seeing those moments more and more.  These small graces are what can sustain us in this moment, and eventually refill our cup so that it can run over to bless others.  You are in my prayers as you refill your cup!

On Humanity, Anxiety, and God’s Love…

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anxiety, care, God, humanity, Jesus, letting go, love, parenting, reassurance, school, stress

Photo credit: https://www.coloradodepressioncenter.org/new-anxiety-program-resource/stress-anxiety-emotion-fear-wooden/

This week has been the week I have been dreading for months:  back to school.  Initially I was dreading it because we had no idea what would happen – whether school would be virtual or some hybrid of virtual and in-person.  Then, I was anxious about how to actually help a first grader and sixth grader do virtual school at the same time – all while working myself.  Because this would all be new, I felt like I was staring into a black hole of knowledge, with no way to know what to really expect.  On the one hand, not knowing meant I had no choice but to, “Let go, and let God.”  On the other hand, I’m really terrible at letting go.

Our first day finally arrived yesterday, and some of the anxieties I had felt were founded.  The first few hours were spent dashing up and down the stairs of our home, juggling one child on the second floor and the other on the first floor, or tag-teaming with my spouse.  Fortunately, the two girls started school an hour apart, so I could manage the stress of one child at a time.  However, there were moments when Zoom meetings started at the same time – and some of those times were times when the technology was just not working.  Knowing full well that calm can produce more calm, I put on my “Zen face.”  But on the inside, I kept thinking there was no way this would be sustainable.

But by midday, both girls had found a rhythm.  The elder was especially becoming more independent and her usual confident self, and the younger quickly learned how to go with the flow, finding educational things to fill empty holes, and navigate new systems.  I was even able to find ways to squeeze in my own work throughout the day, do a livestream set of prayers, and catch up on pastoral care calls.  Despite the initial chaos, the day went so well, I felt confident we could do this!

Throughout the day, images and verses from scripture kept popping up in my mind:  Jesus asking Peter why he doubted while walking across water; Jesus reminding us how if the flowers of the field and the birds of the air are cared for, how much more are we loved and valued; or angels at the tomb telling Mary Magdalene and the other women not to be afraid.  Time and time again in scripture, we hear the refrain, “Do not be afraid.”  We hear that phrase not because we should try to become perfect, anxiety-free humans.  We hear that phrase because anxiety is normal – but so is God’s love and care for us.  I do not know what anxieties you are holding today, but my hope is you can remember God’s abundant love and care for you – whether you hear those words from God, whether you feel that in your heart through the Spirit, or whether a friend, family member, or a stranger is God’s messenger of hope to you today.  Wherever the reassurance comes from, do not be afraid – you are loved and cared for – and you’ve got this!!