On Listening with New Ears…

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adjust, children, ears, God, hear, Holy Week, humanity, Jesus, listen, passion narrative, powerful, teach, voices

Every year on Palm Sunday, most Churches read the passion narrative.  We read the story from the night before Jesus’ death, all the way through the cross and the sealed tomb.  Because the story is so long (2-3 pages of text at least), many churches read the narrative as if it is a script, with parts assigned, to break up the reading.  This practice helps keep our attention, but also helps us hear the story differently each year.  As someone who has both listened to passion narratives and participated in them, I know how powerful the experience can be.  I will never forget the first time I was asked to read Jesus’ part.  There is something indescribable about having Jesus’ words in your mouth.  Likewise, hearing other people read parts can be powerful.  Imagine hearing the most faithful church elder say the words of Judas or denying Peter; or imagine how a well-placed pause by the narrator can make you hear differently.

As a priest, knowing the power of the voice in the passion narrative, I work hard to make sure the voices people hear on Palm Sunday are moving for them too.  Of course, I am sometimes limited by the available readers, but whenever I get the list of potential readers, I work hard to create synergy – looking for a mixture of male and female voices, looking for variations in age where possible, and also looking for visuals, like varieties in the physical attributes of the readers.  This year, I happened to have some children and youth offer to read and tried to find unexpected roles for them too.  What I did not anticipate was how powerful their voices would be for me.

You see, this past weekend, children and youth from all over the country and globe took to the streets because they feel afraid and threatened, and they are frustrated that adults are either not listening or are unwilling to find a way forward to make them feel safe.  Now, I know some of us may disagree with some of their proposed actions, but if nothing else, this past weekend made me feel like our inability to listen respectfully to one another and work for change was exposed.  Our children this weekend drew back the curtain on our ugly secret – that we are not acting as agents of love in the public sphere – on either side.

Feeling raw and exposed by Sunday, imagine the wave of emotion that hits when a nine-year old reads the part of Jesus to our church in the passion narrative.  Having a child say, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough!” shook me to the core.  As I listened to his clear, steady voice, I began to not only hear the passion differently, but also began to realize that Jesus is speaking to us every day, with voices we may not expect, but voices that speak truth – raw, painful, beautiful truth.  As we continue our Holy Week walk this week, I invite you to listen to the Jesuses speaking to you in your everyday life.  What does God need you to hear this week?  How might hearing a voice that says something you oppose sound differently if you listen with holy ears?  Adjusting your ears will certainly change how you experience Holy Week, but more importantly, adjusting our ears might help to change how we experience humanity in this moment.  Those who have ears, listen.

Photo credit:  Picture taken at Hickory Neck Episcopal Church by John Rothnie, March 25, 2018.  Permission required for reuse.

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A Gift from the Church…

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Christ, church, diversity, Easter, gift, God, Holy Week, Jesus, liturgy, music, pilgrimage, powerful, variety, worship

Photo credit:  https://blueeyedennis-siempre.blogspot.com/2011/04/update-holy-week-poems.html

As a former United Methodist and preacher’s kid turned Episcopal priest, I have a pretty wide range of what I find liturgically inspiring.  I was raised on what I would call the “Ol’ Timey Hymns,” I discovered praise and guitar music in college, I found the joy of call-and-response preaching and participatory music at a primarily African-American church where I was a member, I discovered Anglican choral music at the Cathedral that sponsored me for ordination, I was immersed in “high church” worship during seminary where my alb constantly smelled like incense, I discovered the joys of a paid professional choir who could chant choral matins, and I have served in churches with praise bands.  I have been known to crank up the gospel channel on Sunday mornings on my way to church before listening to traditional chant during the services later that morning.

So imagine my joy when I found a church that seemed to capture a good portion of the variety and breadth of my own liturgical experience.  The diversity of worship at Hickory Neck reveals an embarrassment of riches.  We are so blessed with a variety of liturgical and music leaders that I still do not have a favorite service.  Of course, fitting that diversity into one Sunday can be tricky.  That is one of the millions of reasons why I love Holy Week so much, especially at Hickory Neck!  Over the course of a week, we celebrate Palm Sunday, we lead a quiet compline digitally via Facebook live, our Praise Band leads us in a contemplative Taize service, our Congregational Choir and local ecumenical clergy lead us in a healing service, our Choral Scholars lead us in a beautiful foot washing and altar-stripping service, we retreat into quiet on Good Friday midday, but then our youth lead us in a powerful Stations of the Cross service that night, our liturgical team puts together an amazing Easter Vigil, and then the brass rings in Easter Sunday.  In one week, we get the fullness of Hickory Neck on dazzling display.

I do not know what life is like for you these days.  But if you are in the position to give yourself the gift of Holy Week, I highly recommend it.  The full experience allows you to create a sort of pilgrimage, and certainly makes Easter Day a much more powerful experience.  But even if you can only catch a few services, realize that each night’s service is like a carefully crafted gift, meant to create an encounter between you and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Even if you have been feeling distant from God lately, I know most churches are happy to have you slip into a back pew, take in what you need, and slip back out into the world.  Lord knows I have sometimes showed up at the doors of a church not entirely sure why I was there, but left knowing exactly why the Holy Spirit had drawn me there.  If you do not have a church home and want to join us in the feast of Holy Week, you have a church home at Hickory Neck.  If you are reading from further away, I hope you will share with me your experiences this coming Holy Week.

On the Power of Hospitality…

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church, community, disciple, Episcopal, faith, gift, hospitality, invite, kingdom of God, powerful, radical, share, welcome, witness

Photo credit:  www.riversouthbay.org/my-river/opportunities/hospitality-team

As a priest, it is pretty rare that I get to sit in the pew, let alone worship in or experience another church’s community.  But last week I had the opportunity to do that in two very different, but blessed ways.  The first was taking my children to Vacation Bible School (VBS) at a local Disciples of Christ church.  The church is one of our ecumenical partners, and I had preached there during a pulpit exchange last Lent.  Our children had requested attending VBS, but our shared Episcopal offering was at a time we could not do.  So off to the Disciples of Christ church we went.  As we ate dinner each night, and as the kids ran off to crafts, music, teaching, and play, and as I sat in on the adult class, I felt like a guest in a wonderful house of hospitality.  I watched as within just a week, the church members fell in love with our children, giving them hugs and high fives, teaching them powerful lessons about how they are made for a purpose and that God is always in their corner.  It was a wonderful gift to be welcomed as strangers and sent off as fellow disciples in Christ.

The other experience was quite different.  A gentleman who had worked for the cleaning company we use at our church passed away unexpectedly a few weeks ago.  His church hosted the funeral, and I attended the service on Sunday.  The funeral was admittedly a difficult one.  Lonnie had experienced a rough road in life – from the loss of family, addictions, homelessness, imprisonment, recovery, and new life.  I only knew his story superficially, having been introduced to him through one of our parishioners who was a mentor of his.  But what I witnessed was a community of faith who completely embraced Lonnie in every way – loving him fully, accepting him as he was, incorporating him into the life of the church, welcoming him into their homes, and being active agents of his recovery and faith life.  They offered me a powerful witness about what Christ-like relationship looks like.

I come out of those experiences with two distinct conclusions.  First, I have a renewed appreciation for my own faith community.  Though I learned powerful lessons last week, I also developed a renewed love for Hickory Neck and our distinct work in furthering the kingdom in the greater Williamsburg area.  My experience reminded me of what radical hospitality can feel like as a recipient and made me want to offer it more.

Second, I am impressed with the broad range of expressions of faith in Williamsburg, and I am grateful that there is a place where anyone can find a church home.  The witness for Jesus is strong in this community.  I suspect that the more we appreciate our collective witness, the stronger our individual witness will become.  If you have not invited a friend or acquaintance to church lately, I encourage you to do so.  Experiencing the gift of Christian hospitality, community, and formation at Hickory Neck is not a gift to keep to ourselves.  That gift can be life changing!

Sermon – Mark 5.21-43, P8, YB, June 28, 2015

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baptism, Christ, communion, community, doubt, faith, God, hemorrhaging woman, Jairus' daughter, Jesus, powerful, saints, strong, weakness, witness, women

Today we are surrounded by some powerful women.  Many of you do not know Charlotte and Piper, who we are baptizing today, but they came into the world fighting.  While they were in the womb, their lives were threatened.  Doctors were able to operate in the womb at twenty-one weeks to ensure their survival.  Despite that help, they were born early and very tiny, but amazingly, had to have very little medical support.  Once they gained weight, they were able to come home and enjoy a healthy infancy.  My guess is that the strength these two children of God harnessed is what has pulled them through – a strength that their parents might regret when they hit their teenage years!

When we baptize Charlotte and Piper, we will baptize them into a communion full of strong saints – women who have paved the road before them, who have shown great faithfulness and strength, and who will serve as mentors and guides in their earthly pilgrimage.  We meet a couple of those women today.  First we meet Jairus’ daughter through her father.  Now, we might not think of her as a strong woman, since she is near death, but this young woman was powerful nonetheless.  She evokes such devotion in her father that he, a synagogue leader, is willing to bow down to the controversial Jesus and beg for healing for his dying daughter.  Jairus’ love for this powerful young woman made him willing to cross boundaries, to show vulnerability, and put great faith in Jesus.  We also know that Jairus’ daughter is twelve, about the age that women start menstruating, making them capable of producing life – one of the most powerful gifts of nature.  Though she is at death’s door, her power as a woman and as an individual bring people like Jesus to her, so that she might be restored to wholeness of life.

Of course, we also meet another strong woman today.  By all accounts, this woman should not have been strong.  In those days, menstruation alone meant that women had to be separated from the community for a period of time for ritual impurity.  But to have been bleeding for twelve years means that this woman has been ostracized from others for as long as Jairus’ daughter has been alive.  Furthermore, she spent all her money trying to obtain healing from doctors.  Her poverty and her impurity make her a double outcast.[i]  But this woman will not quit.  She boldly steps into a crowd (likely touching many people that she ritually should not) and she grabs on to Jesus’ clothing, knowing that simply by touching Jesus she can be healed.  She does not ask Jesus to heal her or mildly whisper among the crowds, “Excuse me Jesus, could you please heal me?”  No, she takes matters into her own hands, and though Jesus demands to speak with her, her own determination and faith make her whole.

In many ways, the baptism that we witness today is a same expression of strength and faith.  When we are baptized, we (or in the case of infants our parents and godparents) boldly claim the life of faith.  We renounce the forces of evil and we rejoice in the goodness of God.  We promise to live our life seeking and serving Christ, honoring dignity in others, and sharing Christ in the world.  This action is not a meek or mild one.  This action is an action of boldness – one in which we stand before the waters of baptism, and stake our claim in resurrection life.

Now, here’s the good news:  even though we are surrounded by powerful women today and we are doing and saying powerful things, we do not always have to be strong.  All the women we honor today are strong – but they have moments of weakness too.[ii]  I am sure over the course of twelve years, the hemorrhaging woman has doubts.  As bold as she is today, I am sure there are moments when she fears – maybe even that day – whether she could really reach out and claim Jesus’ power as her own.  And as Jairus’ daughter feels the life fade from her, I am sure she doubts.  I am sure she wonders whether she will ever be able to claim the life-force that is budding inside of her or to live a long life honoring her parents.  And though Charlotte and Piper have been warriors thus far in life, they will both have their own doubts and weaknesses.  In fact, that is why we as a congregation today promise that we will do all in our power to support them in their life in Christ.  That is why her parents and godparents promise by their prayers and witness to help them grow into the full stature of Christ.  That is the good news today.  For all the moments of strength that we honor in one another, we also honor the doubts, fears, and weaknesses.  God is with us then too, and gives us the community of faith to keep us stable until we can be strong witnesses again.  Amen.

[i] Mark D. W. Edington, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 190.

[ii] David Lose, “Come As You Are,” June 24, 2012 at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1493 found on June 25, 2015.