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.

Sermon – Mark 1.29-30, EP5, YB, February 7, 2021

Tags

Bible, disciples, discipleship, feminist, God, Jesus, mother-in-law, resurrected, Sermon, serve, Simon, theology, women

This morning I want to let you in on a little secret:  I do not actually love all of the Bible.  Now I know, I am a priest.  I am supposed to love all of Holy Scripture, the tome of inspired words from God.  Even in our ordination, priests proclaim, “I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.”[i]  And while I do believe what I said in my ordination about Scripture, there are still things in Holy Scripture that make me cringe, and, quite frankly, make me dread preaching them.

Today’s lesson from Mark is one of those texts.  We read of the miraculous healing of Simon’s mother-in-law, and my immediate reaction is, “Great!  Here we go again! A woman gets healed, and what’s the first thing she does?  Go to the kitchen and make the men some food.”  I was bracing myself this week for how I was going to stand here and talk about a woman being healed – actually, not just healed, but the word in the Greek is “raised” – the same word used for what happens to Jesus in his resurrection in Mark 16.6.[ii]  I was all ready to go with my defensive theology when I read the words of one scholar.  He simply says about the mother-in-law, “Mark introduces the first deacon in the New Testament.”[iii] 

My daughters and I enjoy reading a periodical called Bravery Magazine.  Every quarter a new edition features a woman who has shown bravery in the course of her life.  The one my younger daughter and I are reading now is about Eugenie Clark, a famous marine biologist, sometimes referred to as “The Shark Lady.”  Eugenie broke all kinds of boundaries about what women could do, but throughout our readings about her, one quote from her stuck with me, “I don’t work at something because I think it’s important.  I work at things that, to me, are interesting.”[iv]  In other words, Eugenie did not set out to care for marine life because she wanted to prove women are equal to men.  She set out to love and care for marine life because she found that work interesting – or as we might say, she was living out her call or vocation.

The same can be said about the mother-in-law of Simon.  She is not simply serving Jesus and the men with him.  She is not even “bowing to cultural convention, keeping in her restricted place as a servant.”  She is being a deacon, a “disciple who quietly demonstrates the high honor of service for those who follow Jesus.”[v]  What those labeled as disciples do not understand, and as one scholar reminds us, will not understand until Easter, is being a disciple of Jesus means becoming servants.  These named disciples will fight this reality the entire life of Jesus, in fact, later in Mark vying for primacy and privilege.  But this woman, as scholar Ofelia Ortega says, this resurrected mother-in-law, “has overcome all the selfishness and restrictive teachings and has been close to Jesus; deep down she is already a Christian, diakonisa [deacon], a servant of the church gathered in her son-in-law’s house…her diaconal work is the beginning and announcement of the gospel.”[vi]

As much as I would like to argue we are all like the mother-in-law, no matter what our gender, I think most of us are more like the male disciples, who are still trying to figure out discipleship.  We are still busy trying to rush Jesus out of his time of prayer to do more work, to control or contain the work of the Messiah, and certainly to guard our dignity in our daily lives.  But what the mother-in-law reminds us this week, is that if we wish to seek Jesus, to know and feel the presence of God, to understand our call in this crazy world, our first job is to serve:  to return to our baptismal covenant promise of seeking and serving Christ in all persons.

So how do we do we do this?  How do we shake ourselves out of own sense of control, our own agenda, or even, especially these days, our sense of weariness about this world?  We claim our discipleship, our invitation to serve.  We may start very small.  Maybe we start in our families like the mother-in-law and serve – not begrudgingly emptying that dishwasher while muttering, but joyfully honoring the ways Jesus has raised us up and given us power to serve.  Maybe we start with our neighbors, those feeling lonely or anxious, and send them a card or make them a meal.  Or maybe we start with those unknown to us who are suffering and serve them through advocacy or our labor.  We do not have to fully understand our service, and we will likely fail at doing that servant ministry as faithfully as the mother-in-law.  But Jesus has raised us up so that we can start afresh each new day.  Amen.

---

[i] BCP, 526.

[ii] Ofelia Ortega, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 334.

[iii] Gary W. Charles, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 335.

[iv] Beard Elyse, editor, Bravery Magazine:  Eugenie Clark, vol. 13, The Prolific Group, 2020, 4.

[v] Charles, 335.

[vi] Ortega, 334.

Sermon – Isaiah 1.1, 10-20, P14, YC, August 11, 2019

Tags

action, blame, change, do something, God, guilt, hypocritical, injustice, innocent, love, meaning, renewal, Sermon, serve, strength, worship

One of the topics in Confirmation Class is how the Episcopal Church interprets and talks about Holy Scripture.  Confirmands are often surprised to hear the labels “Old Testament” and “New Testament” are not helpful labels.  Instead of calling the first portion of Holy Scripture the “Old Testament,” we call that portion the “Hebrew Scriptures.”  We make that change for two reasons.  One, we want to remind ourselves that the Christian Scriptures do not eliminate the importance of the Hebrew Scriptures – as if the “new” testament makes the “old” testament obsolete.  Two, the use of the “old” can connote irrelevance.  Neither of those things being true, we try to reframe our language.

Today’s Hebrew Scripture reading is a classic example of how our language can taint our interaction with Scripture.  Many of us hear the words of Isaiah and the judgment of Israel’s worship, and we slip into “they” language.  They are being as sinful as Sodom and Gomorrah – the same people who “had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”[i].  Their worship, their sacrifice of animals, is meaningless to God.  Their prayers will be ignored by God.  They have blood on their hands.  The shifting of audience is easy enough for us; not being a community that offers sacrifices anymore, this piece of Scripture really can feel like an “old” testament.

That’s why I like one scholar’s rereading of this passage.  He argues we need to reframe today’s passage in our modern context.  Instead of condemning ancient practices, he rereads the text for the modern church as God saying thus:  “I hate your worship.  Your prayers make me sick.  I loathe your music.  Your sermons are a sacrilege.  Who asked for your offerings?  Your Holy Communion stinks.  I want none of it.”[ii]  I do not know about you, but that rewording made this passage come alive in ways “old” texts never do.  Suddenly, God is not talking about them; God is talking about us – our worship, our actions, our behavior.  With new ears for this text, God is not criticizing outdated, foreign practices – God is criticizing the thing we are right in the midst of: our worship, our music, our prayers, our communion, this very sermon!

Hearing this passage as a modern reading shook me up this week.  All week I have been pondering our worship – the primary marker of our identity.  Does our communion stink?  As I thought about the sacred meal this week, I could imagine how communion could be so rote communion loses its meaning.  But then I began to think about my experience with communion.  As a priest, I receive communion two to three times on a Sunday – sometimes more.  Despite that repetition, something about the physicality of communion keeps communion fresh.  Sometimes the wafers are stale, making them hard to swallow; sometimes the bread is dry and crumbly, making a huge mess around the altar; sometimes, especially by 11:15, my breakfast is so far gone that eating communion feels like a desperate attempt to ease the rumbling in my empty stomach.  The same happens with the wine:  sometimes the wine burns going down; sometimes the wine soothes a dry throat; sometimes I wish I could take a long draw of wine to wash down the gluten-free wafer that is stuck in my teeth.  Those experiences may sound silly or trivial, but I find God in every one of them:  How often have I longed for God the way I long for food when I am hungry?  How often have I cursed the mess of life before realizing Jesus makes our life messy?  How often has something from church or a word from God nagged at me like a wafer that scraped my throat on the way down.

I like thinking about those physical-spiritual connections in Eucharist because they do what God is challenging us to do in Isaiah today.  God is not saying worship is inherently bad.  The sacrificing of animals, the prayers, the offerings were all thing the community of God had been instructed to do.  There are whole books of the Bible that laboriously detail how to do these things, thoughtfully making concessions for those lacking the resources to make the recommending offerings.  God is not saying God hates the festivals, is repelled by their sacrifices, and will ignore their prayers because God finds them archaic or brutal or wrong.  God’s fervent and harsh criticism of their worship is the hypocrisy of their worship.  In verse fifteen, God says, “I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.”  What God is pointing out is the irony of their worship. Here they are, their hands covered in the blood of the sacrificed animals – what should be a pure, sacred offering to God for the blessings of this life.  But what God sees is different blood:  their raised hands are not simply covered in the holy blood of sacrifice; their raised hands are covered in the blood of the oppressed, the orphan, the widow.  God, rather bluntly, says, “Do not come to me with the pretense of humility and righteousness when nothing about your life is righteous.  Do not come to me as though you are pure and sanctified, when I see you covered in the blood of the innocent you trampled on the way into the temple.”

In the aftermath of two more mass shootings last weekend, the cities of Dayton and El Paso gathered in vigil, in prayer, and in conversation.  In Dayton, the governor offered the kind of speech one usually offers in times such as these – a sense of condolence, an encouragement to come together in mutual support, an acknowledgment of grief.  But the residents of Dayton were not having that speech this week.  As the governor was speaking, someone in the crowd shouted, “Do something!”  The governor continued his speech, and two more voices cried out the same call, “Do something! Do something!”  The governor maintained his cool and kept going with his scripted speech, but within moments, the crowd was chanting in one voice, “Do something!” so loudly the governor’s speech was completely inaudible.  Perhaps reflecting the tenor of a nation who is emotionally exhausted by the repeated trauma of mass shootings, the people of Dayton broke.  No longer content to receive prayers and idle words, the people of Dayton demanded the governor do something to change their reality.

I think that is what God is really upset about in our scripture lesson today.  God is not bored by their worship or saying the acts of worship of the Israelites are inherently bad.  What God is saying is their worship is invalidated by their actions outside the temple.  The people of God cannot do evil, ignore injustice, forget the oppressed, shun the orphaned, and leave the widowed behind while still seeking refuge in God.  God wants us to do something.  In fact, in verse seventeen, God says, “Learn to do good.”  We can pray all we want, we can mourn mass violence, we can even criticize politicians about their lack of action.  But God is looking straight into our eyes today and saying, “I am glad you are here and I love you.  But you need to do something.”  And if we are unclear about what that something is, God tells us right here in Isaiah:  cease doing evil, do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.  When tragedy strikes, when the world feels like the world is falling apart, when we feel helpless or overwhelmed by the evil of this time, God says your worship of God is odious unless you are doing something.

Now I do not want you to leave today thinking this service is meaningless.  Quite the contrary, “worship is essential for us and requires of us an awed and candid engagement with God that is life giving, community transforming, and world altering.”[iii]  What would be meaningless is for you to go through the motions, or for you to seek solace only, and not strength; pardon only, and not renewal.  The prayers, your offering, our music, the sacred meal are meant to empower us to go out in the world and do something.  I know that can be scary.  I know you may be thinking, “well, I have very strong opinions about guns and what our country should be doing.”  But I also know the people I have spoken to on both sides of the issue do not want the slaughter of innocents.  To that, God offers us encouragement.  God says in verse eighteen, “Come now, let us argue it out.”  God does not want you to run away from the evil of the world, but to dive in and figure out a way to do something.  God wants you to engage because God knows you can.  In fact, God says, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.”  God does not hate our worship; but God does not tolerate our worship when our worship is void of action – when we forget the dismissal of our deacon, to go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.  Today, God invites us to wash the blood of the innocent off our hands, and to go out and do something:  to go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.  Amen.

[i] Ezekiel 16.49.

[ii] Paul Simpson Duke, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 319.

[iii] Duke, 321.

On Baseball, Community, and Church…

Tags

baseball, church, community, disciple, God, Good News, Little League, Lord, love, meaning, ritual, serve, support

Photo credit:  newprovidencepal.org/baseball/

This summer we have had the joy of supporting both a friend’s and a parishioner’s little league baseball teams.  Not having boys myself, it has been a long time since I watched a little league game.  In fact, after the first game we saw, I shared with my husband that I could not imagine giving up so much family time for one member’s extracurricular interest.  He understood my hesitation, but invited me to look around.  You see, with all those mornings, afternoons, and evenings at the baseball field; with the ritual of packing chairs, canopies, and ice chests; and with the repeated gathering of parents and siblings, slowly, slowly a community is formed.  Parents learn about each other’s lives, siblings convert boredom into adventures, and guests are quickly made to feel welcome with a shared chair, beverage, or joke.

What those teams, especially travelling teams, have done is create a community.  They have created a group of people who know each other’s stories, who share wins and losses together, and who slowly learn to talk more than just baseball – but life!  They have created a community where kids do not just have one set of parents – they have a whole community of moms, dads, and siblings.  They have created a community that revolves around ritual, memory-making, and maybe even meaning-making.  In many ways, those teams have created something similar to what Church creates.  Church too creates a multigenerational community – where every elder is a grandma, and every adult can parent children.  Church too creates a community where wins and losses are shared together, where stories are known, and companionship is created.  Church too revolves around ritual, memory-making, and meaning-making.

Church creates community, but uses that creation for a different purpose.  The community of Church nurtures, forms, offers comfort, and creates community, but almost as a side-benefit to the main work we do.  Our purpose is to shape disciples for sharing and living the Good News of God in Christ.  So, while we are loved and supported in the community, we are loved and supported so that we can go out into the world to love and support others.  While we share stories, wins, and loses, we also go out to listen to others’ stories, naming where we see God acting in their lives.  While we participate in ritual, making memories and meaning, that same ritual sends us out to love and serve the Lord in the world.  We may come for the community Church creates.  But we stay because that community demands we be much more.

Today I am grateful for our many communities.  In fact, I think we all need more than just Church communities to keep us grounded in the world God created.  But if you haven’t been to church in a while, I invite you to give it a try.  You may find even more than you were looking for!

On Being Stewards of Dreams…

Tags

church, cup, dream, God, intergenerational, Lord, ministry, portion, serve, vision

Photo credit:  https://www.pintrest.com/pin/536632111820932245/

“O Lord, you are my portion and my cup; it is you who uphold my lot.  My boundaries enclose a pleasant land; indeed, I have a goodly heritage.”  (Psalm 16.5-6) 

At our Vestry Retreat this winter, we began to talk about the dream we have been tossing around since before my arrival.  Upon reflection of the demographics and needs in Williamsburg, the dream is that Hickory Neck offer a childcare program, adult daycare program, or a combined ministry of the two.  I have been excited about the idea ever since I first heard it articulated.

I had encountered the concept of intergenerational care online (see video here).  What I loved about the video was that the intergenerational care reminded me of what happens at church:  people from all generations finding comfort, care, and a sense of identity and purpose.  In our modern culture, intergenerational relationship is rare.  Families live far apart, people tend to be segregated by life stage, and we value self-sufficiency.  But what we forget in our modern culture is that our young and our old need each other – they teach each other, they bring each other renewed energy, and they help each other learn.  I have always loved that my children have lots of “grandmas and grandpas” at church.

If I had the option of putting my children in childcare that fosters such a rich environment, I would be thrilled.  Furthermore, I know that our geographic area could use more accessible childcare and senior daycare.  As the pieces came together, God seemed to be inviting Hickory Neck into a new phase of its ministry.  This winter, the Vestry agreed that we should start being stewards of this dream the Spirit had given us.  So, for the last month, the Vestry has been having conversations in the community.  The idea is to learn what services are already offered, whether our sense of the needs matches the actual needs, and what potential partners there may be in our community.  We are obviously in the very early stages of this walk, but it is an exciting time!

I hope you will join us this Sunday as we gather for our quarterly Rector’s Forum.  We will be talking about this vision, as well as the many other tremendous ministries of Hickory Neck.  We indeed are blessed by a goodly heritage at Hickory Neck.  I look forward to celebrating the ways that our Portion and our Cup are leading us!

Sermon – Isaiah 58.1-12, EP5, YA, February 5, 2017

Tags

church, fast, fasting, God, Isaiah, love, need, outreach, relationship, Sermon, serve, worship

In about three and half weeks we will gather in the Historic Chapel for Ash Wednesday services.  In the liturgy for Ash Wednesday, the priest invites us into the “observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”  I don’t know about you, but this invitation always makes me a little nervous.  The truth is, I am terrible at fasting.  I have often blamed the issue on low blood-sugar.  But really, I just hate the way not eating makes me feel.  I get cranky, I cannot focus on work, and I just want to crawl into bed.  And what makes fasting worse is that we get scriptural passages that warn us about grimacing while fasting – that we should go so far as to put oil on our faces so that we look shiny and happy during our fasting.

Knowing my utter sense of failure at my inability to engage in the most holy of spiritual practices, I confess that I was secretly pleased to read our text from Isaiah today.  The people of Israel have become quite good at fasting and pious worship.  We are told that day after day the Israelites come to God in worship, delighting to know more about God, and fasting like righteous followers of God.  They even bow down and lie in sackcloth and ashes.  They are the epitome of penitential Lenten worshippers.  Except for one small, teeny, tiny problem.  Despite their devotional fasting and their fervent prayers, God is angry with the Israelites.  You see, while the Israelites are piously engaging in reverent, penitential worship, their hired hands are working under their oppressive orders.  While they have been perfecting reverential bows, there are hungry, homeless, naked, impoverished peoples just outside their doors.  Oblivious, the Israelites complain to God, “Why do we fast, but you do not see?  Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”  God’s response is a brutal question:  Why are you here?

In polite Episcopal circles, we do not often ask that question:  Why are you here?  We might ask a visitor a much softer version of that question, “What brings you to Hickory Neck?”  But we almost never ask a regular or long-time church member, “Why are you here?”  I think part of why we do not ask someone else that question is because we are afraid someone will ask us that question.  We are afraid to be asked that question because the question feels like a trick.  If I say I am here because I want peace or comfort, does that make me a passive, self-serving Christian?  If I say I am here because I enjoy the community, does that mean my church is more like a country club than a church?  If I admit that I do not know why I am in church this morning other than a strange longing somewhere deep inside me, does that mean that my worship is superficial or doomed for ambiguity?

The scary part about our anxiety around that question, “Why are you here today,” is that God has a very clear response before we or the Israelites can even answer the question.  God says that if we do not come to worship to be changed, we are doing something wrong.  As one scholar argues, Isaiah’s words today tell us that, “Worship without justice has no value in the eyes of God.”[i]   For Isaiah, a gap has formed between the faithful’s seeking God and God’s ways and their actual way of life.  What Isaiah wants the people to know is that fasting, prayer, and worship are all well and good, but without some connection to the other 167 hours of their week, their worship, their fasting, their relationship with God is hollow.  Now, God is not telling us that worship is inherently bad or self-serving.  As another scholar points out, “worship is the most important thing we do together.  It is the place that forms us into the people of God.  It is the place where we inhale God’s love and grace, so that,” and here comes the important part, “so that we can be sent forth to exhale God’s love and grace in a broken world in need of redemption.”[ii]

One of the things that attracted me to Hickory Neck was the wide variety in styles of worship.  On any given Sunday, I can pray the Prayer of Humble Access in the midst of a quiet Rite I liturgy; I can belt out a praise song that is so familiar I don’t need to look at the words; I can chant the Eucharistic Prayer while the Choral Scholars respond with beautiful, precise, haunting harmonies; or I can sing a version of the Lord’s Prayer that my seven-year old daughter has learned by memory.  I love the variety of expressions of worship here, and love our unique gift that is rare in most parishes.  But variety can be dangerous.  Variety means bringing together people who don’t necessarily revel in the differences.  There will be people who only come to our early service because they find music to be a distraction.  There will be people who only come to the late service because anything other than traditional Anglican music interferes with their worship.  And there will be people who only like the middle service because they can let their hair down and be themselves.  Slowly, what is meant to be the gift of variety becomes a competition for the best – the most holy, most reverent, most relatable, most “of God.”  But what all that comparison leads to is not deeper relationship with God.  That comparison leads us to focus on the worship as an end unto itself, instead of as a means “right relationship.”[iii]

In order to get to the point of fasting or worship, God tells the Israelites to redefine fasting.  Instead of abstaining from food or drink, the fast God desires, “is outreach to those in need, which involves not only feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and caring for one’s own, but also addressing the attitudes and structures responsible for injustices.”[iv]  In the Episcopal Church, we have codified this redefinition of fasting in our dismissal.  We take all of our prayers, all of learning, all of our confessions, and all of our feasting and we say, “Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.”  In other words, we give ourselves the beauty of worship, and then remind ourselves of the point of that worship – right relationship with God and our neighbor.  I have often thought the church needs the words of the dismissal painted above the Narthex door, so that as each of us departs this space, we can jump up and slap the words – much life a sports team entering the arena who slaps a slogan or the team name.  Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

Now some of you may be thinking about this radical redefinition of fasting and this question of why we are here in worship, and be wondering, “Can’t I just give up some food and call it a day?!?  Can’t I just sit in worship and not worry about why I am here?!?”  You may know well that righting relationships with God and neighbor is a lot harder than a day’s worth of sacrificing food or just showing up on Sunday.  But before you get too anxious, listen again to Isaiah’s words about what happens when we enter the kind of fast God prefers, “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.  Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”  God’s work is never too difficult – exhaling God’s love and grace in a broken world in need of redemption is as easy as breathing in the love and grace we inhale every Sunday.  The promise of God’s blessing is waiting – we just need to breathe.  Amen.

[i] Carol J. Dempsey, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 314.

[ii] Andrew Foster Connors, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 316.

[iii] Dempsey, 316.

[iv] Dempsey, 316.

Sermon – I Kings 19.1-15a, P7, YC, June 19, 2016

Tags

abandoned, body of Christ, comfort food, desensitized, done, Elijah, fight, food, go, God, healing, life, love, Orlando, peace, sacred, Sermon, serve, shooting, strength, tragedy, tree, wilderness

Last Sunday, after the parish picnic, I found out about the tragedy in Orlando.  When the youth and I gathered for Holy Eucharist that night, we lifted up our prayers for the victims and their families.  Being able to name the tragedy in the context of Eucharist was comforting, but by the time I got home and poured over news coverage, I found myself bereft.  I was not in shock, for this kind of tragedy has honestly become commonplace in our country.  I think I wanted to be in shock or at least surprised.  But instead, I felt a sense of familiarity and coldness.  I realized that my psyche has become desensitized to this sort of tragedy.  Instead of feeling sad, I just felt numb.  I felt powerless, with nothing to do but be resigned to the fact that this is the way our life is now.  Nothing can change.  Mass murder is normal – whether by a religious radical, a mentally unstable person, a racist, or a disillusioned teen.  Mass death is normal – whether LGBT brothers and sisters, people going to the movies, African-Americans worshiping, or children attending school.  All I could comprehend in my numbness was the fight, the outrage, and the compassion draining out of me.

The same thing happens to Elijah in our story today.  If you remember, a couple of weeks ago we heard about how Elijah has been putting Ahab’s practices to shame.  You see, in an effort to keep the political peace, King Ahab agreed to take a foreign wife, Jezebel, and worship her god, Baal, in addition to Yahweh.  The God of Israel is none too pleased, and so Elijah dramatically challenges the prophets of Baal to a duel.  Elijah is full of confidence, taunting, and dramatic flair.  And when Yahweh wins, Elijah slays the entire lot of Baal’s prophets.  But today, Jezebel proclaims she will avenge their deaths, and all of the fight leaves Elijah.  He runs into the wilderness until he cannot run any longer.  He crumbles under a tree, and proclaims that he is done.  He feels that he is all alone.  He asks God to take his life.

We all know the feeling that Elijah has.  Maybe we or a loved one has been fighting cancer.  We go for one last evaluation only to find that things have made a turn for the worse.  Or maybe we have been advocating for a particular political issue and the tide seems to be turning.  But a court decision is made or a vote is cast and the decision or vote does not go our way.  Or we think we have finally seen an addicted friend reach the end of his addictive behavior.  We are relieved to see healthy patterns until we get a late night call about how he has gotten into trouble again.  The fight leaves us.  We no longer feel a sense promise, victory, and confidence.  Instead the darkness settles over us like a fog, and we crumble under a tree and say, “Enough.  I am done, Lord.”

But something seemingly small happens to Elijah in his moment of despair.  The story goes, “Then Elijah lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep.  Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’  He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again.  The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’  He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.”  God gives Elijah food.  No words of encouragement, no pep talk about how things will get better.  God feeds Elijah in the wilderness, in a moment of despair, in a time of darkness.

There is a reason why we have something called “comfort food,” in our culture.  In fact, every culture has some version of comfort food.  Whether the food is a southern mom’s chicken and dumplings or a Jewish grandmother’s matzah ball soup; whether the food is Burmese mohingar, Vietnamese pho, or a New Mexican posole; or whether the comfort food is North Carolina, Memphis, or Texas barbeque, we all have food that brings us back to ourselves.  Somehow the taste of something familiar and rooted in our identity or a fond experience connects to our entire body in a visceral way.  The smell of the food, the flavors that are just right, the warmth filling our bellies, and the happy memories that flood our consciousness allows our entire body to relax.  Whatever has been ailing us – a sore throat, a homesickness, or a broken heart – can be wiped away by that simple, familiar, healing meal.

But comfort food does not just make you feel good.  Comfort food gives you strength:  mends your heart, heals your soul, and emboldens your spirit.  Elijah does not simply eat the food from God and wallow longer at the tree.  Elijah gets up.  He journeys for forty days on the strength from that bread.  His renewed spirit allows him to have a deep conversation with God, where he eventually finds out that he is in fact not alone.[i]  God has not abandoned him.  God has enabled other prophets to stand with him.  God is not done with Elijah yet.  Though God does not expect Elijah to go at it alone, God does expect Elijah to get back in there.[ii]

I am fully aware that we as a community are a diverse group of people with a wide range of political opinions.  My guess is that the violence of Orlando brought out a wide variety of responses to the event and the politicking that has happened since then.  But no matter how you feel about the shooter, the victims, or the instruments of the victims’ death, a week ago, 49 of our brothers and sisters died.  Life is sacred, and that sanctity was snuffed out last week.  And this is not the first time this has happened.  Though the stories behind the shooters, the motives behind the shootings, and the demographics of the victims are different each time, invariably, more life is desecrated.

We learn from Elijah’s story that God knows we need to mourn.  God knows we need to wallow for a time.  God knows that we may feel alone, or powerless, or just plain tired.  That is why God gives us trees in the wilderness.  But eventually, God will send us some comfort food – to soothe our aching heart certainly, but more importantly to strengthen us to continue the journey.  Because whether we feel like we have the inner strength or not, God is calling us to step out of the shade of the tree, and get back on the journey.[iii]

What that means for each of us here may be entirely different.  Certainly our work is to be grounded in prayer – prayers for the victims and their family members, prayers for the shooter, prayers for our nation as we sort out how we will govern ourselves, and prayers for us as we figure out how to be witnesses for Christ in the midst of the chaos.  But prayers are not all we are called to do.  We could do that under a tree or in a cave.  Instead, God sends us comfort food to heal our broken hearts, soothe our wearied souls, and embolden our spirits.

Today, and every Sunday, our comfort food, like Elijah’s, is also in the form of bread.  We call that bread the body of Christ.  That bread has power.  That bread has power to forgive our sinfulness and complicity with sin.  That bread has power to comfort our aches and sorrow.  That bread has the power to make us Christ’s body in the world, witnesses to the love that Jesus taught us about.  We know that our prayers and our consumption of Christ’s body does that for us because the very last thing we do – the very last thing we say – in our worship service is “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”  We do not say, “Have a good week.”  Or “Be at peace.”  We say “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”  How God will use us to love and serve the Lord in the world varies widely.  We all have a variety of vocations that take us to varied and sundry places.  But wherever we find ourselves, God has work for us to do.  Our work is to not only say, “Thanks be to God,” but to mean, “Thanks be to God.”  We thank God for our call to love and serve others.  We thank God for food for the journey.  We thank God for the ways that God does not leave us alone.  We thank God the ways that God will empower us and use us to be agents of love in the world.  So take a little more time today to pray and to mourn.  But then get ready to be sent out into the world to love and serve the Lord.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[i] Trevor Eppehimer, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 150.

[ii] Haywood Barringer Spangler, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 151.

[iii] Terrance E. Fretheim, “Commentary on 1 Kings 19:1-4[5-7]8-15a,” June 19, 2016 as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2876 on June 16, 2016.

Sermon – Mark 6.1-13, P9, YB, July 5, 2015

Tags

baptism, Christian, covenant, disciples, faith, identity, Jesus, liturgy, protection, purpose, seek, Sermon, serve, share, vulnerability

A few weeks ago, as we were planning liturgies, we were discussing the fact that we had two baptisms in a row – last Sunday and today.  A few people in the group kind of groaned, “Two in a row?!?”  I laughed at the time.  But the more I thought about their exasperation, the more I wondered why they were exasperated.  Certainly baptisms can take longer.  Between the blessing of the water, the renewal of vows, and the baptism itself, the service is a bit longer.  And perhaps to groan came out of a place of wanting to spread out the requency of special services – much like one rations out Halloween candy instead of eating it all at once.  But the more I thought about having two baptisms in a row, the more I liked the idea; in fact, the more I thought about the baptismal liturgy, I began to wish we had one every Sunday.

Now before you all issue a collective groan of exasperation, let me explain.  You see, the baptismal liturgy is one of those foundational liturgies.  In baptism, we ritually welcome someone into the family of faith.  But the baptismal liturgy is about more than the cute baby (though Rose is very cute, I admit!).  The baptismal liturgy is the time when we declare who we are, how we are to live, and how we will accomplish that ideal.  In this liturgy, we retell the story of our history – how God moved over the waters in creation, how God split the waters to free the enslaved people of Israel, and how God used the waters of baptism to mark a new way through Jesus’ own baptism.  In this liturgy, we also talk about our nature – how we are prone to sin, how we (despite the fact that we are saved by the waters of baptism) are on a continual journey of repenting and returning to the Lord, and how we need each other if we are ever to keep turning toward God.  In this liturgy, we also declare the radical way that we will live our lives in Christ – what being a Christian actually means.  Being a Christian means regularly gathering to learn together, to pray together, to eat at the Holy Table together, and to join in fellowship together.  Being a Christian means sharing the good news with others – not just by example, but by our words too.  Being  a Christian means seeking and serving Christ in others, loving our neighbor, striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of others.  I don’t know about you, but regular worship, regular evangelism, and regular mission sounds like a lot of work!  And yet, here we are (for the second week in a row!) proclaiming that we will do these things.

So if today is all about defining who we are and who we are going to shape little Rose into being, what might be the best way for us to prepare her for her new life in Christ?  Some of us might imagine the story we heard a few weeks ago about David and Goliath.  If you remember, David was just a boy who agreed to take on the enormous Goliath, that everyone feared.  When King Saul agrees to let David fight Goliath, he first wants to suit up David.  Saul clothes David with Saul’s armor; he puts a bronze helmet on David’s head and clothes him with a coat of mail.  By the time Saul puts his sword over the armor, David cannot even walk!  David realizes the protection weighs him down.  So he removes the armor and weapon and instead takes only a staff, five smooth stones in his shepherd’s bag, and his sling.  Goliath (and if we are honest, probably everyone else gathered, including the people of God) laughs at David’s puny preparation.  The funny thing is that in our gospel lesson today, Jesus does the same thing for the disciples when he commissions them to go out in the world.  Jesus tells them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; they get a staff, one pair of sandals, and one tunic.

When we think about preparing ourselves for the life of faith – of going out into the world to seek Christ, serve Christ, and share Christ – most of us think about preparing the way that Saul prepares David.  We want some armor for all those times that we are rejected when we share our faith; we want a sword in case we run into trouble while seeking Christ; we want some heavy mail so that when we serve others, nothing or no one gets too close[i]  But instead, Jesus sends out the disciples with a staff to steady their walking as they share the good news, a pair of sandals and one tunic so that they can humbly encounter others as they serve Christ, and empty hands and bellies so that they can seek Christ in others.  On this day when we proclaim who we are and how we will live, one might imagine that we are readying ourselves and gathering our supplies, and especially that we are arming this small, vulnerable child for walking the way of Christ.  But instead, Jesus basically tells us that there is no way to protect ourselves; there is no way to prepare.[ii]  We go with our trust in the Lord, with vulnerability, and with a sense of identity and purpose.

That is why I think we could stand to have baptism Sunday every Sunday.  Our tendency would be to find the biggest backpack we can and load that bag with all the things we think we need for our journey.  But Jesus tells us to put that bag down and start walking:  walking the way, the truth, and the light; walking by seeking, serving, and sharing Christ.  In many ways Rose has more to teach us today than we have to teach her.  She came into this world with very little.  In fact, she even came here with very little – sure her parents might have a monster diaper bag with all the “just in case” stuff babies often need.  But Rose herself cannot carry a bag; she is not self-sufficient; she is vulnerable with us all.  Instead of giving Rose an armor for Christ today, she encourages us to take off our armor and swords, and get back to the basics: our staff, sandals, and tunic.  That is the beauty of baptism.  Baptism helps us remember that we need each other.  Rose needs us to teach her the way.  We need her to teach us how to gat back to basics.  Together we find our way to living the faithful life in Christ.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

[i] Michael L. Lindvall talks about the anxiety that evangelism produces in all of us in his article, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 216.

[ii] C. Clifton Black, “Commentary on Mark 6:1-13,” July 5, 2015, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2502 on July 2, 2015.

Reflections on the Storm…

Tags

anxiety, Christ, grace, hurricane, love, serve, stress, suffering

I have been pondering for the last ten days what to say about the experience of Hurricane Sandy.  I think I felt overwhelmed because I knew that my experience was not as bad as thousands of others in our area.  My experience felt superficial somehow, as if I did not earn enough credit to have something to say about all of this.  But what I realized these last couple of days is that although I cannot speak for places that were utterly devastated by this horrible storm, I can speak for what life has been life for the rest of us, tied to those who are suffering more while suffering ourselves.

As background, we lost power for seven days.  We have a fireplace (although it took us several days to secure wood) and we had hot water.  But we did not have heat, the ability to cook, or the other conveniences of electricity.  We had filled our cars with gas before the storm, but we knew we had to be careful about the number of trips out of the house.  We also have a three year old daughter.  We had several trees fall on the property, one damaging the church, but mostly we were spared significant damage.

Over the last ten days, several reflections have occurred to me.  First, I used to work with Habitat for Humanity, and in our work there, we told personal stories of homeowners to potential volunteers and funders.  I remember telling stories of families whose only heat source was their gas oven, who could not afford their electric bill and just went without power, or whose children suffered in school because of poor heat, comfort, and nutrition at home.  I told those stories and my heart broke as I imagined the faces of each of those homeowners.  But I had never experienced those realities, especially as a parent.  As we struggled this past week to warm our child by bringing her into our bed; as I slept by the dying fire (making sure to avoid accidents), realizing that although my body was warm, the frigid air around my head was keeping me awake; or as I found that despite my two layers of clothes, long robe, and a blanket, I still could not keep warm during the day, I began to see those Habitat stories in a whole new way.  There are neighbors who suffer this pain everyday, and yet we are blind because they are hidden in homes we do not notice, in sections of town we do not frequent, or in coworkers whom we do not know well.  Despite our suffering for seven days, or the continued suffering for people up to ten days so far, there are people who live this suffering everyday.

Second, there is a way in which the varied experiences of a disaster make you feel like that if you do not suffer in a particular way, your experience of suffering is not valid.  You feel shallow or weak or insensitive for complaining if your experience is less burdensome than others.  And in a way, I think that is appropriate.  We should always be grateful for our blessings and recognize that there are many ways in which things could have been worse for all of us.  But stifling our pain for the sake of honor others’ pain has begun to feel corrosive to me.  Despite the fact that my suffering or even the suffering of my parishioners was milder compared to other areas of Long Island, our suffering is still hard.  The experience of long periods of cold, of worrying about the health of yourself and your child who cannot stop coughing and wiping running noses, of worrying if the mental health benefits of getting out of the house are worth the anxiety of the uncertain gasoline situation, of feeling cut off from the rest of the world, of worrying about those whose suffering is worse, of being frustrated about not being able to reach those without power to see if they are okay – all of that takes a toll on the psyche.  And even when we got power a week later, about half of my parishioners were still without power.  So any sense that things just go back to normal is false.  The frustration of just wanting to get back to work without the ability to get back to work can be overwhelming.  It was not until the snow hit and the schools closed yet again that I realized how much of this emotion and anxiety I have been stuffing.

Finally, I have been struck by the overwhelming ways in which this storm has brought out the goodness in others.  My parishioners have been running extension cords across the street to share power with others.  I observed all of us talking to one another more – learning more of each others’ stories – caring more about the welfare of each other.  People without power themselves have bent over backwards to make sure my family was okay.  Friends and parishioners have taken us in for hot meals and for washing laundry or for simple camaraderie.  People long to help others even when they are suffering.  There is a sense of abundance in the face of devastation.  There is joy watching a toddler find creative ways to entertain herself.  And the outpouring of love from all over the region is even more overwhelming.  I have felt like that wall that keeps us from sharing Christ with one another has been decimated, and Christ is found all around us as we love and care for one another.

This last week and a half has been an emotional rollercoaster, and the end is not necessarily in sight.  I ask that you pray for one another.  I ask that you seek and serve Christ in all persons.  I ask that you love and give yourself grace the same way that you are loving and giving grace to others.  And I ask that you remember the ways in which you are opening yourself to others and not to forget that new way of being when we finally do get back to “normal.”