Sermon – Jeremiah 31.31-34, Psalm 51.1-13, L5, YB, March 18, 2018

Tags

clean, comfort, communion, covenant, exile, God, heart, Lent, persistence, Psalm, relationship, repentance, Sermon, sin, sinfulness, ten commandments

As we heard our psalm today, you may have thought the psalm sounded familiar.  And you would be right.  Just under five weeks ago, we said this exact same psalm on Ash Wednesday.  After we were invited into a holy Lent – one of fasting, self-examination, and repentance, and ashes were spread across our foreheads, we said this psalm.  “Have mercy on me, O God…For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me…[I have] done evil in your sight…” we confessed.  We begged God to create in us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us.  I wonder how saying these words again, just several weeks later, feels today.  Perhaps after weeks of following your Lenten discipline, you feel closer to that clean heart and renewed spirit.  Maybe you are making your way out of Lent and the repetition of Psalm 51 feels unnecessary because you have completed your repentance work.  But maybe Psalm 51 feels unattainable, because your sinfulness feels like something you cannot shake.

If you are in the latter category, and if, in fact, you are beginning to wonder if you will ever master this sinfulness thing, take heart.  I actually say verse eleven of this psalm every time I celebrate the Eucharist.  Week in and week out, whether we are in Lent, Eastertide, or Ordinary time, even after I have prayed and confessed with the community, before I approach the altar to celebrate holy communion, I say these same words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”  Whether in a season of penitence or not, whether I have already celebrated Eucharist two times earlier in the morning, I still pray Psalm 51.11, longing for the God of mercy and hesed, or loving-kindness, to create in me a clean heart.

That is why I think the beginning of our liturgy was so hard today.  As part of the penitential order, we prayed the decalogue, or the ten commandments.  With each commandment, we responded, “Amen. Lord have mercy.”  Reading the decalogue in scripture, as we did just a few weeks ago in Lent is a bit different – somehow having them in paragraph form makes them more palatable – with only certain commandments jumping out at us as areas of improvement.  But praying them is more difficult.  With each commandment receiving a closing petition, the idea is hammered home – we struggle with every last one of these commandments.  Now I can imagine what you are thinking – but I have never murdered.  While that may be true, the poor and the oppressed die every day because no one cares enough to change policy or ensure each person gets help.  Or maybe you are muttering that you have never put any gods before our God.  But we commit idolatry every day when we believe money or even we ourselves are in control instead of our God.  Each petition we pray in the decalogue reminds of how deep and diverse our sinfulness is.

But here’s the funny thing about those commandments – the Israelites could not follow them either.  The Israelites had been rescued from slavery and protected relentlessly.  Once the Israelites were finally in safety and heading to the Promised Land, God created a new covenant with the people.  God sent Moses up the mountaintop and had Moses write the law on tablets – the law that would guide the people into faithful, covenantal living.  But before Moses could even get down the mountain and deliver the covenant to the people, they had already created the golden calf – an idol in the place of God.  They people would struggle so much with the ten commandments that a whole generation of God’s covenantal people would not be allowed into the Promised Land – not even Moses himself.  Although God intended for the decalogue to shape the lives of the people and to create the boundaries for the covenant, and although none of the petitions are all that unreasonable, yet still the people would break their covenant with God time and again.

We are just like our ancestors.  I was just retelling a parishioner this week about my Lenten discipline in college.  You see, in college I picked up a bit of a potty mouth.  It got so bad that my freshman year, I decided to charge myself a quarter for every curse word I uttered, with the plan of giving the proceeds to church on Easter.  By the end of week two in Lent, I had to reduce the fee to a nickel because I could not afford the fee!  And the funny thing was that every year in college was the same.  “This year!  This year I will master my filthy mouth.”  And every year I would have to reduce the fees.  We are creatures of habit, masters of repeated sinfulness, just like our ancestors.

That is why reading Jeremiah is so powerful today.  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’s reading 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 could not 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.

I have had parishioners attend two services in one day – maybe they were a speaker at two services or maybe they sang in two different choirs.  Invariably, one of these multi-service attendees will ask me, “Should I take communion again?  I shouldn’t, right?”  I always chuckle because I have to remind them that I take communion three times every Sunday – sometimes four or five if I take communion to someone homebound on a Sunday.  I confess all those times, I pray all those times, I say those words of Psalm 51 all those times, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” Lent is the same way – sometimes we are confessing multiple times in one day.  Sometimes we need to say the decalogue, and we need to confess our sins, and we need to hear Psalm 51.  And before we go to bed, we may need to confess to God again.  We do all those things with confidence because our God is a god of mercy, hesed, and restoration, always looking for ways to renew God’s covenant with us.  God’s persistence with us is what inspires our work this Lent.  So yes, create in us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit within us – every week, every day, every hour.  Amen.

[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.

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On Finding the Holy…

Tags

Christ, devotion, discipline, disorder, God, habit, holy, Lent, repentance, rhythm, room, routine, sacred, sinfulness

“Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross,” by G. Roland Biermann.  Photo taken by Jennifer Andrews-Weckerly at Trinity Episcopal Church, Wall Street.

It was a pretty simple question.  “How is your Lent going?”  What was not simple was my answer.  As a priest, I feel like my answer should have been, “It’s going really well,” followed by a list of things I am appreciating about the season.  But this year, I have been having a hard time finding my Lenten rhythm.  Part of the reason is that I scheduled a brief vacation right at the beginning of Lent, experiencing a powerful Ash Wednesday, but missing the first Sunday in Lent, the beginning of our digital Compline offering, and our first Wednesday night of worship.  Being away also meant that I got off-schedule with our family devotional time at breakfast.  Meanwhile, the book I planned to read with a book group for Lent got lost in the mail and had to be reordered while my fellow readers got ahead of me.  I had expected to re-center at our Lenten Quiet Day, but that had to be cancelled.  And so there I was on Sunday, left with this question about Lent, feeling like my Lent was not really off to a good start.

Part of the challenge for me is that I am a creature of habit.  I like routine and order.  I am able to focus more clearly when life is ordered in a regular pattern.  I think that is why I like Lent so much.  Lent encourages us to find a regular pattern – whether we have given up something daily, we are reading something devotionally each day, or we are praying at a particular time.  Regular services are added, or maybe we just commit to not missing any of the Sundays in Lent.  Regardless of our practice, the whole purpose of Lent is to create a rhythm for six weeks that deepens our relationship with Christ, and draws us out of sinfulness and into repentance and renewal of life.

But the more I thought about the question about how my Lent was going, I realized that perhaps the disorder of my Lent is forcing me to find the holy outside of the construct of patterns.  So, yes, the book I wanted to read did not arrive on time; but its delay meant that I more fully enjoyed my vacation and was not distracted during my “away” time.  Yes, I missed several routine things in the first week of Lent, but I also got to experience some incredible things while away – seeing the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for the first time, stumbling into a city-wide Stations of the Cross designed by artists in New York City, finding beautiful religious artwork in churches and art museums, and even unexpectedly enjoying a midday Eucharist with my husband – something that never happens in my normal routine.

This year, I am beginning to think my new Lenten discipline might be finding the holy in the disordered chaos of life.  It means I have to pay attention to the little moments of life where God is trying to break in:  the blessing of a glass of wine with friends, the pure joy of a three-year old laughing, the sacred experience of holding a newborn baby, the power of a hug as someone’s eyes well up with emotions of fear or grief, the sacred invitation into pain as someone texts, calls, or emails what is on their mind.  It is possible that I will regain some semblance of Lenten order as Lent goes on.  But if not, I am feeling especially grateful for the ways in which God is present every day, even when I do not feel like I am making room for God.  So, I suppose my new answer is that my Lent is going really well.  How is your Lent going?

On Repentance, Joy, and Journey…

Tags

Advent, Christ Child, Jesus, journey, joy, love, prepare, repent, repentance, sinfulness

Photo by Jennifer Andrews-Weckerly

One of the long-standing debates among clergy and scholars is whether or not Advent is a penitential season or not – a mini-Lent, if you will.[i]  There are arguments both ways, some saying absolutely yes; to prepare our hearts for the birth of Christ, our job is certainly to repent of our sinfulness.  Others who disagree with Advent being a season of penitence argue the season is more about joyful expectation and anticipation, and is distinct from the penitential season of Lent.  Meanwhile others argue that the both Lent and Advent are for both penitence and joy.

I am not sure I have made up my mind about these debates.  What I can tell you is that in the decluttering of my heart in preparation for the Christ Child, and in listening to the lesson appointed each Sunday, I know I am, and the world around me is, in need of some repentance.  As case after case pours in of sexual harassment and abuse, I am aware of how far we have drifted from the ways in which Christ longs for us to treat one another.  From the ways that we eviscerate one another online, or talk behind our neighbor’s backs, I know that we have lost a groundedness in Christ Jesus’ message of love.  From the ways in which we have stormed away from the communion table, I feel how deeply broken we are as a world.  I play a part in not correcting those sins, and sometimes actively participating in them.

And so, this Advent, my preparation feels a bit like a journey.  The first step is going to involve a bit of grief – for every woman or man who felt shamed or silenced by a society who would not affirm that they are created in the image of God, and should never suffer bodily violation; for the loss of an ability to see shades of gray instead of seeing black and white; for the hateful things we say and do to one another.  The second step is going to be some real repentance – not just naming the grief, but claiming my role in the degradation of others.  And then, hopefully, by the time we get to Christmas Eve, I expect to arrive at the manger, not with an armful of gifts, but the open arms of humility, repentance, and renewal.  I may not have words, but I long for the evening when I can bow in front of the Christ Child, rejoicing in the gift of love, forgiveness, and transformation that Jesus is for all of us.  Whether that means this Advent is a season of penitence or not, I am not sure.  All I know is this year, I am grateful for the journey.

[i] https://livingchurch.org/covenant/2016/11/29/is-advent-a-penitential-season/

Sermon – John 18.1-19.42, GF, YA, April 14, 2017

Tags

betrayal, blasphemy, chief priests, confession, cross, denial, evil, failure, God, Good Friday, Jesus, Judas, passion narrative, Peter, scapegoat, Sermon, sinfulness, transform

I have been thinking this week about how every year we read the same story of Jesus’ death.  Unlike the Christmas story that we eagerly anticipate hearing each year, this story seems like a masochistic practice of hearing the same devastating story over and over again.  And we do not just read this story on Good Friday.  In addition to John’s version of the passion narrative, we read one of the synoptic versions on Palm Sunday.  Twice in one week we relive the painful story, catching interesting variations.  But the ending is always the same:  death, finality, failure.  At least on Palm Sunday, we use various voices, making the story feel like a performance.  But today, one sole voice, tells the achingly raw story – a story we would rather skip, or soften, or cry out to the reader, “Please stop!”

In hearing the story this year, I was struck by the failures of three characters.  The first is probably the easiest culprit:  Judas.  In Mathew’s gospel there is at least a feigning of loyalty as Judas greets Jesus as “Rabbi,” and kisses his cheek.  But John does not play such games.  In John’s narrative, Judas is fully on the side of the persecutors.  He boldly brings and stands with the soldiers and police.  He does not greet Jesus, or apologize.  He is confident in his decision.  He stands proud, even as we now are able to see his profound failure.  His ignorance of the depth of his betrayal is almost worse than the actual betrayal.  His confidence that this is for the best, is the first crack in our hearts as we hear this painful story.

Then we have Peter – precious, passionate, pitiful Peter.  For all the times he gets things right, and all the endearing times he gets things wrong, today is just a spirit-crushing failure.  In Matthew’s gospel, Peter denies knowing Jesus.  In John’s gospel, Peter denies his discipleship – his very relationship with and dedication to the Messiah.  In the face of Jesus’ “I am,” claim[i] today, Peter’s claim is “I am not.”[ii]  For all the wonderful, powerful, sacrificial moments in Jesus today, Peter is shameful, cowardly, and self-serving.  Even after being warned that he will deny Christ, Peter denies Christ in spite of himself.  That cock’s crow is the second crack in our hearts as we hear this brutal story.

The third character today does not always get as much attention, but their failure is perhaps the worst.  Whereas Judas and Peter deny and betray a friend, the chief priests deny their very God.  They say seven words to Pilate today that should be more shocking than anything said.  “We have no king but the emperor.”  We often get distracted by their words, because we know that they are meant manipulate Pilate’s sense of authority.  But the chief priests, the religious, moral guides of the people of faith say today, “We have no king but the emperor.”  Of course, we have to think back to remember why this statement is so profoundly painful.  You see, once upon a time, God was the king of Israel.  The people worshiped Yahweh, and Yahweh alone.  But the people got greedy, and begged Yahweh for a king like the other nations.  And so God anointed kings through God’s prophets.  But the chief priests take their self-centered sinfulness a step further than our ancestors.  They deny God today.  Their claim to have no king but the emperor is treason against our God – blasphemy.  And with their claim, our heart lies cracked in two as we hear the rest of the awful story.

Of course, blaming Judas, Peter, and the chief priests would be an easy way to scapegoat our way out of this dark day.  There are even Christians who claim that the Jews crucified our Lord.  But we know the truth.  We know that we are the Jews.  We know that we are Judas and Peter and the chief priests.  We know that our heart fractures with each vignette because they remind us of times when we have stood on our soapboxes, certain of our moral claims, only to later look back and see whom we betrayed and trampled in the process.  We know that that our heart fractures because we are reminded of those times when we knew the right thing to do, said we were going to do the right thing, and then failed to do the right thing – over, and over, and over again.  We have heard that same cock crowing.  We know that our heart fractures because we have put other gods before our God.  Sure, the gods have varied:  money, power, security, ego.  But we have gotten so lost in our gods that we said and did things that would have inspired a gasp from anyone more faithful than ourselves.  The failures of Judas, Peter, and the chief priests are not just failures of those men, two thousand years ago.  The failures of Judas, Peter, and the chief priests are our failures.[iii]

I think that is why we tell this story year after year, twice a week from different gospels.  We tell this story over and over again because we fail over and over again.  Though the specific characters are important, the characters live and operate in us centuries later.  That is why the story is so compelling – not because we can gather together and wag our fingers at those people.  The story is compelling because the story is eerily close to our own sinfulness.  Part of the devastating nature of this story is how complicit we are in the story.  Though the powers of evil might want us to deny our culpability in this story, what is hardest about this story is how close to home the story really is.

Now, you I do not ever like to leave the pulpit without a word of hope, a reminder that risen Lord redeems us all.  But today, I encourage you not to rush to the empty tomb.  Take time to sit in our collective confession, to tarry on those things done and left undone which are separating you from God and one another.  Bring your failures or sense of failure to the cross and lay them there today.  Grieve the ways that you cannot help yourself, year after year, from sin and shame.  The whole season of Lent has been building up to this day.  The whole reason we took on those disciplines and came to church for confession was because we knew, ultimately, that this is where we keep tripping up:  in betrayal and denial of our very identity as beloved disciples and children of God.  We are the ones bombing others.  We are the ones racially profiling.  We are the ones denigrating women, the poor, and the oppressed.  We are the ones, century after century repeating the sins of the faithful.

Lay all that sinfulness at the cross today.  Whether you venerate the cross in the liturgy today, wear a cross around your neck, or pray with the cross on your prayer beads, the power of the cross is to absorb all those failures and to transform them into something worth living.  You can, and perhaps should, feel the powerful weight of your sinful patterns today.  But let them die at the foot of the cross with Jesus.  Lay them naked at the cross, for all the world to see.  There is relief in that confession, the depth of which you may not feel fully until our Easter proclamation.

[i] Susan E. Hylen, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 299.

[ii] Karoline Lewis, John:  Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2014), 222.

[iii] Rolf Jacobson, Karoline Lewis, and Matt Skinner, “SB 535, Good Friday,” April 7, 2017, found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=873 on April 8, 2017.

On Sacred Snippets…

Tags

balance, chaos, God, goodness, holy, Lent, lenten discipline, liturgy, prayer, sacred, sinfulness

Photo credit:  https://prayerbookguide.wordpress.com/living-the-season/lent/

I know many Christians who loathe the season of Lent.  They find the season to be heavy-handed, to be too somber and full of self-loathing, and to be a bit of a downer.  I am not one of those Christians.  Lent is probably my favorite season of the Church Year.  There is an honesty about Lent that feels more authentic to me.  I feel like we do not have to pretend in Lent – pretend to be happy, pretend to have our lives together, pretend to be perfect.  Instead, Lent feels like a great equalizer – a time when we all confess our utter inability to live the lives we intend, and our utter dependence upon God.  Add on top of that intentional disciplines, liturgies that articulate the tension of our sinfulness and goodness, and additional church programming, and I come alive during Lent.

But this year, I have been struggling a bit with Lent.  I have gone through all the motions of Lent:  I am reading a book with a study group, I am playing Lent Madness with my oldest child, and I am attending a weekly ecumenical worship service and fellowship gathering.  I have also worked with our liturgical team to change up the liturgies to make them just different enough to shake up the senses.  I am helping teach a bible study in preparation for Holy Week.  I participated in the winter emergency shelter our church hosted last week.  The Lenten “wheels” are all in motion.  But I find this year that I am having a difficult time getting my Lenten grounding.

Now, it could be that my family has been in and out illness over the past month.  It could be that the church schedule has been particularly full, leaving me working most Saturdays this past month.  It could be that I’m still adjusting to my first full year at Hickory Neck, not having shaped a Lenten season here yet.  Whatever is going on, I was gently reminded by my Spiritual Director once that there is no wrong or right prayer life.  Our prayer life is a reflection of the rest of our life.  The Director told me that it was no wonder that my prayers were happening on the go much of the time – because juggling a family of four and a parish means that prayers happen with the rest of life.  In fact, it is unlikely that I will have an hour of prayer time every morning – because balance means finding varied ways to pray in various stages of life.

Remembering that instruction, I have been shifting my expectation of Lent this year.  Since there is little likelihood that Lent will slow down, I am trying to catch meaningful moments as they fly by.  Like how my seven-year old demands that she be allowed to go to Ash Wednesday services to get her ashes or how she begsto go to the winter shelter one more time.  Like how a parishioner calls between drop-offs to talk about navigating the faithful raising of children.  Like how the Great Litany shakes me to my core.  Like how a sermon I prepared speaks to me on a totally different level as I am preaching it.  Like how a conversation with a parishioner reminds me of the powerful ways we are living into God’s call to respect the dignity of every human being.  I may not be finding long periods of silence, setting apart times of dutiful Lenten practices, or mastering a Zen-like experience at church.  But holiness is happening all around me.  My hope now is to savor each moment for just a bit longer, honoring the holy moments God throws my way in the midst of a chaotic season of life.

The Sound of Silence…

Tags

brokenness, church, contemplations, Episcopal, God, listen, noise, prayer, Rite I, silence, sinfulness, worship

Photo credit:  advisoranalyst.com/glablog/s015/05/27/jeff-miller-the-sound-of-silence.html

In almost every parish I have served, there has been an 8:00 am, Rite I, spoken service.  The crowd usually is not that large.  Because the service is spoken, it tends to be very quiet and to be the shortest service of the day.  Those who are attracted to the service usually like the language (We use “thee” and “thou” language and the service has a more penitential tone.)  Others like the brevity of the service – appreciating both going to church and having the rest of the day free.  While others like the service because it feels more contemplative and centering.

Though the service is always pretty quiet in whatever Episcopal Church you choose, what I have noticed about the 8:00 am crowd at Hickory Neck is that they tend to be not just prompt, but early.  Every Sunday, at least five minutes before the service begins, everyone is seated and is silent.  Up until this past Sunday, I found the practice unsettling.  On Sundays, I am usually amped up, and ready to jump into liturgical leadership.  As an extrovert, I am chatty, and am used to some lighthearted conversation before the service starts.  So the silence immediately before the service feels discordant with my pent-up energy.

But this past Sunday, I remembered a complaint long ago from a fellow parishioner at the Cathedral where I became an Episcopalian.  She used to complain that the beginning of the service was not meant to be happy hour – she was irritated by the chatter all around her when all she wanted to do was kneel on the prayer cushion in front of her and enjoy a moment of silence before the service began.  Even the bulletin had a comment at the beginning that reminded people that we should respect others’ desire to begin our worship in quiet contemplation and centering prayer.  Though I appreciated the guidance, I never really “got” it – until this past Sunday.

The beauty of five minutes of silence before worship is that you can let go of all the stuff on your to-do list.  The beauty of the five minutes of silence before worship is that you can let go of the pain, worry, anger, or stress that is ever present and present yourself humbly before worship.  The beauty of the five minutes of silence before worship is that you can listen to God instead of talk to God.  As a celebrant, I do not know that I will ever be able to use those last five minutes to center myself (I tend to arrive much earlier at church to find that centering time).  But as one who facilitates worship, I have found myself greatly appreciating the gift of those five minutes for our parishioners.  I could use a good five minutes today to just listen.  In the noise of mass gun violence, terrorism, racism, poverty, and suffering, I am a bit out of things to say to God.  Instead I would rather kneel in silence today and give humanity’s and my own brokenness and sinfulness to God.  What might you offer to God today in that silence?  What do you imagine you might hear in that silence?

Sermon – John 13.1-17, 31b-35, MT, YB, April 2, 2015

Tags

belonging, brokenness, church, dinner, Eucharist, failings, footwashing, forgiveness, God, home, identity, Jesus, joy, Last Supper, Maundy Thursday, peace, renewal, sacred, Sermon, sinfulness, strength, table

The dinner table is where sacred things happen.  The dinner table is where food is served that can satisfy a hunger, can heal an ailing body, can delight the senses, and can invoke a nostalgia like no other.  The dinner table is where stories are told, days are recounted, prayers are said, and laughter is had.  The dinner table is where places are set, dishes are passed, plates are cleared, and remnants are cleaned.  The dinner table is the host of all things mundane – like that frozen meal you threw together before you ran off to the next thing; and the dinner table is the host of all things momentous – like that gloriously planned and executed Thanksgiving meal that you hosted for your friends and family.  Because the dinner table can do all these things, the dinner table becomes the place in our home where sacred things happen – a holy site for one’s everyday and one’s extraordinary moments.

The dinner table where Jesus and his disciples gathered for that Last Supper was no different.  They had gathered at table hundreds of times in the three years they had spent together.  There had been learning and laughter, stories and questions, arguments and celebrations.  In many ways, all of these things seem to happen in the course of this one night during the Last Supper.  Jesus and the disciples are likely chatting up a storm, talking about the days events, when Jesus does something extraordinary.  He gets up, takes off his outer robes, and washes the feet of his disciples.  This kind of event is unheard of.  Hosts and well-respected teachers do not wash others feet; that task was assigned to a household slave.[i]  And some of the midrashic commentary suggests that not even a Hebrew slave was expected to perform such a menial task.  Instead, the slave might bring out a bowl of water, but the guest would wash his own feet.[ii]  So of course, a lively debate ensues with Peter, who does not understand what is happening.  Jesus washes Peter’s feet anyway – and washes Judas’ feet – before returning to that dinner table to explain what he has done.  He goes on to explain that not only will he die soon, but also that he expects a certain behavior after he is gone – that they love one another.

That is the funny thing about dinner tables.  They can bring out the most sacred and holy of conversations.  The dinner table is where one tells his family that he has terminal cancer.  The dinner table is where one tells her best friend that she lost her job and has no idea what she is going to do.  The dinner table is where the young couple announces that that they lost their pregnancy.  The dinner table is where the college student tells his parents that he is dropping out of school.  We tell these awful, scary stories at the dinner table because we know that the table can handle them.  The table is where we gather with those who we care about and is therefore the place where we can share both the joys of life and also the really hard stuff of life.  Though our table may have never hosted a dinner as beautiful as one of the tables Norman Rockwell could paint, our table is still a sacred place that can hold all the parts of us – the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly.  We can share the awfulness of life there because we know that those gathered can handle it, and can carry us until we can be back at the table laughing some day.

What I love about our celebration of this day is that all of those things – the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly – were present that night with Jesus and his disciples.  So yes, earlier in the evening, there probably is a raucous conversation.  The disciples are gathered at the table, in all their imperfection: those who love Jesus with a beautiful innocence and those who greedily hope to be at Jesus’ left and right hand; those who humbly understand Jesus and those who want Jesus to victoriously claim his Messianic power; those who profess undying faithfulness (even though they will fail to be faithful) and those who actively betray Jesus.  At that table Jesus not only talks about how to be agents of love, Jesus also shows them how to love.  On this last night – this last night before the storm of Jesus’ trial, crucifixion, and death – a sacred moment happens at the dinner table.  And though we do not hear the story tonight, we also know that Jesus then breaks the bread and offers the wine, instituting the sacrament of Holy Communion.

We know the rest of the story.  The disciples, who still do not really understand Jesus fully, muddle their way through footwashing and Holy Communion.  Then those same dense disciples sleep their way through Jesus’ last prayers.  One of those disciples becomes violent when a soldier tries to seize Jesus.  And eventually, most of the disciples betray and abandon Jesus altogether.  To this unfaithful, dimwitted, scared group, Jesus offers a sacred moment at the dinner table, inviting them into the depths of his soul and a pathway to our God:  and encourages them to love anyway.

Our own Eucharistic table is not unlike that dinner table with Jesus.  Tonight, we too will tell stories, sing, and laugh.  We too will wash feet in humility, embarrassment, and servitude.  We too will hear the sobering invitation to the Eucharistic meal, and will walk our unworthy selves to the rail to receive that sacrificial body and blood.  We too will argue with God in our prayers, pondering what God is calling us to do in our lives and resisting that call with our whole being.  We too will lean on Jesus, longing for the comfort that only Jesus can give.  And we too will hear Jesus’ desperate plea for us to also be agents of love – not just to talk about love, or profess love, but to show love as Jesus has shown love to us.

In this way, our Eucharistic table is not unlike the dinner table in your own home.  Our Eucharistic table has hosted countless stories, arguments, and bouts of laugher.  Our Eucharistic table has witnessed great sadness and great joy.  Our Eucharistic table feeds us, even when we feel or act unworthily.  And our Eucharistic table charges us to go out into the world, being the agents of love who are willing to wash the feet of others – even those who betray us and fail us.  This Lent, we have been praying Eucharistic Prayer C.  In that prayer, the priest prays, “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.”[iii]   This Eucharistic table, like our own dinner table, can handle all of us – all our failings, sinfulness, and brokenness.  This table can fill us up with joy, forgiveness, and peace.  This table can be a place where we find belonging, identity, and security.  But this table is also meant to build us up – to give us strength and renewal for doing the work God has given us to do – to love others as Christ loves us.  Sacred things happen at this table.  Those sacred things happen so that we can do sacred things in the world for our God.  Amen.

[i] Guy D. Nave, Jr., “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 279.

[ii] Mary Louise Bringle, “Homiletical Perspective, Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 279.

[iii] BCP, 372.

Lenten hope…

Tags

already, Easter, God, hope, Lent, not yet, repent, sinfulness, spring, weary, winter, work

Picture credit: http://www.hellopamevans.com/selling-home-spring-smart-move/

Today is a day I have been longing for for at least a month.  The church bells are playing, the sun is shining, the temperature is rising, and I can see bits of grass under mounds of snow.  In some ways, the dreariness of winter has been most appropriate.  We are in Lent after all, so the feeling of weariness seems appropriate.  Any hint of spring would only tease us into a sense of relaxation – something we do not associate with Lent.  And yet, today feels like a little taste of Easter – a promise of what is to come in just a few short weeks.  For some reason, I really needed that taste today.

Of course, we always live our lives in a state of “already and not yet.”  As Christians we understand that the kingdom of God is already present and not yet fulfilled.  We live in a strange state of in between – of knowing that the Savior has come, and yet a time of waiting for the return of the Messiah.  It is an odd reality, and yet how we also understand this odd time.

Lent can be that way too.  We already know what happens after the crucifixion of Jesus.  Therefore staying in the moment, staying in the state of repentance and thoughtfulness about our sin feels contrived or forced – like pretending those birds aren’t chirping when we clearly hear them.  But that is also the beauty of Lent.  In fact, I think that is why we can experience Lent at all.  How else could we agree to delve into the depths of our sinfulness, our separation from God and others, without the promise of the Resurrection.  The Resurrection does not excuse us – it simply anchors us so that we can do the hard work that we need to do during Lent.

So today, I will breathe in the little promise of Easter.  I thank God for the gift of sun on my face and the trickle of melting snow.  And then I will get back to Lent with a little more energy and hopefulness.

Sermon – Luke15.1-10, P19, YC, September 15, 2013

Tags

belonging, church, faith, God, Jesus, party, people, Sermon, sinfulness, welcome

One of the cool things about wearing a collar around in public is the very interesting conversations that I get to have with total strangers.  For me in particular, many of the questions are not just about being a priest, but also about my gender.  Most people come from religious traditions that have not exposed them to female priests, and so they have all sorts of interesting questions – and to be honest, I think most of them are trying to figure out if the Roman Catholic Church started ordaining women without them noticing.

But once we get past the surface stuff, I usually end up asking them about their own faith experiences.  All sorts of emotions flit across peoples’ faces – from discomfort, to mistrust, to guilt, to simply hesitancy.  Just this week I had a long conversation with a woman at Staples who had a cemetery connection to St. Margaret’s; but as soon as I asked her about what church she currently attends, the stammering and eye-contact avoiding began.  I was truthfully just trying to see if the woman could use a church home, but I think she interpreted my question as judgment.  These kinds of reactions happen to me a lot, and I think the reason is that people have a lot of assumptions about church based on past experiences or even stereotypes.  There is a sense that they need to have their life more together before they even darken the door of a church; that certain people will not be accepted in church; that if they do not agree with everything that others believe they will not be welcomed; or that church is full of a bunch of hypocrites.  There is even a video that we posted on our Facebook page this week about the reasons people give for not coming to church, and all those fears and suspicions are articulated with vulnerability and honesty.

So on this “Welcome Back Sunday,” as we think about what the church is and who belongs, who do we get in our Scripture readings today?  First, Jeremiah tells us of a people so far steeped in sinfulness, that refuses to repent and return to God, being utterly destroyed.  If you remember, God invited Israel back into covenant relationship in our lesson last week – to be molded into a new people by the potter.  But the people did not listen, and now their sinfulness and unwillingness to return to God has led to judgment.  Then, in our Epistle lesson to Timothy, we hear about Paul, an apostle who admits that he was once the most horrible persecutor of believers in Christ.  If you remember, Paul used to be named Saul.  He was a faithful Jew who was persecuting the Christians because he believed them to be proclaiming a false Messiah.  Only after his dramatic conversion experience does he become Jesus’ apostle.  Finally, in our Gospel lesson, we hear about a sheep that has wondered off from the flock.  Though the shepherd has 99 other sheep to worry about, he leaves them in the wild to find the one that is lost.  If I had to pick three people to feature for an advertising campaign for the church, whose attractive features I could promote as being representative of the appealing nature of the church, I doubt the Israelites, Paul, or the lost sheep would be on the top of my list!

Of course, that is the funny thing about churches.  As much as we want people to know that all are welcome, we also are always trying to put our best foot forward.  We do choose pictures of happy, young, diverse people in our advertising because we want people to believe that we are all those things.  And in some ways those things are true, certainly of St. Margaret’s.  We are a group of people who are happy to be here, and we do have young families and some diversity.  But what our glossy advertising glosses over is that we are also all humans here.  We all have our flaws, and we all fall into separation from God and from one another at times.  There have been times when each person in this room, like the Israelites, has fallen so far into sinfulness or separation from God that we do not even know how to begin to make our way back.  There have been times when we have been as hateful and judgmental as Paul – at times our hatefulness directed toward others; or worse, at times our hatefulness directed toward ourselves.[i]  And there have certainly been times when each of us has wandered away from the flock – maybe because we just could not relate to church anymore, maybe because we were hurt by or angry at the church, or maybe because life just got the best of us.

We sometimes think about church as having insiders and outsiders.  Even in the gospel lesson, we see that division.  At the beginning of the gospel lesson, we hear the Pharisees and the scribes grumbling about how Jesus welcomes the tax collectors and sinners.  Jesus spends the rest of the lesson explaining that insiders or outsiders are totally different in Christ.  In fact, when that one lost sheep is found what happens?  A party!  Now, if we had been the shepherd, and if we had even considered the ridiculousness of leaving 99 healthy sheep at risk, our next response upon finding the sheep might have been to scold or punish the sheep.  Or if losing the sheep had been our fault, we might have been privately relieved upon the sheep’s return or quietly told a few close family members.[ii]  But no, this shepherd shouts on the mountaintop and invites all the neighbors in to celebrate.  A party ensues because in Jesus’ world, every person is important, valued, and loved – no matter where they are or where they have been.

When I was in high school – I know this might surprise you – but I was a bit of nerd.  Although I developed a wide variety of friends, I never quite felt like I fit in wholly to any one particular group.  I sort of patched together a network of friends, but no one group make me feel fully accepted and like I could be fully myself.  One summer, I went away to a six-week program that gathered talented high school students from all over the state.  My focus area was math, but other focus areas included literature, choral music, art, Spanish, and dance.  I left home that summer not knowing anyone who would be in the program, and yet as the summer went on, I found like I had found a place where I belonged.  Finally, I was meeting people like myself, who also felt slightly off from the rest of their high school classmates, who introduced me to all sorts of music, expression, and life.  I came back for that following school year knowing that I still did not have a group like that at high school, but there were people out there who knew me and loved me fully.  That sense of belonging, and total acceptance kept me going for years to come.

As I think back to that summer at Governor’s School, I realize that they taught me what church, at its best, is really like.  At church, all are welcomed in – the person thought to be beyond saving, the judgmental persecutor, and the one who feels lost or who has strayed away.  But those descriptions do not fit just one person.  The truth is we have all been each of those persons at some point in our lives – and I am sorry to break the news to you – but we will all be each of those persons again at some point in our lives.  Sometimes we are the lost person who will be feted, and sometimes we are the flock or the neighbors who will celebrate someone being found.  In fact, the reason why we can be those celebrating is because we know the feeling of being the one who is celebrated.  Because the roles are ever shifting, we know what the experiences are like on all sides.

That is the beauty of a church community.  We are all welcome because we have all been, are currently being, or will be in the future in any of the roles we hear about in Scripture today.  And the party just is not the same without each one of us there.  That party is the same party we hold every week, when we gather around the Eucharistic table, having confessed our sins, having embraced one another at the peace, and then gathering around the table to receive the celebratory food of Christ – knowing fully that each of us is welcome no matter where we are on the journey – because we have all been there.  Amen.

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[i] Stephanie Mar Smith, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 66.

[ii] Mary H. Schertz, “God’s Party Time,” Christian Century, vol. 124, no. 18, Sept. 4, 2007, 18.