Sermon – John 11.32-44, All Saints, YB, November 4, 2012

09 Friday Nov 2012

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All Saints’ Day is the Day that the Church commemorates the saints of Church History, who died living a faithful Christian life.  We remember notable saints, like St. Margaret of Antioch.  But we also remember all the saints, who by virtue of their baptism die into the sacred communion of all saints.  On this day, we remember those whose lives inspire us; and we remember those saints to us – our friends and family – who have died an earthly death.  And the way the Church celebrates those deaths is no different than the way we celebrate any funeral – by focusing on resurrection.  In our gospel lesson today, we see resurrection most clearly in the raising of Lazarus, who was dead for four days, and who is raised by Jesus to new life.

Now, I do not know about you, but after the week we have had, the last thing I feel like celebrating is resurrection.  We have seen actual death, as Hurricane Sandy and the aftermath have killed many and destroyed homes and livelihoods.  We have had our own neighborhoods plunged into suffering and destruction.  And many of us have suffered in various ways – with no heat, no hot water, no electricity, and no gasoline.  Sure, things could be worse for us, but they are not great.  There is a certain point at which we know we should be saying, “It could be worse.”  But honestly, “it” feels pretty bad.  And the slow progress on recovery and the horror stories of places like the shores and Staten Island make us feel worse.

So now, the Church wants us to focus on resurrection?  Trust me, I have been resisting pondering resurrection all week.  I even considered switching the lessons to the normal propers instead of the All Saints’ Day propers.  But I figured, although the lectionary is not divinely ordered, when I stick to the lectionary, God always moves in us for good.  So I starting thinking about all those who have died this year – those saints we celebrate today.  I thought of those who have died in this storm.  I thought of Miriam and Dick Gow.  I thought of what we say at every Christian burial – that life is changed not ended; that Jesus is the resurrection and the life; that we celebrate eternal life, not mourn earthly death.

With those saints in mind, I returned to our gospel lesson.  Two things gave me hope.  First: Jesus weeps.  Our gospel lesson tells us that Jesus is angry about Lazarus’ death.  The text says that Jesus was “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.”  But scholars agree that what the Greek is actually saying is that Jesus is angry[i] and that Jesus weeps.  If Jesus, the fully human and fully divine Son of God, can be angry and weep at death, so can we.

But Jesus does not linger in that emotion long.  Second, Jesus turns to resurrection.  Now we obviously cannot bring the dead back, as Jesus does with Lazarus.  But we can rest our hope in the resurrection.  This two-fold action of Jesus – anger and sorrow, followed by joyful hope in the resurrection – is our roadmap for this All Saints’ Day.

So despite the fact that we might want to linger in mourning, or despite the fact that the mourning comes in waves over time, we grasp tightly to the hope of resurrection.  And so, with the saints, we turn toward resurrection this day too.  We turn our hearts to the restored life that we find here on Long Island – as we see extension cords stretched across streets for neighbors to share power; as we welcome neighbors and strangers to come in our homes to share our power, heat, or to do a load of laundry; as we share our now unnecessary non-perishables, water, and blankets; or as we help an elderly neighbor remove branches and trees from their yard.

But we also turn to the resurrection life here at St. Margaret’s today.  We have been through almost a year together now, and in that time we have seen much resurrection life.  We have welcomed newcomers, revived outreach ministries, and begun new formation programs for children, teens, and adults.  We have seen life after what, at times, felt like a death, and we are walking into what feels like a time for great joy and hope.  So, instead of wallowing in grief, today, we choose marching forward with resurrection hope.  And even though pledge cards may seem hardly appropriate today, we take our pledge cards, those symbols of our commitment to resurrection living, and we march them forward today.  Because even in the midst of suffering and earthly death, today we claim life.  We proclaim that we put our energies into the life of faith here in this place, and the work of witness and mission we do right here in Plainview.  Because we are a resurrection people, joined by the saints, living a resurrection life.  Amen.

[i] A. K. M. Adam, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 241.

Sermon – Job 42.1-6, 10-17, P25, YB, October 28, 2012

28 Sunday Oct 2012

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After a month of reading through the book of Job on Sundays, you would think today would feel victorious.  Finally, Job is rewarded for all his suffering!  The text tells us that God restores the fortunes of Job and gives Job twice as much as he had before.  Family members return to greet him and shower him with gifts, and he is blessed with ten new children.  For any of us who have been through a time of suffering, this should feel like great news.

But this week, as I have been praying on this text, I cannot shake the hollow feeling of this good news today.  Sure, Job has ten new children, but they can never erase the memory of the ten children he lost.  Sure, all his wealth is returned, but after losing everything, having his friends and family abandon and blame him, and sitting covered in boils, surely wealth had lost its value and importance to Job.  The good news of this text has left me feeling hollow because I just cannot imagine how Job lives into this good news.  How can he conceive children with his wife who mocked him and God, risk loving again, and know that his children will never know the reality of the suffering he experienced.  And his family and friends who return with gifts – where were they when he needed them?

I struggle too because we do not really get answers today from Job or God.  We never really find out why God allows Job’s blessings to be taken away.  The only semblance of an answer happened last week when God railed against Job for assuming that Job could understand the ways of God.  But an answer does not come in the blessings either.  The last verses of the book of Job do not “say that God restored Job’s fortunes and relationships in response to Job’s words of repentance and humility.  Instead, God’s reasons for giving things to Job are as unexplained as the reasons they were taken away.  God does not explain suffering, but God does not explain beatitude either.”[i]  We are left at the end of a month of Job no clearer about suffering and blessing than we were when we started.

Maybe this ending to Job feels hollow to me now because I have seen and experienced too much of Job’s journey.  I have held in prayer friends, family, and parishioners who have sat in the ashes of suffering with neither of us finding satisfactory answers.  I have listened to St. Margaret’s stories of pain and suffering that happened in the years before my arrival.  And I have had more friends than I wish to count who have lost a child in pregnancy.  Many of us here have lost teen or adult children.  Having journeyed with friends, I know that you can never replace those children.

I think also the ending of Job feels hollow to me because the ending does not address Job’s relationship with God.  God and Job have been on incredible journey.  Job moves in the book from talking about God with his friends to talking more and more directly to God.  What was once a theological concept is now an intimate relationship.  Job manages throughout the journey to hold on to “God with one hand and shake his fist at God with the other.  He stays in relationship with God, addressing God directly even from the depths of despair.”[ii]  But the ending of Job does not really give us a clue about what that relationship looks like going forward.  Are they back to square one?  Does Job go back to being blessed and on good terms with God?  Now that his blessing is doubled, does God slip back into the background, unnecessary or at least not thought about too much?

As I have struggled with this text, I finally began to find footing in the small details of the text today.  The first details are in Job’s confession at the beginning of the lesson.  Job confesses that his relationship with God has changed.  Job says, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.”  In other words, Job declares that he had heard about God, but now he knows God.  This journey of suffering and pain changes Job’s experience of God – from being a relationship of dutiful obedience and distant reverence, to a deep intimacy and knowledge.  He no longer simply knows God cognitively; Job knows God in the depths of his being.  As Job experiences utter devastation, loss, abandonment, and pain; as Job rages at God in anger and fury; as Job moans through his misery – Job never pushes God away.  Through some forty chapters of pain, Job manages to grow into deeper love of God.

The other small detail in Job where I find footing today comes in how he orders his life in the midst of his restored fortunes.  Job does not tell his family and friends – the abandoners – to go away, holding a grudge against them that can never be healed.  Instead, he receives their gifts without protest.  Job does not live a guarded life.  Instead, he risks new life with his wife which results in the birth of ten children.  And Job does not return to the same old way of doing things.  Instead he gives his daughters an inheritance just like his sons.  That may not sound like a big deal by modern standards, but giving an inheritance to his daughters is a huge deal.  This act by Job is a radical and innovate way of extending his own transformation by transforming the social order for his daughters.[iii]  The way that Job orders his life during his restored fortunes says a lot about how this ordeal has transformed him.

In the midst of what can feel like a hollow ending, we two can find hope for our own spiritual journey.  We learn two things from Job.  First, our relationship with God is indeed a journey.  The experience of Job gives us permission to be angry with God, to question God, to be a fully and ignorantly limited human with God, and to humbly stand with God.  We can do all of this not as defeated individuals but as transformed individuals – so transformed, in fact, that we can be a people who endeavor to risk love.

The other thing that we learn from Job is to redefine our understanding of blessedness.  We never hear in the text about how Job feels about being doubly blessed.  I like to imagine that Job is sober about his second blessing, his experience of suffering coloring the blessing.  On Simone’s first day of school in Delaware, when I met her teacher, we both were shocked by the recognition.  Simone’s teacher was a Habitat homeowner who had gone through the program when I worked with Habitat for Humanity.  Here was a woman who had gotten into a situation of housing instability.  Her income was 25-50% of median income.  Her children were squeezed into one room at a friend’s house.  Their anxiety and stress had been overwhelming.  But she put in hundreds of hours of sweat equity, she built a home, and she stabilized her family.  Simone’s teacher could have gone back to school to find a higher-earning job.  But she stayed with this school, forming and shaping one- and two-year olds into loving, caring toddlers.  Simone’s teacher was one of the most amazing women I have ever met, and she transformed my daughter’s life at a formative time.  Simone’s teacher could have been distant, cut-off from extending love, or resentful for her time in poverty.  But instead, Simone’s teacher was full of life and love.

Job, like this teacher, learned that he could use his blessing to transform others.  Job invites us to also consider the ways that we can use our blessings to transform others – to become a blessing.  In our stewardship campaign this year, we have been talking about how we are blessed to be a blessing.  Job shows us the way of living into this life.  Yes, I want you to consider how you can be a financial blessing to St. Margaret’s.  But I also want you to see the great invitation of transforming your spirit into one of blessing.  We all have a laundry list of things that could make us bitter, guarded, or careful.  But Job and God invite us to instead live the blessed life that blesses others.  We are promised today that we can live into a blessing life through the example of Job – a man who had every reason to abandon hope, love, and God – but who instead is strengthened in God, renewed in hope, and overflowing with love.  We too can embrace Job’s embodiment of being a blessing in this life.  Amen.

[i] Martin B. Copenhaver, “Risking a Happy Ending,” Christian Century, vol. 111, no. 28, Oct. 12, 1994, 923.

[ii] Kathryn Schifferdecker, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?tab=2&alt=1, as found on October 26, 2012.

[iii] Dale P. Andrews, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 199.

Blessed…

24 Wednesday Oct 2012

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As we journey into our stewardship season, we continue to reflect as a community about how we have been blessed.  This week, Fal Gibson offers a reflection on her own gratitude to God for the many blessings in her life.  I hope you will enjoy the blessing of Fal in her words as much as we enjoy the blessing of her presence every week!

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Beginning each day with “Thank you, God,” I set the tone for the entire day.  Whether I am going to work, or looking forward to a time of celebration with family or friends, starting today with an attitude of gratitude reminds me that God is the source of all blessings. I am thankful for blessings large and small, for expected and unexpected ones, and for the special people in my life.

I am blessed to be a part of St. Margaret’s church family, so I asked myself the question, what shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?  I need to support my church financially. I offer with joy and thanksgiving what God has first given me – my family, time and possessions. “Giving is a privilege, something we appreciate being able to do as a result of God’s grace.” (2 Corinthians 8:4)

Our church cost money to operate and, thus depends on the contributions of our members to meet the expenses.  The expenses that come with our lovely St. Margaret’s church: utilities, maintenance, upkeep, our educational programs, materials and equipment, St. Margaret’s newsletters and mailings to members and/or others in the community. The Bible says that everyone is to give “according to means” (2 Corinthians 8: 3, 11).

I pray for all of God’s children and see each one being divinely blessed.  I pray for all members of St. Margaret’s Church and for the beauty, joy and wisdom we all share as being part of a beautiful church family. Everyone is a unique and purposeful creation. I pray that every member is blessed with love, food, shelter, and safety.  I pray that the Episcopal Church of St. Margaret, with its red, welcoming doors will continue to be an important part of your spiritual journey. “Giving is a witness to the gospel, demonstrating the genuineness of the church’s love,” (2 Corinthians 8: 8, 24).

During our Stewardship campaign, I ask you to take some time and pray about how you can use the blessings, you received from God to further HIS Kingdom.  I think as receptive Christians you will be moved by scripture and the spirit to go beyond providing such support to give up a further portion of your money as a sacrifice.  Support and sacrifice: the first is our duty; the second our delight. I knew a member of our parish, Miriam Emerson, who made it her duty to make sure that the children at the Lillian Valley School in Barefoot, Idaho received school supplies, and the seafarers through the Seamen Institute received knitted hats and scarves every year with great delight.  Miriam was indeed a blessings to the St. Margaret’s church family and many others, and I was truly blessed to have known her.

I like to say that stewardship puts into practice our faith in God as our Creator, our Redeemer, and our Sustainer. Everything we are and everything we have belongs to God.  Can you feel the Holy Spirit at St. Margaret?  Can you count your Blessings and name them, one by one?  I can.  I pledged.  Wouldn’t you pledge and help Rev. Jennifer do the work within our parish and the outer community as God has called her so lovingly to do?

~ Fal. Gibson

Blessed to be a Blessing…

17 Wednesday Oct 2012

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Blessed to be a blessing.  This is the theme that the stewardship team has adopted this year as we begin to reflect on the abundant blessings in our lives and discern how we might use those blessings to be a blessing to others.  I have had the great pleasure of working with six other parishioners from St. Margaret’s since this summer, and we have all been discerning how our relationship with God and money are connected.  We have debated and discussed whether and how our faithful financial stewardship impacts our relationship with God.  We have helped one another draw the connections between our relationship with money and our relationship with God.  This work is on-going among us, as we continue to pray through this issue as we discern our own pledges this year.  Some of us have already witnessed how sacrificial giving can be life giving.  Others of us wonder how our attitude toward money can impact our relationship with God.  And so we continue to pray – for our own discernment, for each other’s discernment, and for St. Margaret’s.  We know that St. Margaret’s has been a blessing to us, and so we both want to be a blessing to St. Margaret’s, and we want St. Margaret’s to be a blessing to our community.  We invite you into this circle of blessing!

To help you get a better idea of the content of the Stewardship Committee’s discernment, I invite you to read articles in The Message, our parish newsletter, found on our website; and for the next three weeks, to see guest blog posts from Committee members.  This week, Debbie McGee offers her reflections.

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Although the calendar tells me it is October, the lingering warm weather triggered happy memories of warm and sunny days spent beachside this summer.  The soft, cool breezes, the gentle lapping of the waves and long quiet walks upon the sand gave me pause to the presence of God and the beautiful world he blessed us with.

God blesses us with many gifts – abundantly – and does so without any strings attached.  It is up to us to choose to be good and faithful stewards – to express our gratitude for all God’s blessings.  As we enter into Stewardship season, it is an opportunity for all of us to praise God through whom all blessings flow.

Join me in being a faithful steward – be generous with your treasure!  I feel so very blessed by the beautiful environment that God has created for us that I want to be a blessing to St. Margaret’s.  It is important to me that St. Margaret’s parish continues to thrive and makes a difference in the lives of our local community and beyond, while still providing the spiritual home so many of us treasure.

All good gifts around us

Are sent from Heaven above…

So thank the Lord, oh thank the

Lord for all his love…….

I really wanna thank you Lord!

 (Stephen Schwartz Lyrics & Music)

-Debbie McGee

Sermon – Mark 10.17-31, P23, YB, October 14, 2012

15 Monday Oct 2012

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For those of you paying attention to the gospel lesson today and who realize we are kicking off Stewardship Season this week, I promise I did not pick the lessons today!  We are blessed by a lectionary that guides us through our sacred scripture every year, and the use of the lectionary is one of the many things that attracted me to the Episcopal Church.  That being said, since Jesus so conveniently brought up the subject of money, it only seems fitting that we talk about money today.

We know that the issue of money was important to Jesus.  All three of the synoptic gospels tell a version of the story we hear today.  We know the story well, and tend to avoid the story like the plague.  At some point or another, we have convinced ourselves that this text does not really apply to us.  We do not see ourselves as rich – we can all think of someone who has more than we do and we all struggle with our finances at times.  But in the depths of our hearts, we know that Jesus is talking to us.  As Americans, we constitute five percent of the world’s population, but consume twenty-four percent of the world’s energy.  Americans eat roughly 200 billion more calories a day than we need, which is enough to feed 80 million people every day.  We consume about 159 gallons of water a day, while more than half of the world’s population lives on 25 gallons.  We have more shopping malls than high schools.[i]  Whether we prefer to admit the truth or not, we are the rich person that today’s gospel lesson is addressing.  And if Jesus is talking to us, Jesus is also asking us to give up our wealth because otherwise, we, the camels, have no chance of getting through that needle’s eye.

But before we go too far down the road to guilt or panic, let’s look at what Jesus is really saying in our gospel lesson today.  This young man is a righteous man who approaches Jesus with a genuine desire to ensure he is on the right path to eternal life.  He approaches Jesus humbly, racing to Jesus and kneeling before him like so many other sick people have.[ii]  He must have been fairly certain that his life was not whole to pursue Jesus like this.  What he may not have expected is what Jesus tells him.  Jesus tells him that he is living a righteous life – with one small exception.  His wealth, his possessions, his “stuff” is getting in the way of salvation.  His possessions and wealth have become a source of separation from God.  This is what Jesus is really after today.  Having money is not in and of itself evil.  We need money to survive.  But our relationship with money has the potential to separate us from God.

Wealth can separate us from God in one of two ways.  When we have abundant resources, we eventually assume that whatever needs to be done, we can do.  But this kind of self-sufficiency and self-produced security cuts us off from grace.  Life becomes an achievement earned or a commodity purchased rather than a gift gratefully received and shared.  God becomes unnecessary or simply another commodity.  And if security and worth are rooted in achievements and resources, amassing more becomes our driving motivation.  We cannot let up.  We cannot relax.  We cannot give sacrificially.  Wealth becomes addictive.[iii]

The other way that wealth can separate us from God is that wealth can separate us from those who are impoverished.  Our wealth makes avoiding the poor possible, keeping them out of sight and mind.  As we have been working through our hunger curriculum on Wednesday nights, we have all said at one point or another that we simply do not run into the poor that often in our daily lives.  As one bishop explains, the reason why that socioeconomic divide separates us from God is because, “We cannot know the God of Jesus Christ apart from relationships with the poor and the powerless.  God has chosen the poor, the least, the most vulnerable, those whom the world considers ‘the weak’ as special friends.”[iv]  If we want to grow closer to God, we must grow closer to those whom Jesus cared for the most.  And in order to grow close to the poor, we must examine our relationship with our own wealth.

Now all of this is not to say that Jesus is mad at the wealthy man or sees him as lost.  Mark’s gospel tells us that, “Jesus, looking at him, loved him…”  Now if you remember, Mark is usually the most succinct of the gospel writers.  Neither Matthew nor Luke includes this small detail.  So if Mark is including this detail, the detail is important.[v]  We need to know that Jesus loves this young man because in his loving gaze we learn that Jesus believes the young man has a chance.  The young man has a chance not because he can achieve this new life style.  In fact, when the disciples ask Jesus about this very issue of who can overcome the hurdles of wealth, Jesus says, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”  The young man cannot change his relationship between wealth and God alone.  That relationship can only be changed with God – because with God, all things are possible.

Today we kick off our stewardship season at St. Margaret’s.  For the next several weeks, we will be examining our own relationship between wealth and God.  In order to help us with that discernment, the Stewardship Committee has chosen the theme, “Blessed to be a Blessing.”  We chose this theme because we do not want us to have a guilty or conflicted relationship with wealth.  We want to see our individual wealth as a blessing that enables each of us to be a blessing to others.  All of us at St. Margaret’s have been blessed.  We have our basic needs met – a place to live, food to eat, and clothes to wear.  Most of us have been blessed beyond our basic needs – with cars, entertainment, and technology.  And we have been blessed spiritually by this community.  We have a community of faith where we can come and seek a deeper knowledge and understanding of God.  We have a community that engages us in the faith journey, challenging us to grow into the love of God.  And we have a community that sends us out in the world, showing us the real meaning of God’s love through our service of others.

This stewardship season is not a season to wallow in guilt and beat up ourselves.  But this season is a season to act.  God blesses us so that we can be a blessing.  So where do we start this work of being a blessing?  We start that work by righting our relationship between God and our wealth – our blessings.  As you are pondering your own experience of that relationship, I want you to consider how your pledge this year might be a spiritual discipline that rights that relationship; how this community might help each other right our relationships with wealth and God together.  Now I know we do not like to talk about money with other people.  But if this is a place of spiritual discipline, prayer, teaching, formation for our children and adults, and reaching out and loving our neighbors, where else is a better place to talk honestly about our relationship with money.  This community is forming each of us to be faithful disciples; but we cannot be fully formed unless we are willing to work on our whole being, including our relationship with wealth.  Our discipline of giving more generously and sacrificially – more out of blessing than obligation – can help us to loosen our grip on a relationship with wealth that separates us from God.  Your financial giving to Church is as much of a discipline as your prayer, your study, your serving, your seeking, and your worshiping in this place.  If we can put energy in those areas, we can put some work into our financial stewardship.

In the coming weeks, you will hear from every member of the Stewardship Committee about their own struggles with wealth.  You will hear about how looking at their relationship with money and God is transforming that relationship into one of blessing.  You will see Message articles, blog posts, and updates on our new stewardship bulletin board.  This committee of seven people is intentionally looking at how they feel blessed to be a blessing, examining the quality of their own relationship between wealth and God.  Their invitation to us is to engage in this reflection with them, to discern how God is moving in our lives, and to act.  We can do this work together, because with God, all things are possible.  Amen.

[i] Frank Thomas, “Can Rich People Be Saved?” Ex Auditu, vol. 22, 2006, 219.

[ii] Barbara Rossing, “Healing Affluenza:  A Sermon on Mark 10:17-27,” Currents in Theology and Mission, vol. 22, no. 4, August 2006, 300.

[iii] Kenneth L. Carder, “The Perils of Riches,” Christian Century, vol. 114, no. 26, Sept. 24 – Oct. 1, 1997, 831.

[iv] Carder, 831.

[v] Stacey Elizabeth Simpson, “Who Can be Saved?” Christian Century, vol. 117, no. 26, Sept. 27 – Oct. 4, 2000, 951.

Let my prayer be counted as incense before you…

11 Thursday Oct 2012

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On of my new favorite places is the prayer candle station at St. Margaret’s.  I was first introduced to prayer candles at my field education parish in Alexandria, VA.  I always marveled at the beauty of the candles burning, but never understood the practice fully.  Then, a year and a half ago, I went on pilgrimage with my parish in Delaware.  A colleague shared with me her practice of lighting candles and praying for people throughout the pilgrimage, and I became an immediate convert.  I started carrying coins and small bills just so that I had something to put in the donation box at each church as I lit candles along the way.

So you can imagine my excitement when I discovered that St. Margaret’s had a prayer candle station.  I love those candles for so many reasons.  Sometimes my prayers or my silence in prayer just is not tangible enough.  Lighting a candle makes me feel like I am doing something.  But once the candle is lit, it does so much more.  Watching the flickering of the candle calms the “doer” in me.  The flame’s flicker makes my prayer feel active – as if the prayer is alive outside of my heart.  Sometimes just staring at the flame allows me to quite myself enough to listen to God.  The active flame allows my energy to be somewhere outside of me so that I can be thoroughly silent.  There is also great comfort in the way that the flame burns for hours after I leave.  Even though am not bodily present, my prayer lingers on without me.

But what I especially love about our prayer candles is that they are not just for me.  Parishioners use them all the time – remembering those who have died, worrying about the health of a loved one, or lifting up their own struggles to God.  Having just blessed several pets, I imagine there has been a candle or two for a beloved pet.  I see our young children lighting candles.  I do not know if they fully understand the practice, but I sense that they understand that something holy is happening when they light those candles.  We often have family members of those buried in our cemetery on Sundays, and they often light a candle.  My favorite, though, happens when I walk into the nave at night, when all the lights are out, as I am rushing to another meeting.  I catch in the corner of my eye that one or more candles are burning.  At those moments, in the darkness, I pray to God for whoever has lit the candle, knowing that I am witness to the sacred conversation between someone and God.

Last week we celebrated St. Francis, and as I prepared to preach about him, I discovered that he asked that Psalm 141 be read to him as he was dying.  Verse two of that psalm has been replaying in my head all week, “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice.”  Sometimes, I think we assume our prayers are only a mental exercise – words we craft for God.  But our prayers involve all our senses – our hands that light candles, touching the flame to the wick; our eyes that watch the life of our prayers in the flame; our noses that smell the fragrance of incense lifted to God.  How is God inviting you into prayer this week?  What sensory practices feed your journey with Christ?

Sermon – Mt. 11.25-30, Feast of St. Francis, October 7, 2012

09 Tuesday Oct 2012

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“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.”  These words from Jesus are familiar, comforting words.  In Rite I, we often hear this passage quoted immediately after the confession.  They seem to offer a word of peace to us, who so often feel weary from life’s stresses, anxieties, and pains.  And, when we are suffering, these words can certainly be a tender word of encouragement and promise for us.

But these words today from Jesus offer so much more to us.  Jesus offers these words in the context of commissioning disciples.  Jesus has described the way of discipleship in the gospel of Matthew; discipleship means serving the poor, working for justice, and striving for peace.  This work will be long and hard; this work will be work that will make the disciples weary.  But to those willing to take on the work of discipleship, Jesus offers these words of comfort.  And then Jesus explains how this work of discipleship can be accomplished, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Now I do not know how much you know about yokes, but I have been learning a lot about them this week.  There are two kinds of yokes.  There are the kinds meant for one person:   imagine if you will the person hauling water from a well in the village, the yoke over her shoulders, while two buckets full of water hang below.  Although the yoke distributes the weight, the yoke is not necessarily easy.  The other type of yoke is a yoke for two animals.  Two oxen work together, making the workload easier.  If one ox is tired, the other pushes a little harder; later the roles reverse.  When constructed properly, a yoke for two is built to balance the work between two animals – the yoke does not chafe or rub.  A good yoke does make the work easier and light.

This is the metaphor that Jesus uses for the work of discipleship.[i]  When Jesus invites the disciples into the work of discipleship, he admits that the work will be difficult – but when yoked to Jesus, the work feels light.  When they fashion their steps in the steps of Jesus, they find that the suffering they face seems light.  Fighting for the poor, struggling for justice, striving for peace feels easier when yoked to Christ.  So often, when we are doing this work of discipleship, we forget this promise.  We think that we need to solve the world’s problems on our own, and we feel overwhelmed.[ii]  The “Study, Sup, and Serve” group has been talking about the issue of hunger the last couple of weeks.  As we learn more and more about how complicated hunger is – how hunger is not simply solved by giving someone food – we have all felt a bit overwhelmed.  Where do we begin?  How do we keep from being paralyzed by the weight of the work?  The problem of hunger seems impossible to solve.  But with Jesus yoked to us, we are promised that the yoke of alleviating hunger will be easy – the burden will be light.

On Friday, at our first edition of “Movies with Margaret,” we watched The Blind Side.  The movie is about an affluent white family in the south who encounter a poor, homeless, inner-city African-American boy named Michael.  They take him into their home, and all of their lives are transformed.  In the movie, the mother of the family, Leigh Ann, is challenged by some of her affluent friends who worry about the safety of her children with this boy around.  One friend concludes, “Well, you are changing that boy’s life.”  Leigh Ann insists, “No, you’re wrong.  He’s changing mine.”  Leigh Ann could have ignored Michael when she noticed that he was cold and homeless.  We have all made hundreds of excuses about why we cannot help this person or that person.  She could have only allowed him to stay in her home one night, having certainly fulfilled her Christian duty to shelter the homeless.  But she does not.  She keeps letting him stay.  She buys him clothes.  She helps him get academic help.  She builds his self-esteem.  And even though she takes on this very risky proposition – because Michael could have been violent, he could have stolen from her, he could have ruined her reputation in the community – even though she takes on this work, the work does not feel burdensome.  In fact, her helping Michael makes her happy.  The yoke is easy – the burden is light.

St. Francis, who we honor today, came to know Jesus’ burden as light as well.  Francis came from a very wealthy family.  He had a joyous youth, marked by revelry and social honor.  But once he encountered beggars and lepers, he suddenly gave up this way of life.  He renounced his privilege, and assumed a life of poverty, honoring the poor, the sick, and the disenfranchised.  By stripping himself of earthly wealth, which had become its own burden of sorts, Francis took on a new burden:  the burden of discipleship in Christ.  Francis began to see Christ in everyone – honoring the poor by living in poverty, caring for those less fortunate through the alms he collected, and by loving God’s creation by engaging that creation – whether by preaching to birds or negotiating peace between animals and humans.  Francis saw the bigger picture of God’s creation, and he was a faithful steward of that created order.  Through his work, he found great joy in the companions on the journey.  The yoke was easy – the burden was light.

The invitation of our gospel lesson is not simply a word of comfort – an invitation to curl up next to Jesus and hide from the world of pain and suffering.  The invitation from our gospel lesson today is to find comfort in the work of discipleship, of following Jesus.  Whatever the work might be – whether the work is alleviating hunger in our communities, caring for the poor and disenfranchised, or even sharing the Good News of Christ with a total stranger – the work will not be burdensome.

The first time I went on a mission trip was in college.  My mother was visiting during parents’ weekend, and the campus ministers had a meeting for parents to ease their concerns about us staying in a rural village in Honduras.  I remember my mom embarrassing me with questions about where we would go to the bathroom and whether we would be able to shower.  To her credit, I am not really a camper, and am pretty wigged out by bugs and filth.  But to both of our surprises, I found the trip was liberating.  When I travel on a mission trip, a different version of myself emerges.  I do not worry about my hair or makeup.  I seem to manage all manner of toilets – even if the toilet is a hole in the ground.  I seem to roll with whatever bugs I catch – and yes, I have caught everything from stomach bugs, sinus infections, and worms.  I morph into a person who does not need the comforts of this life.  The burden of being in a foreign and uncomfortable place rarely feels like a burden.  The joys that come from doing that work far outweigh the weight of the work.  That yoke of mission is fashioned so comfortably, and Jesus walks with me so steadily by my side in the yoke, that the yoke is easy – the burden is light.

This is the promise that Jesus offers today.  When we are wearied by trying to affect change for the poor and hungry, or even when we cannot get over the hump of inaction, Jesus promises us a yoke that is perfectly fashioned for us, and in which he will be our yoked partner.  Jesus yokes himself to us because we need him – for comfort, for encouragement, for strength.  But Jesus also needs us – to be his hands and feet in the world.  We do the work together.  In fact, the work will feel unlike work at all.  Because the yoke is easy – the burden is light.  Amen.

[i] Douglas R. A. Hare, Matthew, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993), 129.

[ii] Barbara Brown Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 21.

We are Family

03 Wednesday Oct 2012

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One of the most common ways that St. Margaret’s parishioners describe ourselves is that we are a family.  When parishioners say that, I think they mean it in a good way.  But “family” is a loaded word to me.  When you hear the word “family” you might think of a Norman Rockwell painting where everyone is happily and peaceably eating a family meal – maybe even a meal on Sunday afternoon, like the good ol’ days.  You may imagine happy times with your biological family – times of laughter, playing games, celebrating life milestones, and times of love and support.  Family can be a place where you are truly yourself and accepted fully.

For others, though, “family” brings up other reactions.  All of our families have some level of dysfunction.  We have had bitter fights over the years, times of alienation, and periods of estrangement.  Families somehow have a way of bringing out the worst in us, as if we automatically regress to our immature teenage selves.  If you have ever spent a holiday with a friend’s family, you may have seen your best friend transform into a different version of herself.  If you are married, you may have found some comfort in the fact that your family is no more dysfunctional than your spouse’s.

As I have been integrated into the St. Margaret’s community, I have begun to see that we are in many ways like a family – in the best and worst ways.  We seem to know each others “buttons,” and at times push them when we should not.  We know each other well enough that we let go of pretenses – and yes, we have been known to snap at each other in an impatient moment.  But we also have grown to love one another, to appreciate the funny quirks of each person, to laugh with and at one another, and we certainly have learned to celebrate life together.  We love each other the way that we love our family – in the blessed ways and the challenging ways.

As we celebrated our 15th Annual Fall Festival this past weekend, I was ever aware of all the ways that we were embodying family.  As I watched you help one another, laugh together, and enjoy yourselves, I realized that I too have come to see St. Margaret’s as my family.  I love our quirks, the ways that we tease one another, and the ways we welcome others into our crazy family.  I looked around last Saturday, and I was quite proud to be not only your rector, but also your family member.  As we continue to spread the word about the good work that Christ is doing in our community, I hope we can embrace that word, “family,” fully.  Come to St. Margaret’s.  We are a family – a fun-loving, Spirit-filled, flawed family.  Your fun-loving, Spirit-filled, flawed self is welcome!

Sermon – Mark 9.38-50, P21, YB, September 30, 2012

01 Monday Oct 2012

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Many of you know that brother is a missionary in China.  He and his wife are committed to the work of spreading the gospel in a country that is quite resistant to the faith.  When I tell people what my brother does, most people respond, “Oh, your parents must be so proud!  A priest and missionary in the family!”  And my parents are quite proud of my brother and the call that he is fulfilling.  But in the darkest, most judgmental and ego-centric places of my heart, I sometimes cringe when I hear the comparison between my brother and me.  I cringe because my brother and I have very different experiences of and ideas about Christianity and theology.  We disagree about many issues – gender roles, human sexuality, and Biblical interpretation.  We have had heated debates over the years and times of silence.  Ultimately we have agreed to disagree and we try to respect each other despite these differences.  But when I tell people that my brother is a missionary, I have secretly wanted to explain, “…but not our kind of missionary.  Not the kind of mission work that we do.”

We all do this kind of boundary drawing.  For those of us who are opposed to the “Religious Right,” we often find ourselves explaining at parties how we are Christian, “but not that kind of Christian.”  For those of us worried about the liberal bent of the Episcopal Church, we find ourselves wondering how we can save the Church from the presumptuous progressives.  Neither side is wrong.  As adults, we have been on a faith journey, and along the way, we have developed a relationship with God and an understanding of who Jesus is to us.  Our relationship with God is vital to our lives.  So when someone else claims to also have a vital relationship with God, but that relationship is based on things that we disagree with or cannot understand, our oppositional reactions are only natural.  When we claim to believe in something, there are natural and reasonable boundaries around what we do not believe.  We have staked our faith in an experience of God – in our case – in the Episcopal Church’s understanding of God.  Boundaries about what is or is not an appropriate expression of faith are important.

Defining the boundaries is exactly what the disciples are trying to do in our gospel lesson today from Mark.  Jesus has been teaching the people and the disciples, trying to illuminate the new revelation of God through Jesus Christ.  Jesus has been especially schooling the disciples, since they will need to spread the faith after his death.  There are a lot of false teachings around, and many people trying to claim the same healing powers that only Jesus has.  So, when the disciples hear that a man is casting out demons in Jesus’ name – essentially claiming that his healing is endorsed by Jesus – the disciples shut him down.  “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and tried to stop him, because he was not following us,” they say.  You hear the boundaries forming.  He was not following us.  We are the true disciples, and we are the ones mentoring under Jesus.  Only we can heal in Jesus’ name.  We are in.  He is out.

But Jesus sees this situation very differently.  “Do not stop him…Whoever is not against us is for us.”  As one bishop explains, what Jesus knows that the disciples do not is that, “Jesus, the very incarnation of God’s power and presence, refuse[s] to live by the divisions and barriers of his time.  He challenge[s] the practice of confining God’s redemptive and transforming action to one’s own race, one’s own religious institution, one’s own political party.  When the disciples want exclusive claim to God’s reign, he challenge[s] them to see God’s presence and power manifested in those who [are] not members of their group.”[i]  Jesus is unwilling to draw the boundaries that the disciples want.

But, before they can even understand why Jesus is eliminating boundaries, Jesus turns the tables and tells them not to worry about others, but worry about themselves.  Jesus says, “If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea.”  In other words, if the disciples get in the way of others’ faith – even if that faith does not follow the rules, does not look like what faith in Jesus should, or seems to be uninformed – if the disciples get in the way, they would be better off dead.  Yes, that is how serious this is.  Jesus basically explains that he is more worried about the disciples messing up someone else’s faith than he is worried about someone who may be healing in his name without actually understanding everything about Jesus.  Quite bluntly, Jesus tells the disciples to get out of the way.  Worry about yourselves.  Worry about your behavior as a disciple, not everyone else around you.  The disciples’ faith will define how others believe, and if the disciples are in the way with all this who-is-in-and-who-is-out business, they would be better off dead.

The words are harsh from Jesus, but there is a nugget of grace for the disciples.  Jesus says, “…no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.”  In other words, invoking the name of Jesus – whether one knows the same Jesus the disciples know, whether one understands Jesus fully, whether one is inside or outside of whatever boundaries have been drawn – the name of Jesus has power.[ii]  Jesus explains that when his name is invoked, a person changes.  Jesus’ name does something in the person that we cannot understand or control.  Jesus’ name has a power that is bigger than the disciples and bigger than any rules, fences, or boundaries the disciples try to construct.

This invitation into the openness of God’s grace is for us to realize today.  Many of you know that I love gospel music.  When I used to commute to church on Sundays, I would turn on the local gospel station and blare the music loudly – partially because that was some of the most spirited music I would hear because my parish played mostly traditional Anglican choral music.  The tricky thing about gospel music is that gospel music can do two contrasting things:  the theology of gospel music is sometimes not at all in line with Anglican theology, especially as that theology relates to money, sin, or suffering.  However, gospel music has a way of reaching into your gut and pulling at those very deep and dark things that we struggle with, and shining Christ’s light into those dark places.  There was many a Sunday when I would find myself crying on the way to church because a song spoke such deep truth to me.

This is what Jesus is trying to show all of us today.  If I draw a box around acceptable theology, I could never enjoy about half of the gospel music that I like.  But Jesus reminds me today, that anyone who invokes his name can be used for good.  That includes my brother and the hundreds of people with whom he is spreading the Good News, and that includes my own ministry, despite my ego-centric, judgmental, presumptuous self.  God is using both of us for good.  Our invitation today is to see others with this same lens of God’s grace.  When we stop drawing boxes around acceptable uses of Christ’s name, we may find ourselves in heated, but illuminating discussions about the way God is moving in our lives.  When we stop creating boundaries around acceptable experiences of Jesus, we may find that others teach us something about the Jesus of whom we thought we had full knowledge and mastery.  When we stop drawing lines around proper invocations of Christ’s name, we may find that the people who walk through St. Margaret’s doors are different from us but make our lives much richer.  As one professor explained, “every time you draw a line between who’s in and who’s out, you’ll find Jesus on the other side.”[iii]  Jesus invites us today to loosen those boundaries and let the power of his name not only work through others, but also work through us.  We may be surprised at the ways in which our open minds allow our hearts to be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit here at St. Margaret’s.  Amen.

[i] Kenneth L. Carder, “Unexclusive Gospel,” Christian Century, vol. 114, no. 25, Sept. 10-17, 1997, 787.  Quote changed to present tense for the purpose of this sermon.

[ii] Sharon H. Ringe, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 117.

[iii] David Lose, http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=620 as found on September 28, 2012.

Refreshment…

26 Wednesday Sep 2012

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This weekend my parish is hosting its annual Fall Festival.  Like any major event, there is a flutter of activity and anxiety about making the event a success – both for the tangible results of raising money for the parish and our outreach efforts, but also for the satisfaction of seeing months of labor come to fulfilling fruition.  Consequently, the St. Margaret’s campus is a bit different this week.  There are many more people on the campus, a lot more activity around the church, and the grounds have been beautifully transformed as we prepare for our guests.

In the midst of all this flurry comes Yom Kippur.  The average church might not notice Yom Kippur, but St. Margaret’s is blessed to be neighbors with a wonderful synagogue.  We offer up our parking lot for their congregants this day, and the neighborhood is transformed with people walking to worship.  On this overcast day, I am grateful for the pause that our Jewish brothers and sisters are giving me.  On this day that our brothers and sisters fast, pray, and confess their sins, I am reminded of my own need to root myself in devotion to God, even when it feels like there is no time.  My brothers and sisters, simply by living out their faith, are encouraging me this day to take a break from all the flurry of life to remember why I have life, and why that life is so abundant.

Tonight, I am grateful for the opportunity to take a similar pause with my faith community.  Tonight we begin a six-week series focused on hunger.  Even in Plainview, New York, there are people who struggle with hunger.  And so we are gathering together to prayerfully reflect on scripture, to educate ourselves on the complexities of hunger, and to inspire ourselves to live out Jesus’ call to feed the hungry.  As I was preparing to teach tonight’s session, I began to wonder whether this week was a good week to start an education series, given all our stress and anxiety about the Fall Festival.  But eventually, I came to see that this is just what we need before this event.  Not only does taking this hour help us to get out of our own stress and think about a very different imminent stress that our neighbors face everyday.  Focusing on hunger tonight can give us the motivation we need to raise as much money as we can to help combat hunger here on Long Island.  I am thinking of tonight’s class as a water-break for the soul in a marathon of running this week.  I am looking forward to the refreshment!