Tag Archives: change

Anniversary advice…

13 Friday Dec 2013

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Whenever I meet a couple celebrating their 50th anniversary, my question is usually the same, “So, any advice?”  The answers have varied widely: advice about whether or not it is okay to go to bed angry; varying ways of decision-making; and my personal favorite, to only argue in the nude.  As a child of divorce, in a generation of divorce, those couples who make it to fifty years garner a deep level of respect from me.  I find myself drawn to them, watching how they care for one another, wondering what rough patches they faced along the way that could have led to the dissolving of the marriage, but that they managed to survive.  As someone who has been blessed with twelve years of marriage, I am already amazed at the vast changes that have impacted my marriage.  I can only imagine what lies ahead in the next 38 years.

My parish celebrates fifty years of ministry this Sunday.  Over the course of the year, I have heard stories of times past and the joys of a long life together.  But this week, I find myself wondering what advice we might offer to anyone considering the next fifty years of ministry here.  Having listened to and watched my parish for the last two years, I see a few nuggets of wisdom emerging.  First, change is inevitable.  We often joke around here that we sometimes do things because that is the way we have always done them.  But the truth is many, many things have changed in our history.  Whether it was a particular clergyperson’s way of doing the liturgy, a particular party that “always” happens, or a group that has functioned for a long time, change is the one constant in our history.  Over the last two years of my tenure with St. Margaret’s, many have commented on the sheer volume of changes in our life together.  But from all the stories I hear, change has been a constant for the last fifty years of our life together.  So if we know change is constant, perhaps our task is not to prevent that change, but to find the best ways to be flexible in the midst of change, knowing some change with stick, and some will not.

Second, what feeds us today will not necessarily feed us tomorrow.  This bit of advice comes out of the wide variety of programs I have seen come and go over our fifty year history.  I have heard many people speak longingly about programs that have fed us over the years – a bowling team, a youth program, or a prayer ministry.  But just like we age and change over time, our spiritual needs and the needs of each generation changes over time.  This realization gives us two pieces of freedom:  first, we can let go of the idea that any one program is sacred because programs will come and go; second, we can keep dreaming and expecting that there are programs that are going to come along that dramatically impact our lives – even though we have yet to experience them.

Finally, though people, ministries, and systems come and go, one thing remains constant:  our love and longing for Jesus Christ.  Jesus is the one constant for every person who walks through our doors.  We may all experience Christ differently or may be at different points in our walk with Christ – whether at the beginning, in the midst of a deep relationship, or even questioning how we feel about him altogether – but Jesus and a longing for an experience with the sacred is what keeps us coming back to this place and keeps us inviting others into the joys we have experienced in this place.  Clergy will come and go, long-time parishioners will move or pass away, and life changes will bring people in and out of our parish.  But Christ is always with us – challenging us, feeding us, and forming us into better versions of ourselves.  Remembering that constant grounds us more than any of that stuff that inevitably changes over time.

As we gather this weekend, to worship, to feed on the Eucharistic feast, and to dance the afternoon away, I look forward to observing our parish – watching, wondering, and reveling in all that has been, all that is, and all that is to come.  I cannot wait to see what the next fifty years teaches us!

For everything there is a season…

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

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I have a parishioner is quite passionate about football.  Actually, I have several of those, but this one in particular schedules her meetings and plans around when a particular New York team will be playing.  There is no negotiation involved, unless you are simply willing to meet without her.  Not being a professional football fan myself, I do not entirely get it; but I find her resoluteness both amusing and oddly helpful.

Football season is not the only thing I find myself juggling these days.  This past week, we returned to our full Sunday schedule at church.  We went from a summer of one Sunday service and a leisurely coffee hour, to two Sunday services, a welcome back event in between, and a coffee hour afterwards.  After that, I had a church meeting and went to the hospital to bring communion to a parishioner.  There are times – usually around late May – when all I can think about is stepping into the slower Sundays of summer.  But by early September, I am eager to get back to this crazy schedule.

I think part of me longs for the change because everything else is changing – schools are gearing back up, sports are beginning, and coolness is in the air.  I also long for the change because the church feels more alive at this time.  The busyness is not tiring yet, but invigorating.  A summer’s worth of planning comes to fruition, and then the “so what?” begins.  I love seeing how changes are received, what works, and what needs tweaking.  I love seeing the pleasant surprise on people’s faces when a new change works out better than expected.  And I love the collective wisdom about making things work.

This time of life reminds me of the first verse of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”  Like the seasons of creation change, sports seasons change, so too the church changes seasons.  I very much enjoyed the summer season in church these last few months.  But now, I am looking forward to the possibility that this season, this time, has to offer.  The possibilities are great, and my hopefulness is high.  I hope you will join us in this season at St. Margaret’s to see what this season brings you.

Sermon – Jeremiah 18.1-11, P18, YC, September 8, 2013

12 Thursday Sep 2013

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I am a huge fan of pottery.  I have been given many gifts of pottery, my favorite being a chalice and paten upon my graduation from seminary.  When most of us think of pottery, we immediately think of a beautiful finished product:  the smooth texture, the radiant glaze, or the hands that carefully formed the bowl or other item.  We imagine the potter at his wheel, gracefully shaping clay into a work of art.  We might even recall the intimate scene from the movie “Ghost” where Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze romantically shape a piece of pottery together.

But the more I have read about potters and pottery this week, the more I realize how flawed this romantic image is of a potter.  First of all, potters begin their work with about a two pound chunk of clay that they then have to knead and work into a more elastic form.  They eventually have to throw the clay onto a wheel and get the clay centered.  This work is so difficult that new potters can take hours just to get the clay centered before they even begin the messy work of forming the clay.  Once they figure out the centering, then there is the work of using water, the spraying of wet clay everywhere, and of course the endless mistakes.  Exerting too much or too little pressure, making a wall too thin, or creating an unintended shape can mean starting all over.  One woman watched a man form a beautiful bowl, only to have the whole thing collapse when he tried to take the bowl off the wheel.  The man destroyed five bowls before he finally removed a perfect bowl properly – each time having to start from the messy beginning.[i]

This much more realistic version of a potter making pottery is what the Lord uses as a metaphor today for how God will treat the Israelites.  The Lord sends the prophet Jeremiah down to the potter’s house to hear God’s words.  Jeremiah says, “So I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was working at his wheel.  The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him.”  Jeremiah immediately recognizes the metaphor God is trying to communicate.  God is the potter and Israel is the vessel.  Clearly Israel has veered off course – in fact, Israel has already fallen at this point in history, and Judah is the only group of God’s people left who are still in active covenantal relationship with God.  So this people, who have journeyed from Sinai to the present, who have lived a covenantal life of reciprocal obligation and blessing, have hit yet another point in life where they have fallen away from their covenantal promises and face the option of being destroyed and discarded or being taken back to that compressed version of clay and being shaped into something more pleasing to God.[ii]

Knowing what we know about the potter’s work, we immediately see that this will not be easy work for God’s people.  Life as they know life will be collapsed, and new life with God will take a very different shape.  That transformation will be messy and uncomfortable, and in fact may take multiple attempts at reshaping.  Though the Israelites are offered a way out of destruction, the way out will be painful, disheartening, and disorienting.  All that is familiar will be changed, and though God is holding the Israelites in God’s hands, those hands do not promise to be gentle or permissive.

I have been thinking a lot this week about St. Margaret’s journey with the potter these last fifty years.  We were first centered as a rag tag team of Episcopalians at a local American Legion Hall.  Then the potter reshaped us time and again with various vicars.  When we called our first rector, we started all over again, finding new life and new ministries, God’s hands exerting pressure on us in various ways.  Even as we faced difficult times with our second rector, God’s hand was ever with us.  I am sure many of us felt like we were being compressed down into a clay heap, only to start being shaped again by God in these last couple of years.

Of course, all of that sounds a bit too much like the glossed over version of some of our favorite hymns.  In “Spirit of the Living God,” we hear, “Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.  Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me…”  Similarly, in “Have Thine Own Way Lord,” we hear, “Have thine own way, Lord!  Have thine own way!  Thou art the potter, I am the clay.  Mold me and make me after thy will; While I am waiting, yielded and still.”  Those are the old timey hymns I grew up singing, and I always remember singing them with heartfelt desire.  Of course, now that I know a little bit more about the pottery-making process, I am not sure how wholeheartedly I could sing those hymns.  Those hymns are calling on God to do exactly what God suggests in Jeremiah – that God will reshape us, remold us, and require us to be pliable, cooperative subjects in the process.

Since I entered the search process here about two years ago, we have been talking about change.  Change is a word we throw around a lot, that most of say we are ready for, but the majority of us secretly and not-so-secretly hate.  We know that change is necessary and inevitable, but we will fight change with every ounce of our being – even sometime unconsciously or at least without malicious intentions.  And yet change is what we have all been undergoing for the past two years, and the change does not seem to be stopping.  If we were to imagine St. Margaret’s on God’s Pottery Wheel, we might be able to think about the ways God keeps adding water to us, keeps exerting pressure, and keeps pushing us this way and that way.  It is entirely possible that God has even crumpled us down into a heap again and started afresh with us within the last two years.  I know we have all felt that potter’s work.  Every single person here, including me, at some point in the last two years has groaned under God’s constant shaping and molding.  This kind of shaping is not pretty, is messy and painful, and quite frankly is hard.  Most of us do not prefer to stand, “waiting, yielded and still.”  We prefer that God back off and just go ahead and declare us a beautiful bowl, and be done with us.

Now you have probably learned by now that I always like to give us a bit of good news on Sundays to take home.  I am going to try to give you a little taste of good news, but I have to warn you that today’s good news is a little bitter sweet.  The good news is that the metaphor the Lord gives to Jeremiah is one of promise.  God does not say that the potter takes the spoiled vessel and throws the vessel into the trash.  The promise to Israel is that God, despite all their sinfulness and evil ways, still gives the Israelites another chance to return to God and to the covenantal promises they have made to be in relationship with God.  But God does not promise that their misshapen selves get to stay misshapen.  They will still need to bend to the potter, and be willing to be shaped into something new and beautiful.

This is the colored promise for us as well.  God does not abandon us when we resist God and the changes God wants to make in this community.  God does not lose hope on our complaining selves that would much rather do things the way we have always done them.  God promises to keep God’s powerful hands around us, holding us with the seasoned hands of a potter.  God will be with us.  But God is also going to keep pushing us, and keep painfully shaping us, and artfully bending us into beautiful vessels that can glorify God and show Christ’s light to our community.  So maybe this week, we need to pick up our Lift Every Voice and Sing hymnals and start singing “Have thine own way, Lord!  Have thine own way!  Thou art the potter, I am the clay.  Mold me and make me after thy will; While I am waiting, yielded and still.”  Perhaps if we sing that old hymn enough, we might actually start yielding to the potter who loves us, is always with us, and who desires for us to be a beautiful vessel of God.  Amen.

[i] Christy Jo Waltersdorff, “Centering the Clay,” Brethren Life and Thought, vol. 50, no. 1-2, Wint. – Spr. 2005, 53.

[ii] Bruce C. Birch, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 29.

Seeds of hope…

22 Wednesday May 2013

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Planting This weekend our parish will plant the vegetables in our Garden of Eatin’ – a Grow to Give Garden that will feed our neighbors in need.  As we prepare for the day, I am overwhelmed with emotion – pride, satisfaction, joy, and hope.  A garden to feed others may seem simple enough, but this project has been a bit of a microcosm of what our parish is facing in general.  We are a tough parish that has survived some hard times.  The tenor of our parish has been transformed in the last couple of years into a place of hopefulness and joy, but our history has not left us unscarred.  Out of our history, and perhaps with a little human nature sprinkled in, change has become something to dread rather than to eagerly anticipate.  Of course every church, and probably every individual, does not actually like change, but I believe our tenacious will to survive has resulted in a deeper desire to control, and therefore a fear of change.

From that perspective then, you can see why I am so excited about this garden.  This garden represents the best and the worst of us.  At our worst, we worry about using our property in an alternative and perhaps detrimental way.  If there is to be change, we want to make sure every single detail has been considered by every single person.  We fear the long-term impact of taking on a project that will need long-term care.  But at our best, we see the wealth of our eleven acres and want to share that wealth in a new way.  We see neighbors who need food that we can grow.  We know we will get to know each other a lot better with dirty hands and sweaty brow than we might in our Sunday best.  And we dream that our labor might be a tangible witness to the power of God’s love in our community.

So for me, digging into that dirt, and planting those seeds and seedlings this weekend, is a proclamation that we will be the best version of ourselves.  We will take the uncertain road, we will submit to change, and we will open our hands to our God who will use those hands for good.  A garden may not seem like a big deal to others, but to me, this garden is a bold statement about who we have been, who we are, and who we want to be.

Finding joy in exhaustion…

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

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hands_teamThis month has been one of those months at church that has been super busy.  Three out of four Saturdays have had events, and Sundays have been full too.  That alone can be exhausting, as many of us have commiserated.  But I was thinking about it today, and the truth is that all of the things we are doing are a big deal.  I think that some of our exhaustion is not just because our weekends have been full, but that the things that have been filling our time are emotionally and spiritually significant.

Two weekends ago, our Vestry had our annual retreat.  During that time we were exploring our evangelism efforts here in Plainview and imagining how we might reinvent some of our space to welcome visitors.  Both think about going out into the community and rearranging our own house raised all sorts of apprehensions and anxieties.

Last weekend, we put the soil in our new Garden of Eatin’ – a Grow to Give garden that will allow us to feed our hungry neighbors this summer.  The work was fun, took a physical toll, and brought on a mixture of emotions.  Like any new project, this project has brought a whole host of conversation and at times, conflict.  So in some ways, seeing things moving was completely refreshing and life-giving.  But we still have a ways to go before emotions are completely settled.

Later that afternoon, we held our Annual High Tea.  What I loved about the event was that the attendees ranged widely – total strangers to our church, friends of parishioners, and then a good dose of parishioners.  Now if only we can be as bold to invite those folks on Sundays as we are to invite them to our tea, we would be heading in the right direction.  But thinking about that practice can bring anxiety too.

Finally, this coming weekend, we have two major events.  First six of our teens are being confirmed at the Cathedral.  Although this comes at the end of months of preparation, I really see this as a beginning for them.  They declare on that day that they are ready to take more intentional steps in their journey with God.  It is a declaration made without certainty, but faith that God will be with them along the way.

On Sunday, our confirmands will lead us in worship as they serve in various roles.  We will conclude that service with a parish wide conversation about our ministry and mission here in Plainview.  This is a conversation that parishes throughout the diocese are having.  I am excited to see where the conversation goes, but I know that even this conversation will lead to some tough questions and uncomfortable answers.

What makes me happy about all of this is that this is all good stuff.  That does not mean all of it is easy or does not make us spiritually or emotionally drained.  But if we are not feeling drained, then we are not letting this work really do what it needs to do among us.  So as tired as we are, I hope you can hang in there with me.  I think God is doing great things among us.

Sermon – Luke 4.14-21, EP3, YC, January 27, 2013

30 Wednesday Jan 2013

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The word is spreading.  The new rabbi in town is incredible!  He is clearly filled with the Spirit.  He has become quite the sensation in Galilee and everyone expects his appearance in Nazareth to be impressive – what home town would not love to see their son come home and preach a good word?!  Nazareth, expecting to be proud and wowed, sits in the synagogue.  And then it happens – Jesus does not preach a scintillating sermon.  Instead, he finds a bold text – a text from Isaiah that we all know contains the words that the Messiah will use – reads the text, and then he just sits down.  The room is silent.  We all just stare.  The shock is heavy in the room and words fail us all.  Our minds are running amok with questions.  Did he just read that text from Isaiah?  Is he saying he is the Messiah?  Is he the Messiah?  What does this mean?  What does he mean the scripture is fulfilled?  Of course, no one says those words aloud.  We just stare.  We stare in silence.

Words have mighty power in our lives.  As we celebrated the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King this past week, I have read countless quotes from his life and ministry.  He was a man who knew how to use words powerfully.  In an age where we are barraged by words – in media, in politics, in books – we sometimes forget the power of words.  We tend to skim words, to gloss over them, looking to quickly glean information because we are inundated with words.  In our haste, we forget the power of words.

The catch with words is that words have the power to make both positive change and to get us into trouble.  My grandfather always used to say, never put anything in print that you do not want the world to see.  We have watched these last months how words can cause trouble.  This fall’s political campaign led to many people saying words they regret.  Just in the past two weeks, two big athletes, Lance Armstrong and Manti Te’o, realized the chaos that their words could produce.  Teens every week are terrorized by the words of cyberbullying – with reputations ruined worldwide when seemingly private photos or acts are posted on Facebook for all to see.[i]

This is why that silent synagogue is so powerful today.  Jesus takes words that everyone knows, and he changes them.  The Messiah, the anointed one, has been long awaited:  so long awaited, that I doubt many people still believed the Messiah would come in their time.  So Joe’s boy rolling up into the synagogue and declaring that he is the anointed Messiah is a big deal.  These are words of power and weight – so heavy that the room is completely silent.

Part of the weight of Jesus’ words comes from whom he is claiming to be.  The other part of the weight of Jesus words is interpreting what they mean for the world now.  For Jesus, and for his followers, these words from Isaiah through Jesus become a mission statement of sorts.[ii]  If you remember, in Luke’s gospel Jesus is baptized, goes into the wilderness to be tempted, and this is the first that we really hear from Jesus.  These words are not just bold words – these words will define the entire remainder of Luke’s gospel.  If you were writing one of those fifth-grade book reports, you can almost hear the introduction, “The theme of Luke’s gospel is that Jesus brings good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom to the oppressed, and the year of the Lord’s favor.”  For the rest of this lectionary year we will be hearing stories of Jesus fulfilling these words – good news, release, sight, freedom, favor.  This is what Jesus’ ministry is about.  Jesus takes the words from Isaiah and he changes them.  And through changing them, he changes the world.

A video has been circulating this week called, “The Power of Words.”  In it, a blind man is sitting on a sidewalk, with a cardboard sign that reads, “I’m blind.  Please help.”  As he sits there, two or three of the tens of people who pass by actually drop a coin or two in front of him.  He silently feels for the coin and then puts the coin in his tin can.  Finally a woman sees him and stops.  She silently picks up his sign, turns the piece of cardboard over and writes something else on the sign.  Without a word, she walks away.  In the next several scenes everyone stops and gives the blind man handfuls of coins.  The woman eventually returns, and dumbfounded, the man asks her, “What did you do to my sign?”  She simply replies, “I wrote the same, but different words.”  As she walks away, we see that what she wrote is, “It’s a beautiful day and I can’t see it.”  She took a sign that said, “I’m blind.  Please help,” and she changed the words to, “It’s a beautiful day and I can’t see it.”  The video ends with these words, “Change your words.  Change the world.”[iii]  What the woman in this video does is she takes something we see everyday – a man asking for help, and makes him not so “everyday.”  By changing the words on his sign, she helps all see with fresh eyes.  Suffering and pain no longer seems acceptable simply because of her words.  She changes people with her words

This is what Jesus does in that temple.  He takes words with a certain set of values and meaning, and he changes them.  No longer will good news, release, sight, freedom, and favor be a future dream.  They will change now with Jesus Christ.  So perhaps part of the silence in that synagogue comes from the joyful realization that this liberation might actually happen in their time.  But another part of that silence comes from the implications.  If the Messiah is here, offering liberation from poverty, imprisonment, blindness, and oppression, then that means that the people of God will have to start living like the Messiah is here.  They too will have to work to bring good news to the poor.  They too will have to work to release the captives.  They too will have to care for the blind and the oppressed.  They too will have to honor the year of the Lord’s favor, the Jubilee Year when debts are forgiven, slaves are freed, and lands are left to rest.  Jesus’ words not only change the people of God’s reality, Jesus’ words will change the world, and the people of God’s behavior in that word.  This is big, silence-making news.

Jesus’ words change us too.  We too are left in silence as the weight of Jesus’ words hit us.  If we are to follow Jesus, we too are to be working for the poor, the imprisoned, the blind, and the oppressed.  As that reality waves over us, we too are silenced by the questions.  What does that mean for us?  How will this change my walk with God?  How uncomfortable is this work going to be?  How joyful will this work be?  Pondering these and probably many more questions is a good thing, even more so with Lent on the horizon and the looming of our own Jubilee year here at St. Margaret’s.  With the text ending as the text does today, we are invited to tarry in that silent pondering today.  But know that the pondering is not indefinite.  Jesus’ words hint at the immediacy of the work that is needed.  “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  So do the pondering you need to do.  But know that Jesus is waiting at the back door, ready for you to join him in the messianic work of good news, release, sight, freedom, and favor.  Amen.

[ii] Ernest Hess, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 287.