Tag Archives: conflict

On Blessings and Curses, and Surviving Thanksgiving Meals

23 Wednesday Nov 2016

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Colorful autumn

Photo credit:  www.fluentu.com/french/blog/french-fall-autumn-vocabulary-word-list

For those of you who know me well (or read this blog each fall), you know that I love the changing of the leaves during Fall.  Fall is my favorite season of the year – the cooler weather, the crunch of leaves, and the brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges that take your breath away.  The leaves turned later than usual this year in Virginia, so I have had time to enjoy their beautiful journey until now.  Just this week, a light wind was blowing, and a tree was raining down yellow leaves like a flower girl before the bride.  Some people like to stop and smell the roses.  I like to stop and revel in the beauty of God’s changing leaves.

Watching and being fed spiritually by that beauty this year led us to creating a Thanksgiving Tree at Youth Group this past Sunday.  We took a poster with a bare tree, and then used our post-it notes to cover the tree with things for which we are grateful.  We had five categories, including family, relationships, creation, God, and school/work.  I challenged the group to write down three things in each category – not just a one-word response, but an explanation of their gratitude.  Perhaps 15 notes seemed like overkill to the young adults, but what I was hoping was that the more they thought about the blessings in their lives, the less space the negative would have in their hearts and minds.

That is my prayer for each of you this week as we head into Thanksgiving celebrations.  Though we may have Normal Rockwell images of Thanksgiving Day meals in our minds, and although some of you may actually get that experience, the reality of most meals, especially if spent with family, is that they will include a fair share of conflict.  If you are lucky to avoid talking about politics, some other family drama will surely emerge.  Expecting that conflict, I invite you to start praying your thanksgivings.  If your crazy family promises to bring angst, start praying now about the things that bring you joy about each member of your family.  You may have to dig deep (Lord knows your uncle’s jokes can drive you insane – but maybe you can thank God for predictability with your uncle or for the knowing glances of your cousins).  But my guess is that the more you start looking at your family or friends with the eyes of gratitude, there will be a lot more space in your heart and mind for blessings than curses.

If you can master that practice of thanksgiving prayers throughout one of the more stressful days of the year, perhaps you can carry that prayer practice through the next month.  As you hone that spiritual discipline for the next month, you may find it becomes easier to carry it into the next year.  Given our current climate, we are going to need all the space we can get for blessings. img_3401

Sermon – Luke 12.49-56, P15, YC, August 14, 2016

17 Wednesday Aug 2016

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I grew up in a house without conflict.  No one ever fought, no one ever yelled, and certainly, no one ever hit.  There may have been disagreements, but they were quickly resolved and our house was restored to peace.  Given that was my experience growing up, I assumed all family handled conflict in hushed, quiet ways.  But then I visited a friend who taught me differently.  I was staying with her family for a few days, and on a car ride to dinner, her mother and father started arguing and were quickly yelling at each other in the front seat.  My eyes bulged and my whole body tensed up.  I immediately thought, “This is the most horrible thing I have ever seen!”  I surreptitiously glanced at my friend to see if she was equally horrified, but she just sat there like it was an everyday occurrence.  But even more strange than the fight was how the family acted later.  There was a bit of quiet after the yelling, but by the time we stopped for dinner, everyone was back to normal.  I, however, could not manage to release the tension in my body, and my mind was racing.  Are they okay?  Is this normal?  Will it happen again?  How do I act now?

I remember after that visit feeling relieved and almost proud.  Clearly my family had the better conflict management system.  Clearly we were more in control of our emotions and cared for each other with tenderness and love.  I let myself believe that lie until my parent’s divorce.  My entire world view about conflict and family and love came apart.  Suddenly my quiet house was not simply quiet.  My quiet house was a conflict avoidant house.  The lack of yelling in my house was not simply a lack of yelling, but was a stuffing of hurt and pain for the sake of pretend peace.  Now, do not get me wrong.  I am not suggested that you all go home and yell at your loved ones.  What I am saying is that no matter what your experience of conflict has been – avoidance, dramatic confrontation, reasoned discussion through disagreement – we have all experienced conflict in our family.

All that is to say that nothing Jesus says about families should be shocking today.  Most of us like the loving, caring, gentle Jesus the best.  We like Jesus being hailed as the Prince of Peace, not hearing Jesus say, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”[i]  That is not the version of Jesus we come to hear about on Sundays.  That is not the version of Jesus we want to read about when our best friend is mad at us, our brother won’t talk to us, or our spouse is thinking about leaving.  That is not the version of Jesus we want the preacher talking about on the Sunday we decided to bring our friend to church.

And normally, I would be right there with you in protest.  I like the Prince of Peace who cares for the poor and downtrodden.  I love the Jesus who tells me not to be afraid and not to worry, especially when the lilies of the field are so well tended by God.  I adore the Jesus who forgives and unites all kinds of people into one.  But all of my protest comes from being someone who used to be pretty conflict avoidant.  That is, until I learned another way.  I will always say that one of the greatest gifts of my time on Long Island was learning how to not only handle conflict, but to really appreciate conflict for all that conflict can do.

For those of you not familiar with the cultural dynamic of Long Island, several things are at play.  First, Long Islanders have a different way of communicating.  They are direct, incisive, and honest.  For a Southerner, their style of communication can feel rude, but over time, said Southerner realizes that all that directness and ability to dive into conflict means you get everything out on the table.  There is no listening for innuendo or passive aggressiveness.  There are no cute phrases that sound nice, but really mean something entirely different.  Instead, you know where people stand, and you go home quite clear about the varying viewpoints.  Of course, that style of communication does not always feel good.  If you have sensitive feelings about criticism, your feelings can and will get hurt.  If you get uncomfortable with heated arguments, you will be challenged to stay calm.  If you prefer niceness over brutal honesty – well, you probably should not live on Long Island.

But here is what I learned and came to love about the beautiful people of Long Island.  They taught me how to listen, even if all I wanted to do was flee the room.  They taught me how to sit through criticism instead of getting defensive.  They taught me how to see conflict not as the ultimate evil, but instead as a critical key to transformation, reconciliation, and restoration.

That is at the heart of Jesus’ message today.  Of course Jesus says that he is going to divide fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and in-laws against one another.  What Jesus is teaching about is a radical reordering of the world.[ii]  We heard that proclamation from his mother’s mouth as she sang out the words of the Magnificat earlier in Luke’s gospel, “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”[iii]  Mary was not just talking about the enemy Rome.  Many of the Israelites themselves were proud, powerful, and rich.  We in the modern world are the proud, powerful, and rich.  And to us, Jesus shouts, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

The good news is that Jesus is not telling us he wants us to fight.  He is not encouraging violence or abuse, or even neglect or pain.  Jesus is simply telling us that his message is going to upset the status quo.  And as people who benefit from the status quo, we are going to have to face our demons and look at our brothers and sisters who are in need and take real stock of ourselves and our lives.  And when we start upsetting the status quo – when we start making women equal to men, when we start treating minorities with dignity and respect, when we start empowering the poor thrive and turn their lives around, we will have friends and family who push back.  We will have people who try to convince us to protect our power rather than share our power.  We will have family who walk away because they cannot face the truth.  All we have to do is look at the church – look at the hundreds of denominations who could not agree on whom could be baptized, what Eucharist means, and whom can be ordained or married.  We are a family divided because Jesus’ love is so revolutionary that we will be divided about how to define his love, how to share his love, and how receive his love.  Jesus does not want us to fight.  But he knows that if we are going to authentically live into the Gospel life, we are going to deal with conflict and we are going to be divided.[iv]

But that is also why Jesus went all the way to the cross.  His death was an effort to transform and redeem our conflict and to help us live fully into the people of peace and love we are invited to be in him.  Jesus knows that we will have to fight.  But he also knows that if we are willing to enter into conflict with an open mind, with listening ears, and a discerning heart, we will become a people who do not avoid conflict, but understand conflict as the purifying fire that burns away the mess of life and leaves behind the fertile ground for creating something new and holy.[v]  So yes, Jesus is still the Prince of Peace, who brings peace upon earth.  But the path there is not a smooth, straight, simple path.  The path there will take us through conflict, tension, and pain.  But the peace that awaits on the other side is more glorious than any community that will sit through passive aggressive avoidance just to maintain a false sense of security.

And just in case you are already feeling weary, wondering where you can muster the strength to survive such a rocky path, our letter to the Hebrews today gives us a clue, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith…”[vi]  That group of people you are going to be in conflict with – whether your biological family, or the crazy family you selected as your church home – is the same group of people who have left us an example of how to work our way through conflict.  They have shown us how to survive the race toward peace and reconciliation, reminding us that Jesus is the pioneer and perfecter who gets us there.  We will not get there avoiding conflict.  But we will get there together, holding hands when we disagree, loving each other when we say helpful but painful truths, and rejoicing when we push through to the side of reconciliation, renewal, and rebirth.  Amen.

[i] Luke 12.51.

[ii] Richard P. Carlson, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 361.

[iii] Luke 1.51-53.

[iv] Audrey West, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 360, 362.

[v] Elizabeth Palmer, “Living By The Word:  August 14, 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time,” Christian Century, July 26, 2016, as found at http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2016-07/august-14-20th-sunday-ordinary-time on August 11, 2016.

[vi] Hebrews 12.1-2a.

Sermon – 1 Corinthians 13.1-13, EP4, YC, January 31, 2016

12 Friday Feb 2016

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When I do premarital counseling with couples, I often find that they select the passage we heard today from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.  They may not know anything else about the service, but they know they want this text.  Of course, I am happy to oblige.  I think the passage is the perfect passage for a marriage – but the reasons I like the passage are probably not the reasons the enamored couple likes the passage.  The couple usually likes the passage because the passage sounds so dreamy.  If I do not have love, Paul says, “I am nothing…Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful…”  The couple usually looks lovingly at one another and says, “Yes!  That is how our love is.  And we want to always have this love.”  Watching the couple is sweet, really.  Seeing young, hopeful love reminds me of days long ago when I had that same naivety, and helps me remember all the goodness of my partner.

But the reason I agree to read the passage at weddings is because Paul is not describing romantic, dreamy, caring love.  Paul is describing how truly hard love can be.  Do you know how hard it is to not be irritable at 6:00 am after a sleepless night with a newborn and without the blessing of coffee and a hot shower?!?  Do you know difficult being patient is when you have asked that your partner do something a certain way ten times?!?  And love is not just difficult among partners – love is hard among family, friends, and churches.  Who among us with a sibling has not struggled with envy or resentfulness?  So, when a happy couple asks me to read this passage, I am happy to read the passage because I know that five, ten, twenty years from now they are going to need desperately to remember that love is patient and kind, is not envious, arrogant, or rude, and does not insist on its own way.  Because love the way Paul describes love is beautiful.  But love the way Paul describes love is one of the hardest things we do.

Of course, Paul’s letter is not meant for newlyweds.  Paul himself never marries, and truly did not seem to give much thought to or even recommend marriage.  Instead, Paul is still addressing the same Corinthians we have been hearing about these last couple of weeks.  If you remember, Paul wrote to a diverse community deeply embroiled in conflict.[i]  He had already written to tell them that although they each have varying gifts, each of their gifts is important.  Last week, we heard the portion of his letter that reminds them that they are a body of parts, and that each part is crucial to the body.  Into this set of instructions, Paul adds this next chapter about how the Corinthians are to act like that body:  they are to love in a way that is patient, kind, not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude.  In fact, Paul does not just describe how love looks, he describes how love acts.  As one scholar explains, the original Greek is better translated, “Love ‘shows patience.’  Love ‘acts with kindness.’  Here, love is a busy, active thing that never ceases to work.  [Love] is always finding ways to express itself for the good of others.  The point is not a flowery description of what love ‘is’ in some abstract and theoretical sense, but of what love does, and especially what love does to one’s brother or sister in the church.”[ii]

Of course, we can sometimes be like dreamy lovers ourselves when we hear Paul’s words.  We totally agree that our faith community should be one that expresses, and even actively shows love.  That is, until we are faced with how difficult expressing that love will really be.  This month we are reading Tattoos on the Heart, by Father Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit priest who serves in one of the most violent gang-inhabited areas of the country.  Father Gregory tells the story of a tiny kid, Betito, who became a fixture around the Homeboy Industries office.  He was funny, precocious, bold, and only twelve years old.  One holiday weekend, Betito was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was hit by a stray bullet.  Father Gregory kept vigil at the hospital, but despite their best efforts, Betito died that night.  At twelve years old.  But that is not the hardest part of the story.  You see, the police caught the shooters and Father Gregory knew them too.  He says, “If we long to be in the world who God is, then, somehow, our compassion has to find its way to vastness.  [Compassion] would rather not rest on the two in the van, aiming frighteningly large-caliber weaponry.  I sure didn’t.  …it was excruciating not to be able to hate them.  Sheep without a shepherd.  But for lack of someone to reveal the truth to them, they had evaded healing.  …But are they less worthy of compassion than Betito?  I will admit that the degree of difficulty here is exceedingly high.  Kids I love killing kids I love.”[iii]

What Father Gregory is trying to do, and what Paul is trying to teach the Corinthians is how to love the way that God loves:  with compassion, kindness, patience; in a way that is not envious, boastful, arrogant or rude; not insisting on its own way, avoiding being resentful.  At weddings couples can easily profess how they want to love each other in the right way.  What they do not often realize is how incredibly difficult that will be.  In fact, a couple of years ago, a friend of mine celebrated his first wedding anniversary.  We had had long talks about marriage before he even proposed.  He told me in that congratulatory conversation that I had been right.  That first year had been really, really hard.  Marriage is no joke, he told me.  But the truth is love is no joke.  Love is hard to do.  Love takes work, commitment, humility, right-sizing our egos, and patience.  Paul never says that love feels good.

But the understanding that love is hard is not just for newlyweds.  Understanding love is hard is important for all of us.  Paul’s warning is for St. Margaret’s today just as his warning is for the Corinthians.  If we distort what love is, we can be in danger of thinking that the mission of St. Margaret’s is to gather like-minded and likable people.  Doing so would certainly make loving each other easier! “But true love is not measured by how good love makes us feel.  In the context of 1 Corinthians, it would be better to say that the measure of love is its capacity for tension and disagreement without division.”[iv]  Like any family, we are always going to have disagreements, conflict, and tension.  No matter where we go or who we are, there is and will be disagreement and division.[v]  The mark of us being a community of love is whether we can weather those disagreements, sources of conflict, and tension without division.

The good news is that we have the capacity to be a community of love because God first loves us.  In verse 12, Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”  We are fully known and loved by God.  That love means that we are not left on our own to develop a capacity for patient, kind, un-rude love.  The love described by Paul “is a love we experience as God’s unshakable grasp upon our lives.  ‘That love’ is the source of our greatest security and, thus, our freedom to actually be patient and kind, to bear all things and not insist on our own way.”[vi]  “We can love because God has already fully known us and [loves] us anyway, and is working to make our lives and our communities look more and more like…busy, active, tireless love.”[vii]  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

[i] Carol Troupe, “One Body, Many Parts:  A Reading of 1 Corinthians 12:12-27” Black Theology, vol. 6, no. 1, January 2008, 33.

[ii] Brian Peterson, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 13:1-13,” January 31, 2016, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2734 on January 28, 2016.

[iii] Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion,” (New York:  Free Press, 2010), 66.

[iv] Peterson.

[v] Karoline Lewis, “Love Never Ends,” January 24, 2016, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4249 on January 28, 2016.

[vi] Jerry Irish, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 306.

[vii] Peterson.

Sermon – 1 Corinthians 12.12-31a, EP3, YC, January 24, 2016

26 Tuesday Jan 2016

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Below is the sermon I had prepared for this past Sunday.  However, since most of my parishioners were still shoveling themselves out of their homes, I never got to preach it.  Here it is in its written form.  

 

A little over a week ago, the primates of the Anglican Communion made a big decision.  The primates suspended the Episcopal Church from full participation in the life and work of the Anglican Communion.  For those of you wondering what exactly the Anglican Communion is, the Anglican Communion consists of 38 autonomous national and regional Churches plus six Extra Provincial Churches and dioceses, of which the Episcopal Church is a member.  All of those bodies are in Communion – in a reciprocal relationship – with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is the Communion’s spiritual head.  Each Church makes its own decisions in its own ways, guided by recommendations from specific Anglican entities.  Back in 2003, the Episcopal Church elected the first openly gay bishop, and since that time, the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church have experienced a great deal of tension.  Many churches in the Global South are morally opposed to homosexuality and have suggested that the Episcopal Church voluntarily withdraw from the Communion.  Meanwhile, many Episcopal Churches split from the church, causing lawsuits around the use of church buildings, as well as deep divisions and sadness.

This past summer at General Convention, the Episcopal Church voted to authorize liturgies for same-sex marriages.  That decision is what led to the primates’ decision last week to suspend the Episcopal Church from full participation in the life and work of the Anglican Communion for the next three years.  Though the Episcopal Church will have voice in meetings of pan-Anglican institutions and assemblies, the Episcopal Church will not have a vote on those bodies.  Our own Presiding Bishop has talked about how painful this action is, but confesses that the wideness of God’s love has made it impossible for the Episcopal Church to change course.  No one knows what the future holds.  Many in the Anglican Communion hope the Episcopal Church will change course.  Many in the Episcopal Church believe that our mission is to love all God’s children and to provide a witness of that love despite opposition.  For many of us Episcopalians, we may not feel an everyday impact from this decision, but one way or another, through this recent decision of the primates, the Anglican Communion will experience some sort of change in the way the Communion operates.

For all the drama and complexity of the Anglican Church, we are not the first in the church to experience this kind of conflict.  Thousands of years ago, the church in Corinth was struggling too.  You see, the “Church in Corinth ‘was a very mixed group, with several differing views and practices which put considerable strains on their common life.’”  Into that strain, Paul writes them to “encourage a sense of cooperation and unity amongst a group of people that were struggling with their differences.”[i]  He uses the familiar metaphor of a body to help the Corinthians see how they are to relate to one another:  not as a hierarchical body, with one part superior to the others, but as a body of mutuality, diversity, and interdependence, in which all the parts (or points of view) are needed.[ii]  Paul’s letter is both affirming and challenging.  He wants the Corinthians to know that each of them are valued and significant.  But he also wants of each of them to know that they are not to let their significance get “blown up into self-importance.”[iii]  Their significance comes from being a part of the body.  In other words, Paul wants the Corinthians to know that they are each valuable, they are each needed, and they each need to appreciate the contributions of the others.

One of the things that was most hurtful in the early 2000s, when the Episcopal Church first started openly talking about the issue of sexual orientation was that people started to leave the table.  I remember when I first became an Episcopalian, I loved how no matter what differences we all have, we could still come and feast at the Eucharistic table, side-by-side.  And in most Episcopal churches, that still happens.  But when those who opposed same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay and lesbian brothers and sisters left the Episcopal Church, we lost a part of our body.  We lost the part of our body that would challenge us, question our theology, and make us aware that although we are one body, we are not of one mind.  I fear that the same thing will happen in the Anglican Communion should the Anglican Communion decide that the Episcopal Church can no longer be fully a part of the body.

The challenges that Paul presents to Corinth and the Anglican Communion presents to the Episcopal Church are just as important to us at St. Margaret’s.  Having been with our parish for over four years, I have seen a fair amount of conflict.  Whether we were discerning whether or not to take on an expensive capital project, to start a new outreach ministry, or to reach out to our neighbors and invite them to church, we have rarely been unanimous in our conversations.  But Paul is not inviting the church to experience unity as uniformity or as some sort of superficial harmony.  In fact, Paul might argue that conflict is good because conflict highlights the ways in which we are of a diverse mind.  Diversity within the body means that we are quite naturally going to have a variety of perspectives – and that variety is a blessing.  Paul argues that “diversity within the church community is not something to be tolerated, or regretted, or manipulated for one’s own advantage, but something to be received as the gift that it is.  Paul’s argument implies that not only diversity, but unity in that diversity, is a reality without which the church cannot live.”[iv]

That being said, unity of the body – unity in diversity – is not easy.  I am the first to admit that I grew up in an environment that was conflict avoidant.  My initial inner reaction to conflict is to step back in the face of conflict.  But St. Margaret’s has been a wonderful teacher about how to love and respect in the midst of conflict.  This community has taught me that without conflict, we do not get anywhere real or authentic.  With conflict, we respectfully hear the breadth of our differences, and then we move gently through those, comforting those who mourn decisions, and encouraging those who rejoice in those same decisions.  As Paul teaches us, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it”[v]

I do not know how the Anglican Communion will fare in the next three years.  My hope is that the Episcopal Church might continue to witness the power of unity through diversity within the body as opposed to unity for the sake of uniformity.  The path forward will be hard.  We will need to rejoice with those who were long treated as second class citizens and are now able to be married and ordained just like their heterosexual brothers and sisters.  We will need to mourn with those who see that change as a violation of God’s will.  We will need to honor those who have consensus around suspending our church, and comfort those in our church who feel rejected by that decision.  But mostly, we will need to keep reminding the Communion that we are one body, whose parts cannot be cut off without a weakening of the body.

The same is true for our parish and our own families.  If we see the Communion weakened by cutting off parts of the body, we will have learned some hard lessons about when our behaviors are similar in our own church and families.  If we see the Communion strengthened as the Communion honors its unity through diversity, we too will see the value of renewal through honoring diversity.  Being a body is not easy.  The good news is that we do not have to work to become the body of Christ.  “That is not Paul’s notion.  He considers that believers as believers are already the body of Christ, and he exhorts [us] to relate to one another in a manner appropriate to what [we] already are.”[vi]  Amen.

[i] Carol Troupe, “One Body, Many Parts:  A Reading of 1 Corinthians 12:12-27” Black Theology, vol. 6, no. 1, January 2008, 33.

[ii] Lee C. Barrett, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 278, 280.

[iii] 1 Corinthians 12.19.  Language from Eugene Patterson’s paraphrase of the Bible, The Message. 

[iv] Brian Peterson, “Commentary on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a,” January 24, 2016 as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2733 on January 21, 2016.

[v] 1 Cor. 12.2

[vi] Leander E. Keck, ed., The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 10 (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2002), 948.

The Truth about Weddings…

20 Wednesday Jan 2016

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wedding-cana

Photo credit:  http://www.freebibleimages.org/photos/wedding-cana/

Almost two years ago, we welcomed our second daughter, Cana into the world.  We have gotten countless questions about the choice of her name and we find ourselves telling the story about the wedding in Cana over and over again.  Sometimes the repetition is annoying.  But mostly, retelling the story is a gift in itself.  You see, the story of Jesus’ first miracle is a story of great joy.  There is the setting of a wedding – one already filled with merriment and delight.  There is the wonder of a miracle – the amazing ability of Jesus to convert water into wine.  And there is the shock of abundance – not just the enormous amount of wine that Jesus produces, but also the best wine of the evening.  There are certainly questions in the story:  What is happening between Jesus and Mary?  Is this kind of miracle an exercise in indulgence?  Why does Jesus choose this as his first miracle?  But the questions usually fade in comparison to the joy.  Jesus chooses an occasion of joy to bring forth a miracle of abundance and pleasure.  I cannot help but smile every time I read the story.

Attending a wedding this weekend, hearing the story of Cana in Sunday’s lectionary, and thinking about our own daughter Cana, I cannot help but be left with a sense of gratitude for the gift of abundant joy given to us by Jesus in his first miracle.  There are parts of Jesus’ story that are neither joyful nor abundant.  But this first miracle gives us a taste – a literal and delightful taste – of the abundance of God’s love and kingdom.  I really cannot seem to wipe the smile off my face when I think of any of the three of those reminders of Jesus’ abundance and grace.

Perhaps that is why I am so saddened by the continued discord in the Anglican Communion about gay marriage.  In my country, the occasion of the legalization and blessing of gay marriage in the Episcopal Church has been a source of great joy for my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, as well as their allies.  That, coupled with the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy, has left many in our church feeling a deep connection to the joy and abundance that Christ brings.  And yet, that joy is bringing great sadness to a large portion of the Anglican Communion.  Here we are at the earthly banquet, and instead of a joyful occasion of abundance, we are at a different feast – one where family drama and strife is overshadowing the joy of some of our members.

The irony of the wedding of Cana being appointed for the same Sunday that the Episcopal Church is grappling with the Anglican Communion Primates’ decision to suspend the full participation of the Episcopal Church in the life and work of the Anglican Communion is not lost on me.  But maybe that is the truth of every wedding – the constant tension between heavenly grace and abundance and human sinfulness and frailty.  Behind every dreamy wedding is some glossed over (or sometimes very obvious) family drama.  But even in the midst of family tension, there are usually moments of grace – glimpses of the abundance Jesus wants to shower upon us.  That is what I am grasping onto this week:  in the midst of pain, and facing the ambiguity of these next years in the Anglican Communion, God will keep breaking through with abundance, joy, and miracle.  Though I do not know all the answers to the biblical or the ecclesiastical story, I am grateful for the gift of Cana.

Thanksgiving…

26 Wednesday Nov 2014

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My oldest daughter is precocious.  She is five and she comes from a long line of very head-strong women – at least three generations, but I never really knew the women in the generations above that.  So with two ladies in the house who have strong opinions and strong wills, you can imagine that there tends to be a decent amount of conflict in our house.  Truthfully, I would not have it any other way.  I am happy that my daughter already has a strong sense of self, knows how to articulate her wants and needs, and takes on leadership whenever she can.  Despite that realization, there are moments each day where I just feel exasperated by the struggle, and wish we could just have an easy conflict-free relationship.  I have even wondered at times whether my daughter might be equally frustrated with me, already dreaming of adulthood, when she can be her own woman.

The thing that holds us together is the little moments of grace.  I have taken on the daily habit of whispering a secret to my daughter, “I love you.”  I try to say it at different times, and I especially try to say it after we have had a difficult patch.  Sometimes she guesses the secret before I say it.  Sometimes she rolls her eyes.  But every time, she smiles and the tension breaks.  Lately, I have noticed her doing the same for me.  Not actually saying the words, but giving me small gestures of love.  Just yesterday, we had a parent/child project at school.  We were busy working on it, and I was both trying to complete the project with her and keep her focused.  As we were wrapping up, and she seemed to be off to the next thing, she ran back to me and threw her arms around me for an extended hug.  She did not say anything.  But she didn’t have to.

I have often wondered whether the parent-child relationship is a bit like my relationship with God.  I too long for independence and sense of control, and I certainly have conflict with God from time to time.  But we also have these tender moments where we both express love for one another.  Actually, I think God probably expresses love for me all the time – I just am too hard-headed to hear it.  But it is those tender moments where I acknowledge God’s love for me and I express my love for God that sustain me.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow, you may be approaching time with your family or friends who are like family.  And with family can also come conflict.  My prayer for you is that your day might be dotted with those little moments of grace and love:  whether it is an inside joke, a shared moment in the kitchen or while watching the parade, or just a simple wordless hug.  May love, grace, and gratitude outshine all else tomorrow – or at least help you get through the day!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Sermon – Matthew 18.15-20, P18, YA, September 7, 2014

11 Thursday Sep 2014

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I have heard the argument many times before.  When people see conflict, poor behavior, and ugliness in the Church, the complaint is always the same.  People feel like they see enough ugliness in the world, at work, at school, or even at home.  When they come to Church they just want to be around people who love each other, who never fight, and who are always on their best, most loving, supportive behavior.  Many imagine that the Church should be a conflict-free zone of love and joy; full of those who love the Lord, love one another, and love every person who walks through those doors.  We want an escape from the world when we come to Church – not more of the same.

And so, in order to create this magical conflict-free Church, we start engaging in behaviors that avoid immediate conflict, but probably make things a lot worse.  Instead of dealing with conflict directly, when we feel wronged by someone, we just talk about them behind their back.  Or, when someone sins against us, instead of approaching the problem with the person, we just call a bunch of people in the church to complain about them.  Or if we are feeling wronged by someone, instead of talking to them one-on-one, we just send them a nasty email, copy the clergy, and, while we are at it, we CC the bishop.  Or if all else fails, when someone does us wrong, we don’t say anything:  we just avoid them; un-friend them on Facebook; and, if we cannot avoid them on Sundays, then we just leave the church altogether.[i]

Part of the reason we engage in these behaviors that usually make the conflict worse is because the alternative is downright scary.  We hear Jesus’ instruction manual for dealing with conflict in the church in Matthew’s gospel and we panic.  First of all, Jesus’ instructions force us to admit that we will have to deal with conflict within the Church.  This premise totally dismantles our dream of the loving, conflict-free Church.  And we are not sure we are ready to let go of that dream.  But secondly, if we can let go of our tight grasp on our conflict-free Church dream, we sure as heck do not want to follow Jesus’ instructions.  Going to someone directly to talk about how someone has sinned against us scares most of us to death.  We are not sure what to say and we are not sure how what we say will be received.  And if we somehow manage to get over our fears and the person rejects us, we cannot imagine taking one or two others with us to approach the offender again.  That sounds way too much like an intervention, and we worry that the number of people in the room will only escalate things.  And since we can barely imagine taking one or two other parishioners along with us, we find the idea of bringing the offence before the entire parish unfathomable.  Jesus must be out of his mind if he thinks we are going to parade our personal business in front of the whole church.

I served in a parish once that went through a major conflict.  A parishioner who had been working with the youth group had developed some serious boundary issues which came to a crisis point.  After receiving complaints from several parishioners, the rector called the person-in-question into his office.  That one-on-one meeting did not go so well.  Rumors started to fly, and the offender’s version of the conversation was quite different from the rector’s version.  Eventually, others had to be brought into the conversation.  The whole issue took about a year to resolve, and the offender was so angry that he eventually left the church and many other parishioners were hurt and frustrated along the way.

Part of the challenge is that using Jesus’ model for conflict resolution is not as simple as the model sounds.  Meeting one-on-one can go horribly wrong, as the meeting with my old rector went wrong.  And having a meeting with three or four people can also go horribly wrong – the offender can feel attacked, confidentiality can be difficult to keep, and rumors can start to spread.  And sharing an individual offense with the entire parish is difficult in our litigious society.  Charges of slander and libel are much too easy to file.

The good news is that I do not think the specifics of Jesus’ conflict resolution plan really matter – at least not in the strictest sense.[ii]  What is more important is that this passage from Matthew does several critical things.  First, this passage debunks the notion that the Church will ever be conflict-free.  That this passage exists at all is evidence that conflict is a natural, unavoidable part of life, even life in the church.[iii]  I know that may sound like bad news to some of us, but actually the reality that conflict is unavoidable opens the door to the second good part of this passage.  In addition to helping us see the inevitability of conflict, this passage also reminds us that there are healthy ways to deal with conflict.  Though we may not choose Jesus’ exact method, there are ways to encourage reconciliation over back-stabbing and gossip.  And those reconciling methods are healthy for the offender, the victim, and the community as a whole.  Jesus is not worried about “whether or not we fight, disagree, or wound one another, but how we go about addressing and resolving those issues.”[iv]

Finally, Jesus reminds us that God is with us even in our ugly moments of conflict.  Jesus says, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”  We often jokingly quote this passage when we are having low church attendance.  But what Jesus means when he says these words is that when two or three are gathered in resolving conflict, Jesus is there in their midst.  I cannot imagine a more assuring word from Jesus today.

I once knew a couple who were married for 55 years.  One day I asked the wife what their secret was.  She told me several things, but one of them stuck.  She said that if either of them was disciplining the children and the other parent disagreed with their decision, they never questioned the decision in front of the children.  Later that night, they might talk about their disagreement, but they always supported one another in the heat of the moment.  I remember thinking that their practice necessitated respect, biting one’s tongue, and a humble love that was free from pride.  All of that was not visible through the good stuff of their marriage, but instead through the hard stuff of their marriage.

Now I know some of you are going to go home disappointed today.  Your dream of Church being a conflict-free love fest is getting shattered today.  You may have been hoping after hearing Paul talk about love today that we could all just sing, “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love,” and walk out of here on a cloud.  Truthfully, having people see how we love each other and being able to recognize our Christian identity through our love is wonderful.  But equally wonderful today would be if we could sing, “They Will Know We Are Christians by How We Fight.”

In a few moments, we will do a few things that mark our Christian identity.  We will confess our sins, ask for healing, and pass the peace.  These are all steps toward reconciliation with God, with ourselves, and with one another.  Perhaps you have been experiencing conflict here in our church community, at home, or at work.  Now is your chance to reconcile that conflict, and live into what being a person of faith means.  There is no way to avoid the fact that Christians fight, disagree, and argue.  But how we fight means much more than that we fight.  The church invites us to be a people committed to reconciliation, knowing that where two or three are gathered in conflict together, Christ is in the midst of us.  Amen.

[i] Rick Morley, “Before You Unfriend – Matthew 18:15-20,” August 23, 2011, as found at http://www.rickmorley. com/ archives/803?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=proper18agospel on September 4, 2014.

[ii] Eric Barreto, “Commentary on Matthew 18:15-20,” as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx? commentary_id=2164 on September 5, 2014.

[iii] Jin S. Kim, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 46.

[iv] Kim, 46.

Sermon – Luke 12.49-56, P15, YC, August 18, 2013

18 Sunday Aug 2013

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Once upon a time, I lived in a world where there was such a thing as a “normal family.”  These were the families who could sit around a dinner table and have a pleasant conversation, who never had a disagreement, who never had to deal with passive aggressive behavior, and whose dealings could be taken at face value without any hints of ulterior motives.  In this world, people were happy, holidays were perfect, siblings loved each other, and marriages were unbreakable.  Laughter was pervasive, love overflowed, and peace ruled the day in this world.  And since my life did not resemble this world, surely I would find a life partner whose world was like this.  Surely there would be a way to escape my own reality to find that world where the “normal family” existed.

Of course, once that notion crumbled, I created a new one.  Then I lived in a world where there was such a thing as a “conflict-free church.”  This church was one where people welcomed others warmly, where the love of God poured out of every parishioner, where every meeting unfolded in a peaceful, consensual manner, and where everyone felt at home.  In this church, the people all lived Christ-like lives, and they were so focused on serving others that they never fell into serving themselves.  In this church there was no judgment, no division, and no central source of power.  At this church, people were happy, worship was beautiful, and money was never a concern.  Surely such a church existed, and so if my church was not this way, I would find that “conflict-free church” somewhere.

Jesus takes a blowtorch to these make-believe worlds I envisioned in today’s gospel.  Jesus says, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled…Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!”  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Jesus,” many of us may want to say today.  I thought Jesus was the Prince of Peace – in fact the same person whose name we invoke when we greet one another with, “The peace of the Lord be with you.”  Today’s Jesus is not the sweet, peaceful Jesus in a manger.  Jesus denies peace altogether today and instead rolls out a campaign of conflict.  There is no peace-loving church today.  In fact, Jesus even goes on to say how he will be turning family members against one another.  Father against son, mother against daughter, in-laws against in-laws:  families will be divided against one another.  Not only do we lose the dream of a “conflict-free church” today, any hope of a “normal family” without pain or strife is obliterated today too.

Of course, what is most painful about this gospel lesson today is that we already know the gospel to be true.  What person here today has not faced conflict within their family?  For the lucky among us, that conflict may eventually pass and familial love is relatively easy.  But for pretty much anyone who has had an honest and frank conversation with me, I do not know one single family who has not been touched by divorce, pain, cutoff, abuse, rivalry, anger, manipulation, or division.  Conflict is not the anomaly – conflict is the norm in our families.  And if church is anything like a family, we have known bitter conflict in church too.  Some of us have left churches because of conflict, pain, or suffering.  Most of us have known conflict here in this place – and if we have not yet, we will.  Why this gospel lesson is so hard today is because this gospel holds up a mirror – a mirror to our broken lives, our broken world, and our broken church.  And quite frankly, most of us do not come to church to look in a mirror; or if we do imagine church as a mirror, we hope the mirror is like one of those carnival mirrors that can distort our broken worlds and reflect something much more beautiful or hopeful than the reality we know.

Despite all the seemingly bad news in today’s gospel, some of Jesus’ words reach out to us in hope:  “I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed.”  The idea of Jesus’ baptism not being completed has been bouncing around in my head all week.  In the early days of the church, fonts were not the pretty, upright fonts we see now that hold a beautiful bowl of baptismal water.  Fonts were more like pools, with steps leading down and steps leading up on the other side.  The person to be baptized would walk down those steps, be fully immersed in the water, and the come up for air again as they emerged from the water and walked up the exit steps.  The symbolism was rich – baptism looked like the emergence from the watery birth canal, and baptism rightly lived into the name “new birth.”  But also weaved into the symbolism is journey – a journey from a former life, into a watery chaos (not unlike the chaos from which God created the earth), and emerging a new creation and a transformed person.

The idea that Jesus’ baptism is not yet complete somehow makes sense when we think of baptism as a journey.  In the midst of all this talk about conflict and division, Jesus is giving us a picture of what living a baptized life is like.  At our baptism, we make promises – to turn away from sin time and again – and to turn into the way of baptized life – seeking and serving Christ, loving neighbor as self, and striving for justice and peace.  The image of Jesus’ baptism not being complete gives some grounding to what all this conflict and division is all about.  The conflict and division is a necessary component to completely live into our baptismal covenant.  We say that when we fall into sin – not if we fall into sin – we will turn back toward the Lord.  The journey of baptism promises then that we will not have a peaceful, conflict-free road and that our baptism in not a once and for all activity.  Baptism is a journey, of fully living into those baptismal promises, in which the challenging stuff will shape and mold us into better disciples and better servants of Christ.  Jesus knows that our baptism journey will never be one of peace – at least not the superficial peace we long to have.  Our baptism journey will be one of division.  That division will not only be because conflict is a necessary part of life, but because the radical way of Jesus can only be achieved by walking through the watery chaos of baptism – a chaos full of conflict and division – but a journey in which we emerge transformed and renewed.

Once upon a time, I encountered a world where conflict was not a curse word.  In this world, conflict was not an uncomfortable experience to be avoided, but a challenging experience that led to new growth and new life.  In this world, everyone was not happy in a superficial, cheerleader kind of way.  But people were happy in a much deeper, rooted kind of way.  In this world, families still fought, but the fighting led them somewhere new and life-giving.  In this world, parishioners grew to expect conflict – but also grew to expect transformation.  In this world, conflict was not the end of relationship, but instead the tool that drug people through rough times into times of unknown joy and peace.  This is the world that I long to inhabit.  This is the world that gives us life.  This is the world that leads to new birth.  Our invitation today is to step into the watery chaos of division and conflict, so that we might emerge a faith community on the baptism journey.  Amen.

Sermon – Luke 4.21-30, 1 Corinthians 13.1-13, EP4, YC, February 3, 2013

06 Wednesday Feb 2013

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I have been thinking these last couple of weeks that Christianity could really use a new Public Relations campaign: not just the Episcopal Church, or even St. Margaret’s, but Christianity in general.  This past week a receipt from an Appleby’s restaurant was circulated worldwide on the internet.  The receipt was from a table of about ten Christians.  When the waitress picked up the receipt, the automatic 18% gratuity for groups was crossed out, and the tip read “0,” with a note that said, “I give God 10%, why do you get 18?”  The signer signed her name and wrote “pastor,” on the receipt.  I do not know your tipping policies, but most wait staff make well below minimum wage and make up the difference with tips.  So for a pastor to so rudely deny a person their livelihood is embarrassing to all of us.  Now, you may argue this was an isolated incident, but as anyone who has ever waited tables knows, Christians are widely known as being the worst tippers at restaurants.  Even our Wednesday night study group has reflected on the author’s negative experiences with Christians.  This is not exactly a reputation we can be proud of, especially when we are to be caring for the poor – which many wait staff are.

The Church in Corinth was struggling with a similar PR campaign.  We have been hearing the last couple of weeks how the Church there was fighting over who had the best spiritual gifts.  Finally fed up, Paul breaks down the issue at hand.  No matter what gifts a person possesses – speaking in tongues, prophecy, or wisdom – if that person does not have love, they are a noisy gong, or worse, they are nothing.  Paul is a lot like the marketing director who has come in to clean up the Corinthians terrible PR problem.  Love is the answer.  Many of us hear Paul’s words today and we think of the hundreds of weddings where we have heard this text.  But Paul is not really talking about romantic love.  Paul is talking about the way Christians need to behave in order for others to see Christ in us.

Of course, love sounds easy – almost like a cheesy seventies slogan or that Beatles hit, “All You Need is Love.”  But the kind of love Paul is talking about is not easy at all.  The love Paul is talking about is patient; is not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude; allows others to have their way; is not irritable or resentful.  This kind of love means letting going of the importance of self – which is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks we can accomplish.  We have all seen glimpses of this kind of love in others.  This weekend, our “Movies with Margaret” film was a movie called Saved.  In the film, a girl accidently becomes pregnant, and when she most needs someone who can express Paul’s kind of love, she does not receive that love from the most pious students at her Christian High School.  Instead, the characters who are seen as rebellious heathens are the ones who show Paul’s love most beautifully.  They are the ones who embrace the pregnant girl when she is at her lowest point – when she is lost and utterly alone in her trials.  Those widely acknowledged as un-Christian at her Christian High School are the ones who behave in the most Christ-like way of all:  by showing deep, kind, sacrificial love.

As we slowly begin to wrap our heads around this concept of Paul’s love and how that love might help our own PR campaign, we hit a bit of a snag when we get to our gospel lesson.  Jesus, who has just proclaimed that he is the Messiah in his hometown synagogue, where people are stunned into silence, suddenly is found today speaking so harshly to the synagogue that they angrily rush to throw him off a cliff.  Jesus words do not sound full of love, but instead sound the opposite – rude, arrogant, and irritable.  His anger today may have us wondering if Paul has romanticized Jesus’ life and witness.

The truth is that Jesus’ actions, as harsh as they sound, still exhibit love.  The love Jesus shows is perhaps what we might call “tough love” today.  Despite the fact that the people are outwardly praising Jesus for his words, Jesus sees through their words to their intentions.  The people of Nazareth hear Jesus’ words and wheels start churning.  If Jesus is the Messiah, then they have the honor of being the town that raised him.  And if they have such an honor, then surely they will benefit from all of Jesus’ power and teachings.  Instead of looking on the people of Nazareth with pity, Jesus gets angry.  Jesus knows that his hometown is instantly becoming greedy, wanting to not only keep the Messiah to the people of Israel, but especially to keep him in their own town.  And so Jesus reminds them that God’s love is bigger than them – in fact, God’s redemption will extend to even the Gentiles – Gentiles like that widow at Zarephath in Sidon and Naaman the Syrian.[i]  Jesus’ words sound more like a slap in the face than the patient, kind love that Paul describes.

I have a friend who has many times complained to me about the differences in fighting styles between her and her husband.  She tends to avoid conflict.  Having been raised in a conflict-avoidant household, she totally shuts down in the face of conflict.  Her husband, on the other hand, was raised in a household where conflict was a normal, and sometimes very loud, part of life.  Unlike her busy behavior to squash conflict, he lets the tension build up until he explodes.  Neither of them handles conflict perfectly.  She does not recognize the ways in which she is not loving or caring for him, and so her behavior does often create the slow buildup.  Meanwhile, by not expressing his frustration early on, her husband gets to the point where his only recourse is this last explosion of emotion.  They both could use some work on the Pauline love we hear about today – both needing to be more sacrificial, less irritable, and more patient.  But that work does not eliminate conflict.  In fact, if we really look at what Jesus does in the gospel lesson today, sometimes the deepest love can only happen in conflict.  As one scholar explains, “Sometimes we love our people in the name of Christ, enduring just about everything with them, and sometimes we love them by throwing the Book at them.”[ii]

Paul, Jesus, waitresses, and movies are all pointing us toward a basic reality today.  We are Christians, and as such, we live life differently.  We love differently.  In a culture that says we should be self-centered, boastful, arrogant, and envious, the Church proclaims a different truth.  Living in this love-centered way is not easy.  Sometimes we will have the kind of conflict that Jesus has with his family.  But even in conflict, we hold on to the self-sacrificing love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”  Why do we strive for this kind of living?  Because people are watching.  We are the PR campaign that our neighbors see when they wonder what Christianity is all about.  As St. Francis of Assisi said, “The deeds you do may be the only sermon some persons will hear today.”  Jesus and Paul invite us to live our lives as sermons that illustrate love – not in the gooey romantic sense, but in the ways that both sacrifice the self, and love through conflict.

The good news is that the rest of our liturgy today gives us the opportunity to reorient ourselves toward love.  In a few moments, we corporately confess the myriad ways we do not show love to our neighbors.  The section of our service that invites us forward for healing is also meant to be a place where we can come forward for healing for ourselves, for our unloving relationships, and our unloving witness in the world.  And finally, at the Eucharistic table, we come not for solace only but for strength; not for pardon only, but for renewal.  This liturgy today can renew and strength you so that your life might be a powerful witness of love and Christian faith.  Amen.

[i] Gay L. Byron, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 311.

[ii] William H. Willimon, “Book ‘em,” Christian Century, vol. 121, no. 2, January 27, 2004, 20.