Tag Archives: God

To whom does it belong?

31 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

As St. Margaret’s approaches our In-Gathering Sunday, a day when we gather our pledges for the coming year, some parishioners have been praying on what it means to Walk the Way in this Stewardship Season.  Below is a guest post from parishioner Barbara Archer.  I hope you enjoy her words.

As I sat in the pew Out East four weeks ago, listening to the Parable of the Tenants (Matthew 21:33), I found myself thinking, “What could I possibly have to do with this awful parable that Jesus told over 2,000 years ago?”  In addition, I thought, “I can’t wait to see how the priest is going to use this is parable in his sermon.  “The priest admitted that this was one of the “hard” parables but I was quite taken aback when he compared the tenants in the parable to me!

For a quick refresher of the Parable of the Tenants, there was an absentee vineyard owner who rented his vineyard to tenants.  When the owner sent his slaves to collect his portion of the grapes, the tenants killed the slaves.  The vineyard owner sends a second set of slaves to collect his portion of the grapes and the tenants do the same thing as before, killing the slaves.  Finally, the owner sends his son to the tenants thinking that they would respect his son and give the owner’s son his share of the grapes.  The tenants decide to kill the son so that they can have the son’s inheritance.  The parable goes on further but I will stop at this point.

I think most would agree that the tenants were the greedy scoundrels of this parable so how could I be compared to them?  The priest went on to explain that even though the vineyard owner had given the tenants all of his property, they were unwilling to share any portion of their profits.  The tenants greedily wanted to hang on to whatever they had made regardless of the fact that the vineyard owner had given them everything they needed to be  successful.  The priest went on to remind us that God gives us everything we need to be successful yet, often times, we turn our backs on God.  We refuse to give God, His share of our hard earned dollars despite the fact that He has given us everything!

Are you giving back to God his fair share?  Are you like the tenants?  It is a sobering question to ask yourself and to reflect on.  As we find our Stewardship Campaign coming to an end and our In-Gathering or Commitment Sunday nearly upon us (Nov. 2), please continue to pray and return your blue card with your 2015 Pledge Commitment this coming Sunday.  Our Stewardship theme this year is “Walking the Way.”  Which way are you walking?

Faithfully,
Barbara Archer

Sermon – Matthew 22.34-46, P25, YA, October 25, 2014

30 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

I hear it all the time.  Whether talking to engaged friends or working with a couple in premarital counseling, inevitably the question will come up, “So why do you want to get married?”  And then I get the response, “Well, we’re just so in love.”  Though their googly eyes are endearing and make me somewhat nostalgic for a time long ago, my thought is almost always, “Cute.  I wonder how long that will last.”  Though I try not to squash their mushy moment, eventually we get around to talking about life outside of their love bubble – talking about what happens when they argue, how they will negotiate the in-laws, and who will balance the checkbook.  Those are the times when the warm emotions of love are sometimes difficult, if not impossible, to maintain.  I do not meant to suggest that those warm, fuzzies of love are temporary necessarily; I simply mean that the emotional experience of love is not enough to sustain any relationship – neither those between couples, family, nor friends.  We are right to assume that love is necessary for relationships, but our definition of love has to be much bigger if we are to maintain any kind of meaningful relationships with others.

Sometimes we forget the multilayered meaning of love when we hear passages like the one from our gospel lesson today.  When asked about the greatest commandment, Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… and… love your neighbor as yourself.”  These commandments are so familiar to us that we sometimes forget how hard they really sound.  If our definition of love only includes the emotional kind of love that we might call “being in love,” does that mean we need to have googly eyes toward God?  I know very few people who profess to be “in love” with God.  In fact, I am not sure we would even say that we love God.  We might be grateful to God, we may revere God, or we might even be in awe of God.  But I know very few people who would say, “I love God.”  That emotion just feels strange to us.  And yet, Jesus says today, love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

Now the second commandment is a little easier.  We are used to loving our neighbors – loving people is what we are used to doing.  We love our friends and our family.  But Jesus says to love our neighbor, not just our friends.  Our neighbor includes those grouchy neighbors next door, that kid from school or that guy from work who always pushes your buttons, and most certainly that woman who cut you off while driving.  Our neighbor also includes those neighbors that often go unseen by us: the teen at JFK High School whose family cannot afford clothes and school supplies this year, that family who picked up our produce in Huntington Station through Food Not Bombs, that homeless man who received basic toiletries from St. Ignatius this week, or that Veteran’s family who is struggling to put life back together after returning to Plainview from war.  About these grouchy, mean, and unseen neighbors Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

When I work with those couples planning weddings, I am grateful when they choose the First Corinthians passage for their wedding, “Love is patient, love is kind…”[i]    I am grateful because then we can talk about what love really is.  We can talk about how love is more than simply a warm feeling or even a passionate desire.  In fact, when scripture talks about love, more often than not the kind of love scripture is talking about is not a passive emotion, but an active mercy.  In scripture, love is not something we feel, but something that we do.  To help us understand the difference, scripture will often translate the word for love as “loving-kindness.”  Love is not a feeling, but a choice:  a choice that we have to make over and over again.  As one person explains, “To love neighbor as oneself is to act toward the other as one would act toward those close to you.  We treat the stranger as well as we treat those that we love emotionally.”[ii]

So what does this active love look like?  For our neighbor, this kind of love is a bit more obvious.  The next time someone is rude to you or unkind to you, instead of reacting to them defensively, perhaps you take a moment to wonder what happened to them in life that made them act this way toward you.  Once you start to wonder about what things make them human and what has hurt them in life, your ability to be angry with them for hurting you lessens a bit.  In my early working days, I worked with a woman who most of the time was pretty pleasant to be around.  But there were times that she lashed out – and when she did I used to be both perplexed and angry.  I eventually started avoiding her altogether when, in a totally different context, someone who knew her shared with me that her father and an ex-husband had been alcoholics and were both abusive.  Suddenly the pieces fell together for me.  She had not known the kind of love that God commands – and I had not loved her as my neighbor.  The next time she snapped at me, her snapping felt less personal and awful – and instead I could see a vulnerable, hurting person who did not know how to love.  When Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves, this is the kind of shift in thinking Jesus invites.

In some ways, loving our neighbor is a tangible task we can imagine assuming.  But loving God still feels a little foreign, let alone loving God with all our heart, mind, and soul.  Luckily, God leads by example.  Our stories of God tell us of how, time and again, God chooses God’s people, makes covenants with them, forgives them, and invites them into relationship again. God’s love for God’s people is not an emotion, but an action.  Just recently we reheard the Exodus stories of how as soon as the people get out of bondage, they complain about not having food, not having water, and feeling separated from their creature comforts.  We heard again about how when God takes too long with Moses up on the mountain, they quickly revert to worshiping a golden calf.  And yet God keeps providing for, caring for, and loving them.  This is our model for how we are to love God too.  “We can love with our heart: through generosity to God’s people.  We can love with our soul: by worshiping God and praying for our neighbors and ourselves.  And we can love with our minds: studying God’s Word and letting it correct us, enlighten us, and send us out in loving action to the world.”[iii]

As we continue to prayerfully walk the way through this stewardship season, I first wondered whether this lesson really had anything to say about stewardship.  But as I thought about loving God and neighbor, I realized that is what stewardship is really all about.  Like love, stewardship is not something we feel or think about – stewardship is something we do.  When we make a financial pledge or contribution, we are expressing to God our gratitude for our blessings.  We take money from our pockets – money that certainly could be used for a hundred other things we want or need – and we instead give that money to God.  This is our full-bodied way of loving God with our heart, soul, and mind.  And, when the church uses that money for educating our children, serving our neighbors in need, and sharing the Gospel in our community, the church helps us to love our neighbor through our money too.  Jesus is certainly inviting us to change our feelings about God and our neighbor – but Jesus is also inviting us to change our actions toward God and neighbor.  That is what love is.

Next week, you will have the chance to act on that love.  We will process our pledge cards forward, as a symbolic gesture of our financial commitment to the work and ministry of St. Margaret’s.  We commit to funding the worship, which helps us love God with our soul.  We commit to funding the outreach and evangelism, which helps us love God with heart.  We commit to funding education and formation, which helps us love God with our minds.  And we commit to funding a ministry that enables us to not only love God, but to love our neighbor as ourselves.  I cannot think of a better way to invest our money than to invest our money in love.  Amen.

[i] 1 Corinthians 13.1-13.

[ii] Clayton Schmit, “Matthew 22:34-46 Commentary,” 2011, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1063 on October 21, 2014.

[iii] Schmit.

Stepping out on faith…

23 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Control is something I write about a lot.  Perhaps I write about it so much because I never quite master giving up my desire for control back to God.  I am reminded of the book, Divergent, by Veronica Roth.  In it, the dauntless faction seeks to master its fears through simulations.  In the book there is disagreement about whether fears can ever actually be mastered or whether the work is just recognizing the fear and its cues, and then modifying one’s bodily response to those fears.

If you asked me this week whether I was in the “never mastering fears” camp, the answer would be a resounding yes.  As someone who values control, my life has felt totally out of control this week.  It started with a standby jury summons – every day this week I could not know the fate of my day until 5:00 pm the night beforehand.  So I was already in a state of ambiguity, hoping my childcare arrangement for the day would work.  Then, just as the week was starting, I received a late night pastoral care call night, necessitating a visit in the wee hours of the night.  Two nights later my youngest daughter had one of “those” nights: uncontrollable crying, waking up everyone in the house, and leaving us all weary.  Even as I sit waiting to be called for voir dire, I wonder what will happen today.  Needless to say, this creature of control is being pushed to the limit.

This experience is especially interesting to me as I think about what is happening at St. Margaret’s.  We are approaching our Annual Meeting in December, where we present our budget for 2015.  We do not know what our pledges will be this year yet, especially because some of our older members are quite frail.  So during budget planning, our Vestry had to step out on faith with an estimated budget – in fact, a budget that expects a deficit.  And yet, here we are, stepping into the great unknown, praying that God and the people are with us.

As I plod through my stressfully ambiguous week, I appreciate what kind of ambiguity and risk our Vestry has assumed.  But I especially appreciate their faith, hope, and confidence.  They are inspiring us to embrace generosity – generosity of our time, talent, and treasure.  I am grateful for the powerful witness this week.  They are an inspiration to me and the entire parish.

Sermon – Matthew 22.15-22, P24, YA, October 19, 2014

23 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

Today’s gospel lesson is one of those funny lessons in the Bible that is often quoted, but frequently misconstrued.  Jesus’ says, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  As one scholar points out, “Some people point to this passage as proof that God and politics should be kept separate — that things like taxes have absolutely nothing to do with one’s theological commitments.  Others say that this story proves that religion is a matter of the heart, and that Jesus doesn’t really care about mundane things like what you do with your money.  And some have cited this passage as proof that Jesus taught that the law is the law, and our duty as Christians is to support the government no matter what.”[i]

All of these conclusions are based in modern assumptions, and ignore the context within which Jesus says these words.  Jesus is not laying out a treatise of how his followers are to navigate the tensions between church and state.  What Jesus is doing is navigating the various factions that would much rather have him eliminated than hear the real meaning of his words.  The Pharisees and the Herodians have little in common.  In fact, they are pretty much enemies, with the Herodians being dedicated to King Herod and the Pharisees being dedicated to Jewish Law – including being opposed to paying the tax to Caesar for religious reasons.  But despite these divided loyalties, the Pharisees and Herodians are united in their desire to remove Jesus from the scene.[ii]  And so they play this game, trying to trick Jesus into either angering the state or angering the faithful – either way cursing Jesus.  What they had forgotten is how clever and insightful Jesus can be.  And with this one response, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” Jesus answers a trick question much more broadly than the answer that either the Pharisees or the Herodians were hoping for.

Jesus is not really talking about the separation of church and state today.  He is not even really talking about taxes.  Jesus is talking about a new perspective on the whole of our lives – a way to think about money certainly, but also a way to put all things in perspective.  Now I do not know about you, but I am kind of a visual learner.  I need to see something in writing or have something in a chart or spreadsheet to really grasp a new idea.  So let’s take Jesus’ statement, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” and make a mental pie chart.  Are you ready?  First, let’s put our taxes pie piece in the chart.  What is that, like twenty percent, right?  So now we have a pie chart that leaves about eighty percent.  From that, let’s take our pledge out.  For ease of argument, let’s say you subscribe to giving a tithe, so we will take ten percent out.  That leaves us with seventy percent with which to play.  But Jesus says that the things that belong to God should be given to God.  If we have jobs or we go to school, our ability to do those things belongs to God.  So, we have to give that back to God.  That probably leaves us with about fifty percent in our pie chart.  Our good health is all owed to God as well, so now we are down to about forty percent.  Those friends and family that we hold so dear – those are also gifts from God.  Now we are down to about thirty percent.  And let’s not forget about food, shelter, and clothing.  We just dropped down to about fifteen percent.  Then there is the air we breathe, and God’s own creation upon which we rely.  Now we are down to about five percent.

Whew!  We have five percent of our “stuff” that belongs to us.  But wait – Jesus did not say, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s…and then keep the final five percent for yourselves.”  Surely Jesus knew we would need a night on the town, or a moment to just be self-absorbed, and not think about those suffering around the world.  But here is where the rub is in our lesson today.  The reason why the Pharisees and the Herodians leave Jesus amazed and go away is because they are shocked into silence.  If Jesus answers that the people should not pay the tax, the Herodians will be able to call him a seditionist.  If Jesus tells the people they should pay the tax, the Pharisees will be able to accuse him of not following the law of God because the use of the coin alone, which claimed Caesar’s divinity, was blasphemous.  Not to mention the fact that Caesar was oppressing the people.  If Jesus says they should pay the tax, surely the people of faith will turn on him.[iii]  But Jesus answers with “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

The reason Jesus is able to send the people away amazed is because Jesus point out one even trickier, harder truth – everything we have – our tax money, our tithe, our jobs, our health, our family and friends, our food, shelter and clothing, the very air we breathe – everything belongs to God.  What Jesus is really saying today is that our question – and yes, this is our question too, not just the question of the Pharisees and Herodians – our question today is laughable.  We can make all the pie charts and balance sheets we want.  The pie chart really only has one big piece – and that piece says, “God’s.”

This past week, my daughter and I were talking about the prayer rocks that we got from the Stewardship Committee last week.  If you have not received yours yet, there are some in the back.  The idea is that when you received your pledge card and stewardship packet, you would have a tool to help you prayerfully consider your pledge for the coming year.  The rock is meant to be your tactile way of praying about your pledge this year.  The other nice thing about the rock is that the rock is also a conversation piece.  That is how my daughter and I had a prayerful conversation this week.  We were comparing our rocks – both of ours says “love” on the rock, but hers is more oblong and black, while mine is rounder and grayer.  When my daughter asked me what we were supposed to do with our rocks, I told her that the rock was supposed to help us think about what we wanted to give to God this year.  I suggested she decide on a coin that she could take to church every Sunday.  Instead, my daughter told me she wanted to give a can of food every Sunday.  See, I wanted her to understand the connection of our money with God.  But perhaps my daughter understood the bigger statement of Jesus today – that everything, including the food on our shelves, belongs to God.  So we compromised, agreeing that she could do both.  Because she was right – our money, our food, our livelihood all belongs to God.  Our poor pledge coordinator is going to have to figure out how to calculate that pledge when we turn in our card on November 2nd.

I joke, but I think our pledge card this year might be some hybrid of our ideas.  The adults of our family will certainly be putting on a tithe.  The children in our family will have to calculate a dime or nickel times 52 weeks in the year.  And our cupboard will have to sacrifice 52 items as well.  Normally once a month or so, our family goes to Costco and gets a packet of something to put in our food drive.  But I like my daughter’s idea better – because my daughter’s idea reminds us that the food on our shelves – our food, not food bought for others – belongs to God.  And as Jesus reminds us today, we are to give to God the things that are God’s.  Amen.

[i] Lance Pape, “Commentary on Matthew 22:15-22, found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2201 on October 15, 2014.

[ii] Marvin A. McMickle, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 191.

[iii] Susan Grove Eastman, “Exegetical Perspective, Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 191, 193.  Other resources explain this duality as well.

Homily – Acts 20.28-32, Robert Grosseteste, October 9, 2014

23 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Today we honor Robert Grosseteste.  Robert was one of the outstanding English bishops from the 13th century.  Though he had humble beginnings in Suffolk, he rose to preeminence in the Church, distinguishing himself as a scholar in all branches of study:  law, medicine, languages, sciences, and theology.  He was appointed master of the Oxford School.  He was a theology professor and translated Aristotle’s works from the Greek, wrote commentaries on them, and sought to refute the philosopher’s views by developing a scientific method based on Augustine’s theories.  Because of Robert, Oxford began to emphasize the study of sciences – and many of his pupils became leaders.  In 1235, Robert was consecrated Bishop of Lincoln.  He was a very hands-on bishop, making a point to tend to the pastoral needs of his clergy and laity.  Those under his care really saw him as the shepherd of the Diocese.

In many ways, I think Bishop Grosseteste took to heart the instructions from Acts today.  “Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God …” says the lesson.  Robert was the consummate shepherd tending to his flock.  His regular visits to rural deaneries were not only to tend to pastoral needs, but also to questions of doctrine.  He knew, as Acts says, that “savage wolves” would come among his flock, and he tended and protected them as much as he could.

In some ways, we hear about bishops or those called to tend flocks, and we start to tune out.  The work from Acts sounds like the work of the clergy.  What we forget is that through our baptism, we are all given work to do.  We are all tenders of this community.  We take care of each other, we pray for one another, we visit the hurting in our community.  That is the work of the baptized. But Acts also says, “Keep watch over yourselves.”  What we sometimes forget is that we also need to confess when we need pastoral care ourselves; we need to remember that our own formation is ongoing – meaning we need to make sure we are consistently finding ways to grow in our faith.  If we do not care for our own spiritual well-being, we will find it much more difficult to tend to others’ spiritual well-being.

Luckily, as Robert knew and Acts affirms, God and the message of God’s grace is able to build us up.  This is the final reminder from Acts – that God will strengthen us through grace.  We can all be the pastors, the ministers that we become through our baptism – because God and God’ grace enables and continually invites us in to watch over ourselves and all the flock.  Amen.

Walking the Way…

15 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

This past Sunday, St. Margaret’s kicked off its Stewardship Campaign, “Walking the Way.”  As part of the campaign, we have distributed information packets that include a pledge card.  You will be seeing guest blog posts from our parishioners here on this blog.  There will be articles written in our newsletter.  This promises to be a fun and engaging campaign.

But one of the things I am most excited about is an idea that one of our Stewardship Committee Members had.  The Walking the Way logo has both a cross and a stone path.  When we first looked at the logo, the path symbolized for us the “way” that we walk with God – our own spiritual journey with God.  But as we continued to look at the logo, the image became richer for us.  We began to imagine the stones as representative of each parishioner at St. Margaret’s, as we journey together on this walk with God.  Finally, as we played with the image of a walk and stones, we began to wonder whether actual stones might be a wonderful tool for us this year as we pray about our own stewardship this year.

And so an idea was born.  This year, in addition to our letter, narrative budgets, and pledge cards, we each received a stone.  The stone is meant to be a gift during this time for us to use during our prayer time – a tangible invitation into times of prayer in the coming weeks.  For those of you who have used prayer beads before, you know how useful tangible tools for prayers can be.  The tactile nature of something like a stone helps us focus our prayers, work through our anxieties, and ultimately cling to something that reminds us of our gracious Lord and Savior – as well as the community of faith who prays with us.

If you did not get your prayer stone on Sunday, don’t worry: there are more.  If you did get your prayer stone, I hope you will start using it, and discover what gift awaits you in your prayer time.  Each rock has a word painted on it to help encourage your prayers.  Mine happens to say, “Love.”  I look forward to meditating on how God’s love is a blessing to me, and how I hope to bless others through that same love.  Happy prayers!

With these hands…

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

When I was ordained as a priest, the bishop anointed my hands.  The bishop explained to me that my hands would be used by God for the work of ministry.  At the time, I thought about various ways my hands might be used – for consecrating the Eucharist, for blessing the people, for baptizing the faithful, and for writing sermons and blog posts.  What I had not fully understood was that my hands would become a lifeline of support, care, and love – an extension of Christ’s loving embrace.  Though as an extrovert, I tend to rely on my words for ministry, there would be times when my words could not do the work – only my hands were needed.

The lesson was one that my chaplaincy supervisor had tried to teach me many years before.  I had expressed to my supervisor how I was struggling with some of the non-verbal patients because I felt like I was paralyzed.  By not being able to have a conversation, I felt like I was doing nothing.  In fact, my visits with non-verbal patients tended to be the shortest.  But one particular patient that summer helped me start to break through that fear.  I had been visiting the patient off and on for a couple of weeks, when the nurses asked me to come for another visit.  They were worried that the patient was not far from death.  When I went to the patient’s room, the patient was groggy, but was able to speak a little.  Sooner than I would have liked, the patient’s words were no longer available.  Uncertain what to do next, I offered my hand to the patient.  I was surprised at the force with which the patient grabbed my hand – squeezing so hard that had it been any other situation, I would have pulled away.  But instead, I let the patient cling to my hand with a fierceness of emotion, and we sat there in silence for quite some time.  Somehow, the strength of the grasp filled the room like a shout, and all the words that would have normally bubbled out of my mouth were finally silenced.  Later, after leaving the room, I remember the strange sensation of my hands – as if I were seeing them for the first time.

I was reminded of that powerful lesson earlier this week.  I was pumping while my six-month old was swinging in her swing.  She was fussy, fighting off sleep with wails and writhing.  I had tried soothing her with toys, a pacifier, and coos, but nothing was working.  Finally she reached out her hand toward me, and I grasped it.  I could not pick her up, but I could certainly hold her hand.  As I rubbed the back of her tiny hand, smiling and looking lovingly into her eyes, my daughter slowly calmed down, and managed to give in to sleep.  Though the feel of her hand in mine was totally different from the grasp of an adult, I became keenly aware of my hands once again.  As she drifted off, my thoughts marveled at the many different ways Christ has used my hands over the years.  Both in my vocation as priest and in my vocation as mother, God is constantly using me, literally using my hands, to be a blessing;  and in return, filling me up with joy, renewed vigor, and peace.

When my chaplaincy supervisor warned me that I would not always be able to talk my way through situations, I resisted at first.  I suppose words are my way of trying to exert some sense of control – in essence, my resistance in acknowledging Who is really in control.  Several years later, I am so grateful for the encouragement to embrace that lesson.  As God reminds me over and over Who is in charge within my vocations, I feel relief more than frustration.  The burden of being in control is lifted.  The failings of my words no longer feel like failings.  And I am profoundly grateful for the gift of hands that have been anointed to do God’s work.

The gift of role models…

25 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

This Saturday our parish has its Annual Fall Fair – a festive gathering with vendors, food, children’s activities, raffles, and other fall merriment.  We are blessed with an 11-acre property, so the event is a wonderful way for us to welcome people to our grounds and remind the community that they are welcome here.  Having done this event for so many years, most of our parishioners know what needs to be done – signs, publicity, donors, coordinating vendors, setting up the property, making baskets, bringing in donations.  The list goes on.  But even though we all know what needs to be done, there is usually a bit of anxiety and stress to make sure the event is a success, especially in the week leading up to the event.  As someone who can become easily stressed, I totally understand the reaction.  Though I am not involved in the execution of the event, I always empathize with our parishioners as the tension builds in this final week.

But this year, something has shifted.  I do not know if it is due to their personalities or if they are being intentional in their behavior, but our co-chairs for this event are being the epitome of a non-anxious presence in the community.  Don’t get me wrong, they have had plenty of reasons to become anxious: several key volunteers are unavailable this year, leading to some out-sourcing; the vendors are coming in a little more slowly; and we are trying some very different, new things this year.  But the co-chairs seem to be rolling with the punches, creating solutions, and keeping their cool.  And although the church is abuzz with activity, I sense that the non-anxious presence of the co-chairs is rubbing off on others.  People are doing their assigned tasks, and there seems to be much less tension going into the event.

It is in moments like these when I am grateful to be in a community with a wide variety of gifts.  Being a non-anxious presence is one of my primary goals in my role as pastor and priest in this community.  I feel like that action alone reduces challenges significantly and enables the body to live out its ministry in a healthy and God glorifying way.  But being non-anxious takes work and intentionality, and some days I exude that calm better than others.  This week, I am grateful for parishioners who are serving as healthy role models, and who invite me to live into my call in a more healthy way.

Sermon – Matthew 20.1-16, P20, YA, September 21, 2014

25 Thursday Sep 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Having worked in the non-profit sector for almost seven years before going off to seminary, I learned that even when people are trying to be at their best, sometimes ugliness slips in and makes the waters murky.  At Habitat for Humanity, as part of the homeowner application process, each applicant received a home visit before being selected to be in the program.  The home visit enabled us to get to know the homeowners better, to ask clarifying questions, and to get a real sense of how desperate their current housing situation was.  Since volunteers usually did these visits, we had to do a great deal of training – not just on the logistics of a visit, but really on how to be thoughtful visitors.  For example, many of our volunteers would come back to our staff and complain about the applicants.  “They would be a lot better off if they hadn’t bought that big TV and weren’t paying for cable,” some would argue.  Or another complaint often was, “If they weren’t giving so much of their income to church, they might be able to make ends meet.”

Both arguments were true – but they did not capture the full truth.  Yes, that big TV purchase and that cable bill might seem like an extravagance to one of our volunteers.  But if you can never afford going to the movies, eating dinner out, or going to a play or concert, the TV is the only thing that makes you feel connected to the world, offers release from stress, and gives some modicum of entertainment to your children.  Likewise, yes, that weekly donation to their church probably would be better used to pay down credit card debt.  But their relationship with God is probably the only thing that has helped them survive this long.  That contribution gives them a sense of grounding, of priorities, and a feeling like they too are contributing something to the world.  Even though the Habitat volunteers were generously giving of their time, and were generally kind-hearted people, sometimes their judgments got in the way of their good works.

The same can be true about our relationship with God.  We often give lip service to how much we appreciate that our God is a generous, gracious God who is full of love and compassion.  We have experienced that abundance many times in our lives and we strive to incorporate a sense of gratitude in our lives.  But our sense of gratitude often battles with our sense of justice – in a way that brings out the ugliest versions of ourselves.  Jesus knew this reality all too well.  Jesus captures that tension in the parable he tells today.  The parable is familiar.  A landowner goes out to the market five times in one day, hiring additional laborers each time.  The first group, hired at 6:00 a.m. is promised the usual daily wage.  Each subsequent group is promised “whatever is right” as a wage.  But when the time comes to pay the laborers, the landowner pays the group who only worked one hour a full day’s wage.  The group who started twelve hours earlier sees the landowner’s generosity and assumes they may be getting more than the landowner promised.  But when their turn comes, they only get the usual daily wage.  The workers do not like this, and immediately hoist up the “that’s not fair” flag.

The truth is that the twelve-hour workers are right.  The landowner is not fair.  I imagine any of us who saw a glimpse of the pay distribution at our jobs would be pretty miffed if the newest employees were making as much as the employees who had been there many years longer.  Many people have been advocating lately for legislation that helps to equalize pay for women.  And many activists have challenged the ways in which our justice system has a bias towards the wealthy.  We are a people who are passionate about fairness and justice.  Even when someone pushes back with the classic line, “well, life’s not fair,” we still will fight for fairness as much as we can.

The problem in our gospel lesson is that the kingdom of God does not value fairness over all other ethics.  The kingdom of God holds other values before fairness:  the value of love, the value of graciousness, the value of care.  Most of us can admit that when we hear of the landowner’s generous giving to the last round of workers, our immediate thought is how lovely the landowner’s generosity is.  We all love generosity until we see that some are getting more generosity than we are.  Then something awful happens.  The “evil eye” creeps in and starts to distort our view.  This is the very accusation the landowner makes.  The landowner’s response is simple, “Are you envious because I am generous?”  Other translations translate the phrase for “being envious” as “having an evil eye.”  In other words, insidious jealousy, envy, and greed immediately prevent any sense of celebration and goodwill among the workers.  Instead of a pat on the shoulder, or an acknowledgment of the incredible blessing the late workers receive, the early workers start grumbling about fairness and equality.  They forget that they got what they agreed to:  a day’s wage for a day’s work.

What the parable is trying to communicate, albeit a bit harshly, is that the fact that God is so generous is a benefit to all of us at some point in our lives.  For those of us who have ever been at the bottom, we know how blessed we can feel when God reaches out a generous hand to us.  But I think what makes today’s lesson so difficult for many of us is that although we know that God’s preference for generosity can help us when we are down, we do not ever want to actually be down.  We want to be earning our keep, striving for success, and achieving our way to the top.  We do not like the feeling of not being able to achieve our way through life.

I read an article this past summer about a woman who had been firmly ensconced in her middle-class life, making a reasonable amount of money.  She and her husband were pregnant with twins when two things happened in rapid succession.  First, they bought a house at the top of the housing bubble, right before the bubble popped, making their home depreciate in value by about $90,000.  Then, her husband lost his job.  The twins were born premature, necessitating very expensive formula.  The article goes on to explain how this middle-class, successful couple went from comfortable living to trying to make ends meet with assistance from Medicaid, food stamps, and the WIC program.  She describes the judgmental comments and gestures people made, from blaming her for her problems, to criticizing the food she was buying for her family.  She writes, “What I learned…will never leave me.  We didn’t deserve to be poor, any more than we deserved to be rich.  Poverty is a circumstance, not a value judgment.  I still have to remind myself sometimes that I was my harshest critic.  That the judgment of the disadvantaged comes not just from conservative politicians and Internet trolls.  It came from me, even as I was living it.”[i]

The invitation for the laborers in the field, and the invitation for with each of us is to remember the words from that offertory prayer, “All things come of thee, O Lord…”[ii]  When our hearts are set on gratitude for all that we have, instead of wrapped up in our manmade notions of entitlement, then celebrating with the one-hour workers is a lot easier.  Because we know, like that middle-class woman, that we could at any moment be one of those waiting all day for an hour’s worth of work.  As one scholar says, “This parable reminds us that God is a lousy bookkeeper and invites us to transform our pride, envy, and hardness into joy by admiring and celebrating God’s astounding generosity.  The parable calls us to look at ourselves honestly and lovingly, as God looks at us.  [The parable] invites us to turn from holding grudges because things did not go our way, to let go of the stuff of our lives that keeps us from being joy-filled and grateful people.”[iii]  When we accept that invitation, and turn ourselves toward gratitude, we catch a glimpse of the joyous party that is waiting with the landowner in the kingdom of heaven.  Amen.

[i] Darlena Cunha, “This is what happened when I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps,” Washington Post, July 8, 2014 found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/07/08/this-is-what-happened-when-i-drove-my-mercedes-to-pick-up-food-stamps/.

[ii] 1 Chronicles 29.14.

[iii] Charlotte Dudley Cleghorn, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 96.

Homily – 1 Peter 2.19-23, Edward Bouverie Pusey, September 18, 2014

19 Friday Sep 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Today we honor Edward Bouverie Pusey.  Pusey was the leader of the Oxford Movement – a movement that sought to revive High Church teachings and practices in the Anglican Communion.  Born in 1800, Pusey spent his scholarly life in Oxford, England.  In 1833 he teamed up with others to produce tracts for the Oxford Movement.  But his most influential work was his preaching – which was both catholic in content and evangelical in his zeal for souls, but many of his contemporaries felt that he was dangerously innovative.  In fact, Pusey was once suspended from preaching for two years for preaching about the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  He was also responsible for helping revive private confession in the Anglican Communion.  He established churches for the poor and helped establish sisterhoods, including the first Anglican sisterhood since the Reformation.

A lot of Pusey’s work seems non-controversial to us now.  We are used to talking of Christ’s “Real Presence” in communion.  We are familiar with private confession and Anglican sisterhoods.  But Pusey was controversial in his day and faced much persecution.  I imagine he may have read our Epistle lesson several times in those days: “ … if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”  Our lesson reminds us that what is earthly suffering now can lead to powerful change later.  Pusey’s work and witness changed the entire Anglican experience and identity.  But he saw little of that fruition.

What Pusey and First Peter tell us today is that the work God has given us to do will not always be easy, but when we authentically live into our call, the reward goes beyond just us.  We bless people all the time through our call.  Living into our call takes courage and conviction.  But when we do, we can be encouraged that we are walking the path that many saints before us have walked, and one in which many saints will follow.  Amen