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Sermon – Luke 17.11-19, P23, YC, October 13, 2013

17 Thursday Oct 2013

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I have never been what I would call physically expressive with my faith.  I remember the last time I worshipped at my mother’s church, I was so uncomfortable with the raised hands and utterances of praise, that I found my arms tightly crossed and my eyes glued to the screens to avoid looking around me.  I remember walking an outdoor labyrinth with a priest friend of mine, who upon reaching the center of the labyrinth raised her arms and her head silently to God and just stood there for a long time.  My pace slowed dramatically as I began to panic about how I would never feel comfortable in such a stance, even if I was all alone.  I remember in the multi-cultural church where I worshipped in college watching parishioners stomp and clap as the choir led a spirit-filled song.  I managed to eek out an “Amen,” or maybe even a quiet, “Yes,” but I was drowned out by the boisterous praise around me.

As Episcopalians (or as many call us, “God’s Frozen Chosen”), I imagine that many of us in this room do not see anything strange about my aversion to physical manifestations of praise.  The most physicality we like to show in worship is through our active alternating between standing, sitting, and kneeling.  But my aversion to praise lately has not simply been physical.  I have noticed that the lack of praise has been missing from my words and actions lately too.  Lately my prayers for the parish have become a long litany of people who are hurting or suffering or who simply could use a sense of God’s presence in their lives.  Rarely do I lift up an equally long litany of things for which I am grateful for in this parish and in your lives.  I am not really sure how I got to this praise-lacking place.  Part of me wants to blame my lack of praise on the endless bad news in our world – the recent government shutdown, the economy, shootings, natural disasters, injustice and oppression, and wars.  But I think a larger part of the lack of praise has to do with something missing in my relationship with God – a focus on what needs work in my life as opposed to a focus on what ways my life is so blessed.

I guess you could say I sympathize with the nine lepers who do not return to Jesus when they are healed.  Of course, those lepers do nothing wrong per se.  In fact, they follow Jesus’ instructions to the letter.  Jesus tells them to go and present themselves to the priests and that they will be healed along the way.  And so, the nine lepers obediently follow directions, and in doing so, live life faithfully.  But when Jesus asks the Samaritan leper where the other nine lepers are, we notice immediately that there might be more to our spiritual journey than simply living life faithfully or following the rules.  The contrast between the lepers is so vivid that you can almost see the story in colors.  The nine lepers who are healed and follow Jesus’ instructions to go to the priests might be depicted in beige or taupe.  They do not lack color, but their color is pretty neutral.  Much like their actions are mundane, so are the colors they merit.  Meanwhile, the Samaritan leper might be depicted in vibrant reds, oranges, and golds.  His return to Jesus and his physically dramatic praise that includes prostrating himself at Jesus feet makes him more vibrant in the story.  He is the man raising his hands in praise, standing in wonder before God in the center of a labyrinth, or stomping his feet and shouting at the top of his lungs in worship.  Of course our eyes might be drawn to the vibrant colors of the Samaritan, but we would rarely pick such vibrant colors ourselves – or if we did, we would only use those colors in accessories – a vibrant bag or pair of shoes, but certainly not an entire vibrant outfit.

What the Samaritan leper shows us is that faithful living is more than just following rules or being relatively well-behaved.  Faithful living is more than trying to be a generally good person, or occasionally dropping a few extra dollars in the offering plate if you have some to spare.  The Samaritan shows us that true faithful living is not a quiet or mild experience.  Faithful living is expressive, passionate, and full of wonder and gratitude.  The Samaritan shows us this reality because not only does he perceive his blessing, he articulates his blessing.[i]  This is what sets the Samaritan apart from the other lepers.  Surely they perceive or see their blessing too.  But the Samaritan then articulates or gives word to his blessing.  We see what this double action of seeing and speaking does – the Samaritan is blessed by Jesus.  All ten of the lepers are healed.  That work is done and given without strings attached.  All are healed.  But the Samaritan gains more.  By articulating his thanksgiving, his blessing is doubled.  His gratitude overwhelms him, which seems to overwhelm God into more blessing.  What a fantastic cycle!

David Lose says, “Gratitude is the noblest emotion.  Gratitude draws us out of ourselves into something larger, bigger, and grander than we could imagine and joins us to the font of blessing itself.  But maybe, just maybe, gratitude is also the most powerful emotion, as it frees us from fear, releases us from anxiety, and emboldens us to do more and dare more than we’d ever imagined.”[ii]  The practice of gratitude changes things.  “When Christians practice gratitude, they come to worship not just to ‘get something out of it,’ but to give thanks and praise to God.  Stewardship is transformed from fundraising to the glad gratitude of joyful givers.  The mission of the church changes from ethical duty to the work of grateful hands and hearts.  Prayer includes not only our intercessions and supplications, but also our thanksgivings at the table.”[iii]

Gratitude is something we have been talking a lot about these past couple of months within the Stewardship Committee.  Today is our official kickoff of stewardship season, and you will be hearing a lot about gratitude over these coming Sundays.  A long time ago, before Scott and I were even married, we talked about the model of stewardship with which I had grown up.  Though United Methodists do not use “pledge” language, they do talk about giving and more specifically about tithing.  Growing up, my family always committed to tithing and talked about that practice regularly.  I always knew money was tight, but no matter what, that ten percent was going back to God on Sundays.  I saw how deeply tithing impacted my parents’ spiritual lives, and Scott and I agreed early in our relationship that we would take on that same spiritual discipline.

So you can imagine my amusement then when I first experienced stewardship in the Episcopal Church.  I heard people making the invitation to give and they used a phrase called the “modern tithe.”  Apparently the modern tithe was the phrase used for giving a percentage of your income to the church – a percentage that you could determine yourselves.  I almost laughed the first time I heard about the modern tithe.  The modern tithe idea sends the message that gratitude is important, but we should decide how much of the tithe we want to give.  The whole idea seemed like a slippery slope to me.  The reason I found the idea strange was because I had lived with the ten percent notion my whole life.  And what I learned about ten percent is that sometimes that ten percent is easy and feels great to give, and sometimes that ten percent feels like it could send you into poverty and despair.  But that is what is great about a sacrificial discipline.  No matter where you are in life, that practice of always giving that percentage is a way of saying, “Lord, this does not feel good right now, but I know you to be faithful and full of blessing, and so I give this to you grudgingly, hoping you can infuse my heart with the gratitude I have felt so many times before.”

I tell you that the Andrews-Weckerlys tithe ten percent not because I want to guilt you into doing the same.  I tell you about our tithing because I want my story to help me reclaim some of that joyful gratitude that the Samaritan has and that I have had at many times in my life.  I confess that lately that monthly pledge check has been hard.  More often I write those numbers with a deep sigh of resignation than with a song of praise.  My hope is that in telling you my story of how I feel like one of the nine lepers, that you might encourage me to be like the one Samaritan leper.  My hope is that in sharing my struggles, you might begin to ponder where you are in your spiritual walk with God and whether your financial giving is a reflection of the deep gratitude you have toward God or instead is the obedient, but joyless following of expectations.  My hope is that in offering up my challenges, we might all have more open, honest conversations at home, with one another, and with God about where we are and where we want to be.  The invitation of that bright, loud, boisterous Samaritan is there for all of us.  Blessings await.  Amen.

[i] David Lose, “Second Blessing,” as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2796 on October 11, 2013.

[ii] Lose.

[iii] Kimberly Bracken Long, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 168.

 

 

Sermon – Luke 16.19-31, 1 Timothy 6.6-19, P21, YC, September 29, 2013

05 Saturday Oct 2013

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Today’s scripture lessons are a bit uncomfortable.  The gospel and the epistle lesson really hit the rich hard.  We hear that familiar tale of the rich man and Lazarus and we almost sympathize with the rich man.  As he blindly goes about life ignoring Lazarus, we want to shout out to him, “Pay attention to Lazarus!  Take care of the poor!”  Of course, our reaction is much like the rich man’s once he realizes how doomed he really is.  He begs Abraham to send Lazarus or anyone from the dead to warn his brothers.  But Abraham responds with a deafening, “no,” and the silence at the end of the lesson is heart-wrenching.  This stark judgment is only heightened by our Epistle lesson, which boldly proclaims, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”  The writer does not simply say that wealth can be dangerous, but instead declares that the desire for wealth drives people to ruin and destruction.  There is a little bit of grace at the end of the lesson, which declares that the rich can somehow mitigate this fate by not being haughty, by setting their hopes on God, and by doing good, being rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.  Not all hope is lost, but we are also clear that the rich have a lot to worry about and a lot of work to do.

The biggest challenge about our lessons today though is not just the judgment of the rich, but the fact that we do not think of ourselves as being rich.  We can think of hundreds of thousands of people who are in better financial positions than we are.  Many of our members are struggling to get by – either because of fixed incomes or unexpected situations.  And even if some of us are making all our bills, we still have to watch our budgets – perhaps spending less on leisure, clothing, or the foods that we might like.  The last two parishes I served had a one and two million dollar budget respectively – we could easily look at our budget and the last two years of deficits and say that St. Margaret’s is not a place of rich people.  All you have to do is look around at our come-as-you-are culture, and assume that our parishioners in jeans and t-shirts do not have much money.

Of course, all of this is false.  All of our rationalizations and mind-games can never erase the fact that based on worldwide standards, simply by living in this country, we are rich people.  These lessons are not about “those people.”  These lessons are about us.  That is what makes them so hard.  We secretly want them to be about other people, but at the end of the day, we are the ones in danger of stepping over Lazaruses everyday and we are the ones who must struggle with our own love of money.  We are the rich in today’s lessons.

In the aftermath of the crisis of the Kenyan Westgate Mall Terrorist attack, an article surfaced about the media’s treatment of the crisis.[i]  In the first days of coverage, the mall was described as “being popular with ‘wealthy Kenyans, expatriates, and diplomats.’  It was also referred to as an ‘upscale mall’ ‘frequented by foreigners.’”  On the face of things, the description seemed relatively accurate and harmless.  But what the author of the article noted was that the sentiment that began spreading was that maybe the rich were getting their due, being terrorized in ways that the poor feel terrorized everyday.  But by the second day of reporting, the language started to change.  People began to see that not just the rich were suffering in the attack – ordinary people were being injured and killed too – in fact, even Muslims were being killed, despite the fact that the attack was committed by the so-called Islamist terrorists.  As pictures emerged of Kenyans helping internationals, and Muslims helping Christians, the vulgar labeling of “otherness” had been put to shame by the people’s common humanity and decency.  What I appreciated about this article is how the author saw our tendencies to not see ourselves in the other – how quickly we want to remove ourselves from judgment instead of seeing ourselves in the sinfulness of the world.  What happened in Kenya is not far from what happens every time we open our wallets and decide that we are not the rich man in our gospel or epistle lesson today.

Seeing our own culpability in our lessons today, what can we do from here?  There are two gifts in our scripture lessons today.  First, by watching the story of the rich man and Lazarus unfold, we get the benefit of what the rich man wanted for his brothers.  We are reminded through Abraham that the warnings are all there for us.  Though the rich man’s opportunity for repentance and renewal is gone, ours is not.  We have Moses, the prophets, and even Jesus himself rising from the dead as our reminder that our wealth is gifted to us to use for good.  Second, the hope of the epistle lesson is our hope as well.  We too can be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share.  Even when we feel like we have nothing left to share, all we have to do is remember that our sharing is our active relinquishing of the power that the love of money has over us.

This week, a priest friend of mine was featured in a story in Chattanooga, Tennessee for the bold move his church is taking.  Another church in town erected three 100-foot crosses on their property at the cost of $700,000.  On reflection, my friend and the Episcopal community of faith that he has gathered began to wonder how else they could spend $700,000.  In response, the community established the Southside Jubilee Fund.[ii]  They will raise $700,000 themselves in order to give all the money away.  Considering the call for Jubilee in Leviticus, the requirements for receiving money from the funds will be biblically based – any group doing work feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing those in need, caring for the sick, loving your neighbor, forgiving your enemies, honoring widows, or healing the land can receive from the fund.  Who knows whether the church will be able to raise the full $700,000, but that kind of boldness is the kind of boldness our epistle lesson calls for today.

We at St. Margaret’s are embarking on some of our spending.  We are finally fixing a long-term water problem that has been plaguing our undercroft.  As we repair the years of damage, mold, and old asbestos tiles, and as we restructure our outdoor drainage, we will also be reconstructing a space that not only holds our social events, but facilitates education and formation for adults and children, welcomes support groups, and perhaps can become used for more community gatherings.  This kind of expense may feel like the expense of the rich – but I actually think this kind of spending is a bit like the kind of spending the epistle encourages.  We will have to be both generous to fund the project, but also use the space for good works and share the space with others.  And if we are really embracing the call to share, perhaps we can consider some sort of matching program – matching the dollars we spend on our building with the dollars we spend on outreach.  That matching might not be dollar for dollar like in Chattanooga, but the invitation for boldness is there.

But the invitation for boldness is not just for St. Margaret’s.  The invitation for boldness is for each one of us here.  I would like us each to take a moment and pull out our wallets.  Look at how much cash you have in there.  I want you to make a mental note of that amount, and then I want you to watch over the coming week or weeks how you spend those dollars.  I want you to watch where the dollars go and what your spending says about your relationship with money.  Even if you cannot be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share those specific dollars, perhaps you can spend the next month watching the ways you do and do not share your other dollars and what that says about the power that the love of money has in your life.  If you find that those dollars are not being used boldly for good works and generous sharing, perhaps you and your family can consider how you might live differently:  how you might, as our epistle says, live the life that really is life.  And as you make those observations, I hope you will share that experience with me and one another – so that we might encourage one another on the journey toward bold living.  Amen.

[i] Charles Onyango-Obbo, “Nairobi Westgate Mall Terror Attack, And The Folly Of ‘Otherness’ – What Al-Shabaab Revealed About Us,” as found at http://nakedchiefs.com/2013/09/24/nairobi-westgate-mall-terror-attack-and-the-folly-of-otherness-what-al-shabaab-revealed-about-us/ on September 26, 2013.

[ii] As found on http://southsideabbey.dioet.org/ on September 25, 2013.

Sermon – Luke 16.1-13, P20, YC, September 22, 2013

26 Thursday Sep 2013

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If you were following today’s gospel lesson closely, you are most likely wondering whether you heard Jesus correctly, as his words make little sense.  Jesus tells another one his parables about money.  When a scheming, dishonest, self-serving manager is about to get fired, he goes and does the unthinkable.  He forgives debts which are not his debts to forgive, hoping in the end to make enough friends who might support him once he is out of a job.  And so when the master returns and finds out what has happened, we expect judgment to reign down on him even greater than before.  But in a shocking turn, the master commends the manager for acting shrewdly.  In response to this turn in the story, Jesus says to the disciples, “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal home.”  We hear Jesus basically telling the disciples to use dishonest wealth in the same way as this manager, and our response is confusion, disbelief, and maybe even disappointment.

After years of economic downward spiral, after watching banks and individuals cheat their way to the top while pushing down the poor and middle-class, many of us find Jesus’ words confusing if not altogether offensive.  We want nothing to do with a life that encourages scheming and plotting behavior and the embracing of dishonesty.  Some part of us feels a bit betrayed by Jesus’ strange advice and we are not entirely sure how to proceed.

So for those of us stuck in a bit of a confused haze about dishonesty, money, and relationships, we are going to take a step back and look at what is actually happening in the parable so that we can understand Jesus’ comments a bit better.  First, we have a poorly-behaving manager.  The manager has squandered away the master’s money.  When he is caught, the manager takes a good look at himself and admits some honest truths – he is not capable of doing manual labor and he is too embarrassed to beg for money.  Having been honest about who he is, he connives his way into a solution:  he will engender goodwill among his neighbors by doing financial favors for each of them – forgiving portions of their debts in the hopes that they will sometime very soon return the favor.  Both the master and Jesus recognize the shrewdness or wisdom in the manager’s behavior because the manager uses his wits to get out of a devastating position.

After understanding exactly what Jesus is complimenting, next we need to understand what Jesus is saying about money.  When Jesus says to “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth,” Jesus is not saying to start behaving unethically.  Jesus is claiming that money itself is inherently a means, not an end.  This point is a little tricky for us.  We all have varying philosophies about money.  Some of us manage to care very little about money, with money holding very little power over us.  Some of us struggle with money, sometimes remembering how money can be used for good, but most times feeling like money creates stress and anxiety in our lives that we cannot seem to shake.  And others of us become narrowly focused on money – either in how we can acquire more or what ways we can spend and enjoy money more.  What Jesus knows that we often forget is that money is inherently “dishonest.”  Money creates systems of injustice and hierarchies of power; money can destroy marriages and friendships; and money can be the ruin of many a person.  So when Jesus says to make friends through dishonest wealth, he does not mean to become a dishonest people; he means that money is inherently luring us into dishonesty, and we can either throw our hands up in the air in resignation and a refusal to be associated with that dishonesty, or we can use that dishonest wealth as a means to something much more important – relationship with others.

So if we understand what the manager is actually doing, and we can see money as a means to an end, how do we get to the step of being comfortable with using something bad for good?  Jesus is not telling us to manipulate people with money in order to be in relationship with others.  Most of us believe the old adage that you cannot buy friends – or at least not good ones anyway.  But Jesus is not suggesting we try to buy friends.  Jesus is suggesting that instead of categorizing everything into good and evil, honest and dishonest, we become a bit shrewder in our thinking.  Jesus encourages his disciples to learn from the dishonest manager because the dishonest manager takes a pretty awful situation and manipulates the situation into something good.  The kind of shrewdness Jesus is encouraging is the kind of activity that we might call, “thinking outside of the box.”  If the disciples are to live in this world and thrive, they are going to have to think outside of the box and get creative not only with money, but all sorts of things.

As I have been struggling with this text this week, I did one of the things that I often do in Bible Study.  I started looking at other translations to see if I could make more sense of Jesus’ words.  This week, I found the most help from a translation called, The Message.  Now as ample warning, The Message is a very contemporary paraphrase of the Bible, which takes a lot of theological liberties that I am often uncomfortable with; but I do often find that the language from that paraphrase opens up the biblical text enough for me to start seeing the text with fresh eyes.  The Message translates Jesus words in this way:  “Now here’s a surprise:  The master praised the crooked manager!  And why?  Because he knew how to look after himself.  Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”

What Jesus is trying to say to us today is layered.  First, money has a corrupting force in our lives.  Jesus talks about money incessantly in scripture, from telling people to give away all their money, to scolding people about storing up their money in larger barns, to reminding people not to stress about money, to this odd text about money.  As Luke concludes today, Jesus tells us that we cannot serve God and money, because of the all-consuming way that money can corrode our relationship with God.

Second, we cannot escape money.  Money is a part of our everyday lives, and as we all know is necessary for functioning – for food, for shelter, for clothing, for comfort.  Even those monks and nuns who take on a vow of poverty still rely on the money of others for support.  Money, with all its potential for corruption, is inescapable in our lives.

Finally, once we understand the power and place of money in our lives, Jesus reminds us that when we are wise, keeping God at the center, we can use money as a means to goodness in our relationship with God and with one another.  The manager “transforms a bad situation into one that benefits him and others.  By reducing other people’s debts, he creates a new set of relationships based not on the vertical relationship between lenders and debtors (rooted in monetary exchange) but on something more like the reciprocal and egalitarian relationship of friends.”[i]  This kind of work is not about charity per se, but about making friends.[ii]

A commercial has been circulating around the internet lately.[iii]  In the video, a boy is caught red-handed trying to steal a bottle of medicine and a soda.  A woman is berating him in front of a marketplace, wanting to know why he would take these things.  He confesses that the items are for his mother.  A local merchant steps forward, and hands the woman a handful of money to cover the cost of the stolen items.  The man then quietly asks the boy if his mother is sick.  When the boy nods yes, the merchant has his daughter also bring a container of vegetable broth and other items, and sends the boy on his way.  The next clip of the commercial shows the merchant thirty years later, still working in his shop.  He collapses and is taken to the hospital.  The daughter becomes completely overwhelmed as the medical bills add up, even selling the shop they had once run together.  As she is found crying near her father’s bedside, she finds a revised copy of her bill.  The amount due is zero.  We find out through the video that the doctor who forgives the bill is that same boy who stole medicine thirty years ago.  He writes at the bottom of the bill, “All expenses paid thirty years ago with three packs of painkillers and a bag of veggie soup.”

Jesus knows how money corrupts our world.  But Jesus also knows that we can shrewdly utilize our money as a tool to create relationships that glorify God.  This is Jesus’ invitation for you today:  to examine how your relationship with dishonest wealth can be used for goodness.  Amen.

[i] Lois Malcolm, “Commentary on Luke 16.1-13,” as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx? commentary _id= 1783 on September 18, 2013.

[ii] Thomas G. Long, “Making Friends,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 30, no. 4, Pentecost 2007, 55.

[iii] As found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUM4Mb9rUTU on September 20, 2013.

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

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

12 Thursday Sep 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 12.32-40, P14, YC, August 11, 2013

18 Sunday Aug 2013

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A few weeks ago, a parishioner told me about how he had run into a guy in the parking lot of a grocery store he frequents.  He knew the man to be homeless, and as he was doing his own grocery shopping, he purchased a couple of bags of food for the man.  When he stopped by the car to deliver the bags, the man was overcome with gratitude.  The homeless man’s gushing evoked something in this parishioner, and he found that he just opened his wallet and gave the man all the cash he had too.  That is the funny thing about generosity.  Generosity is kind of addictive.  When we see how much something small means to someone else, we find we want to do more.  And in some strange way, our entire perspective shifts.  Those pennies we were pinching now just seem like pennies:  their value and meaning shift.

This is what Jesus has been trying to get at these last two weeks.  If you remember, last week, Jesus told the parable of a man who was scolded for storing up his excess produce in larger barns, especially since that man would die that very night.  Today, Jesus talks more about the “stuff,” of life.  Jesus says, “Sell your possessions, and give alms.  Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Now I know:  most of us check out when Jesus says, “Sell your possessions.”  There are very few of us who can truly part with all of our possessions.  But what Jesus is really trying to get at is in the last sentence.  “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Jesus wants his followers to see that the stuff of life is neither important nor unimportant.  But our attitude toward our stuff is what is important.

I worked at a parish when I was in seminary that was planning a remodeling of their building.  As different schematics were presented, the number one complaint I heard was, “We need more storage space.”  No matter how many different ways the architect and priest presented new layouts, the complaint about storage space kept arising.  When I finally asked the priest why they did not just put in more storage space into the plans, the priest told me this:  “You know what, Jennifer?  I do not want to put in more storage space because I know they will fill it.”  I was confused at first, wondering whether that might be the point – the parish had stuff they needed to store, hence the request for more space.  But eventually, what I came to see the priest as arguing was that no matter how much space they created, the parish would simply accumulate more stuff to keep storing.  Anyone who has upgraded from a smaller living space to a larger one knows how true this can be.  The more space we have, the more we tend to fill the space with stuff.

The trouble is not inherent in the stuff.  Our stuff is not necessarily evil.  The trouble with our stuff is that much like the land owner last week, when we get so focused on storing and maintaining stuff, our focus or our heart becomes fixed on the stuff and not the potential for the stuff.  Seven years ago, Scott and I moved to a one-bedroom apartment at seminary.  We had more things than could move with us, so we got a storage unit back in Delaware.  When we finally moved to Long Island, we emptied that storage unit.  As I was looking for something in the basement the other day, I realized I have a ton more dishes in the basement than I ever use.  Part of me wanted to get them out and start using them.  But then part of me wondered whether if I could survive for seven years without those casserole dishes and extra glassware, maybe I did not actually need them.  That conclusion has led to some challenging thoughts about the potential for our stuff.

Now I know these texts the last two weeks make us feel uncomfortable.  We do not like talking about money or our stuff in church.  We do not even like talking about those topics in stewardship season, let alone in the comfort of summer!  But we get these texts this time of year because their message is important for us to hear everyday.  When we are so burdened with stress or anxiety about money or our stuff, or even the stuff we want to have but do not have, then our bodies become tense, and our hands tightly closed.  The trouble with those tightly closed hands is that we cannot receive God in the ways that God desires to come to us.  The warnings later in today’s text about being ready are not to “‘Be ready so that you will avoid punishment,’ but, rather, ‘Be ready so that you will receive blessing.’”[i]

That is why Jesus wants us to be aware about where our treasure is.  In fact, we hear his longing in his first words today, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  In other words, you do not need store up things or tarry in anxiety about the earthly stuff.  Our God, that loving father, is pleased to give you all the blessings of the kingdom; and not just in the heavenly kingdom, but here and now.

The question for us this week, then, is what “stuff” is getting in our way of receiving God’s blessing?  What are our arms so full of that we cannot have open arms to receive God’s blessing?  For me, I have been working on letting go not just of the physical stuff of life, but more my own emotional stuff.  Just last week, Simone and I went away for a week at the beach where we would share an 11-room house with other families.  I spent the weeks leading up to the trip worrying about what to bring, how I would haul all the beach “stuff” to and from the beach by myself, what toys or videos we would need for entertainment, and how I would manage the different meal schedule – since meals were served about two hours later than in the Andrews-Weckerly house.  Now certainly my weeks of preparation meant that I was well prepared.  But what I missed in all that preparation was that there would be ten other families present.  My concerns about being the sole parent for the week and how I would manage became all about me.  I forgot that God was giving me the blessing of ten other parents and at least two other sets of siblings to help me cope.  People chipped in with entertaining my child, by aiding with discipline, and with finding creative alternatives when the rains came.  I spent weeks trying to figure all this out by myself, when if I had just heard God’s word for me today, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,” I might have been able to open my arms a lot sooner for God’s blessing.

The question is the same for all of us.  We all can stand to think about where our treasure is today.  Because God longs for our hearts to be in the blessings that God already decided to give to us.  What do you need to let go of today in order to open your arms for God’s blessing?  Amen.

[i] Audrey West, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 336.

Sermon – Luke 11.1-13, P12, YC, July 28, 2013

31 Wednesday Jul 2013

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During seminary, one of the requirements for becoming a priest is to serve for eight weeks in a hospital setting as a chaplain.  Now one might think that there is a hospital chaplaincy course or that the hospital gives chaplains training on how to be a chaplain.  But the truth is, we received two day of “training,” half of which was about just being in hospital, not about how to be a chaplain.  Needless to say, on day three, when the supervisor told us to go to our floors and to get to work, I was almost stunned into inaction.  What would I say?  What was I supposed to do? 

Of course, only hours into the job, I realized how much I had underestimated the challenges.  Not only did I have no idea how to enter a room and strike up a conversation that was not like the ones they were having with every doctor and nurse, I also had no idea how to pray appropriately for the Roman Catholic, the Pentecostal, the Jew, the United Methodist, the Episcopalian, and the uncertain person who was not sure about God but was still willing to let me pray.  I remember sharing my anxiety with a fellow Episcopalian and he simply said, “Oh, I always just pray prayers using the same format as the collects in the Book of Common Prayer.”  Despite my love for the collects in our Prayerbook, an entire childhood of praying like a Methodist meant that his advice offered little encouragement. 

The truth is I am not sure most of us are ever really taught how to pray.  We know a good prayer when we hear one, and we may even write down a prayer we like, but very few of us volunteer to lead prayer at the opening of a meeting or over a meal.  Part of the problem is that most of us think there is a right way to pray.  We imagine there is some magical formula like my friend from seminary suggested, or we worry that our extemporaneous prayer will not be smooth enough or use holy enough words.  We worry that the way that we pray somehow suggests the quality of Christian we are.  Prayer, like biblical literacy, is one of those areas that we get completely anxious about when pressed in public.

The good news is that we are in good company.  We hear in our gospel lesson today one of the disciples say to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.”  The disciples at this point have seen Jesus pray many times.  They see how good he is and they see how important prayer is in his life.  In fact, in Luke’s gospel, Jesus is regularly found in prayer.[i]  They watch Jesus enter into prayer with God for months, and they long to be able to do that too.  And so they come to Jesus, and they vulnerably submit their request:  teach us to pray. 

Their question is full of implications.  First is the admission that they do not have the first idea about what they are doing.  Maybe they learned some prayers in temple, or maybe their parents prayed with them.  But they realize in watching Jesus that they do not actually know how to pray themselves.  Not really.  Second, they see a real connection between Jesus and God that somehow is revealed in Jesus’ prayer life.  Perhaps they see how prayer strengthens him in his weakness and how he is more vulnerable with God than even with them.  They long for that kind of connection with God too, but still, they are not sure how the whole thing works.  Finally, a deeper implication is at hand in the disciples’ question.  Perhaps they are not only asking Jesus how to pray, but also wanting to know what is actually happening in prayer.  Perhaps they have tried praying on their own – for an illness, for a new job, for a broken relationship – but the prayer did not work.  They want Jesus to teach them the right way to pray so that the results they desire are fulfilled.

In some ways, Jesus does that.  First, Jesus gives them a simple prayer.  When you pray, pray this.  The prayer is one that countless Christians have etched into their minds for over two thousand years.  Many of us have distinctive memories of learning the Lord’s Prayer, while others of us just simply know the prayer without remembering how the prayer became ingrained into our conscience.  The Lord’s Prayer is perhaps the only part of a funeral that everyone – even those who never go to church – seem to know and can recite.  This is the same prayer that we say every Sunday, that we teach our children, that we say near death, that we pray when we cannot muster up any other words.  In this way, Jesus teaches the disciples and all of us to pray. 

But then, Jesus goes on to really teach the disciples about prayer.  He tells this funny parable about a man who awakens his friend in the dead of the night because another friend has come to his house and he has no food to feed him.  The man in bed refuses at first, but after much persistence, he caves and gives his friend what he needs.  At the end of the parable, Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.”  Yes, Jesus gives the disciples the words they can use to pray.  But Jesus is also trying to teach them about what prayer really is.  Jesus presents this parable of two friends in a relationship that involves give and take.  Jesus is trying to teach the disciples that prayer is about relationship.  The prayer relationship with God is one in which the disciples will be coming in the middle of the night asking for very inconvenient things.  The prayer relationship is active, deeply personal, and will involve asking for what they really need.[ii]  In fact, Jesus says of the man in the parable, “because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.”  Another translation of the word “persistence,” is “shamelessness.”[iii]  In other words, Jesus teaches the disciples that this prayerful relationship holds nothing back, cannot be embarrassed, and certainly does not worry about pretenses.

Unfortunately, we may hear those words about asking, searching, and knocking and remember every time that our prayers have not been answered, when we have not found, and the door has not been opened.  But Jesus is inviting us today to reframe prayer not as something we do with the expectation of an exchange:  I ask for healing, or a job, or a romantic partner, and God gives that to me.  We are still to come to God with those pains:  the longing for healing, the desire for vocational fulfillment, and the hope for partner who makes us happy and whole.  But instead of bringing those things to God because we want them solved, Jesus suggests that we bring those things to God so that all of ourselves is nakedly before God.  Only then can we have the intimacy with God that we desire and the realness of relationship we long to have. 

Now where this gets messy is when we start trying to understand why things happen – when we are not healed and people tell us, “It was God’s will,” or “Everything happens for a reason.”  But those answers hold little weight when a child dies or when someone loses their home.  I cannot believe in a God who wills those things to happen.  In fact, when a teen asks me why their parents are still getting divorced even though they prayed for the divorce not to happen, or when a mom loses a pregnancy and wants to know why God would let that happen, my answer has most often been, “I don’t know.”  I do not know why our physical ailments are not healed and why horrible or disappointing things happen to us.  All I do know is that God longs for us to bring all of that to God in prayer. 

So when I am angry, God wants me to let God have it.  When I am sad, God wants me to pour out my heart.  When I am lost, God wants me to share my wandering self.  And when I am not even sure God is with me or loves me, God wants me to just come and sit, even if I do not have words or if I do not feel like I can really trust God anymore.  When the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray, Jesus gives them a simple, straightforward prayer, teaching them and us that we do not need holy words or even our own words – especially when we cannot find our own words.  But Jesus teaches us all so much more.  Jesus teaches us to be shamelessly honest about what we need whenever we are in need.  And Jesus teaches us that prayer is based on trust – not a trust that everything works out for the best or that we will get exactly what we want – but a trust that God is listening and God loves us and all the world.[iv]  Jesus’ teaching is not tidy – but Jesus’ teaching invites us in, encourages us, and holds us in this wonderful journey with God – the one who we come to know through prayer.  Amen.

[i] James A. Wallace, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 289.

[ii] Elisabeth Johnson, “Commentary on Luke 11.1-13,” as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx? commentary_id=1724 on July 25, 2013. 

[iii] Wallace, 291.

[iv] David Lose, “Teach Us to Pray,” as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=2654 on July 25, 2013.

Sermon – Ecclesiasticus 51.9-12, Feast of St. Margaret of Antioch (Transferred), July 21, 2013

24 Wednesday Jul 2013

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Today we celebrate the feast of St. Margaret of Antioch, our patron saint.  The legends vary widely about Margaret, but in general, her story goes a bit like this.  Margaret was born to a pagan father, but Margaret was raised by a nurse.  The nurse introduced Margaret to Christianity, and the father disowned her.  As a young teen, she devoted herself to Jesus Christ, vowing to remain his bride for the rest of her life.  A few years later, a wealthy man passed her way and requested to take her as his mistress.  She refused, and he had her imprisoned and beaten.  Her captors felt sorry for her and begged her to submit to the man, but she assured them that though they saw suffering, she saw her pain as “sweeter than cream.”[i]  In her weakened state, she is believed to have faced a dragon, though some refer to the dragon as a demon or Satan himself.  The dragon tried to swallow her, and with a cross she held in her hand, she defeated the dragon.  Of course, this victory did not seal her fate.  Still refusing to submit to the rich man, she was eventually beheaded.

When I explain to outsiders about which Margaret is our patron saint, I often explain how we picked the weird one.  First of all, relating to martyrs is always difficult for modern Christians.  Few of us will ever face torture or persecution for our faith.  Though we may admire their commitment, imagining how we would show similar dedication is challenging.  Furthermore, relating to someone who commits their virginity to Jesus Christ might be difficult for many of us.  Though we may admire nuns and monks today, whose lives also involve a commitment to chastity, very few of us can imagine such a rule for ourselves.  Besides, we get entirely uncomfortable just talking about sex in church.  Add in the bizarre story about the dragon, and most of us start to mentally check out or at least assign Margaret to the category of fiction.  This distance creates a barrier for finding meaningful connection to Margaret.

Of course, some of our resistance is aided by our conflicted feelings about the value of saints.  What I appreciate about saints in the Episcopal Church is that we have a broader definition of saints than the Roman Catholic Church.  We have a wider variety of saints that are commemorated throughout the year, and in fact, our weekly Thursday Eucharist here at St. Margaret’s always focuses on a saint of the church.  What I find most appealing about saints is that they can often be aids for us in prayer.  Either we can pray to be more like a certain saint, or we can use saints as a vehicle through whom we pray to God.  St. Margaret of Antioch was known as the patron saint of women in childbirth.  “Because of the promises made just before Margaret’s death to assist anyone – especially women in childbirth – who has [St. Margaret’s] life written down, reads it, or has it read to them…[some of the copies of her story were] written on long strips of parchment which were fastened around the abdomens of women in labor.”[ii]  Though that practice may sound silly to us now, who has not prayed to St. Anthony when they lost something, or purchased a St. Joseph when trying to sell a home?

Perhaps where we find the most help today in understanding St. Margaret is from our reading from Ecclesiasticus.  The author begins the final chapter with these words, “And I sent up my prayer from the earth, and begged for rescue from death.  I cried out, ‘Lord, you are my Father; do not forsake me in the days of trouble, when there is no help against the proud.’”  I imagine Margaret cried out to God in a similar way in that prison cell.  I imagine there was nothing but prayer on her lips.  But even more than crying out to God in her pain and suffering, I imagine that Margaret more so prayed the words that the author of Ecclesiasticus also prayed, “I will praise your name continually, and will sing hymns of thanksgiving.”  Despite her many trials – being disowned, being captured and tortured, and being threatened with death – she somehow saw the sweetness of Christ in all of her trials.  She could still come to God in praise and thanksgiving, despite facing circumstance that called for nothing of the sort.

St. Margaret has a lot to teach us about today about prayer.  I was just in conversation with someone this week about their prayer life, and they confessed how good they are with their “thank yous and pleases” to God, but how rarely their prayer life is filled with adoration of God.  We all struggle with this kind of prayer relationship with God.  We are quite good at coming to God when we need something, and we occasionally remember to thank God for our blessings.  But rarely do we stand before God, arms and hands open and just stand in awe of our God.  We get caught up in a relationship with God as an exchange, and we forget how huge our God is and how tremendous God’s presence in our lives is.

Today, Margaret invites us to remember the awesomeness of our God.  She reminds us of the incredible work began here in Plainview fifty years ago in her name.  And she invites us into a prayer of adoration for the bountiful grace that awaits us in our next fifty years.  For the First Communion we celebrate today, for the bountiful produce that our Garden of Eatin’ is producing, for the blessing of Holy Matrimony that a couple plans for this afternoon, for the blessed fellowship we enjoyed yesterday at the Gibsons’, for the gift of life and ministry in this place, and for the saint who reminds us of the awesomeness of our God, we will praise the Lord’s name continually, and we will sing hymns of thanksgiving this day.  Amen.

[i] Sherry L. Reams, ed., Middle English Legends of Women Saints (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2003), 119.

[ii] Reams, 111.

Sermon – Luke 10.25-37, P10, YC, July 14, 2013

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

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Lisa had produced lots of stories like this over the last ten years.  They were human-interest stories for ESPN – the stories that drew people into the private pain and sacred celebrations behind their beloved sports.  Lisa loved her work, but she had never gotten as involved as she did four years ago.  In 2009 she met Leroy and Dartanyon – two high school wrestlers from a poor Cleveland school who were fighting against all odds.  Dartanyon was homeless and legally blind and Leroy had lost parts of both legs in a train accident.  Dartanyon often carried Leroy to classes up stairs, while Leroy helped Dartanyon with his homework.  Their story was so potent for Lisa that she could not walk away.  Over the course of four years, she would find herself doing everything from helping Dartanyon obtain his birth certificate, to ensuring they had food everyday; from helping them fill out financial aid forms for college, to connecting Dartanyon to a Paralympic coach.

When I saw Lisa’s story this week, I could not help but to think about the Good Samaritan from the gospel lesson today.  Most of us know this story well, and pretty much all of us want to strive to be a Good Samaritan; so much so that we spend time volunteering, we give money to aid important causes, and we even occasionally give a dollar to that guy on the corner.  But what struck me this week about the story of the Good Samaritan is that we often simplify the example of the Samaritan. We read this story and we know that we should not be like the lawyer or the priest or the Levite.  We should help others like the Samaritan.  The problem though with this simplified response to Jesus’ command to “Go and do likewise,” is that we skim over all the work the Samaritan did.  The text says the Samaritan, “went to [the victim] and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them.  Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.  The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.’”

Several things strike me about this account.  First of all, there is a longevity to the care of the Samaritan.  The Samaritan does not simply give the man some bandages, or a cloak, or even some money, and then leave.  The Samaritan does not simply help the man to a local hospital or inn and then carry on with his life.  The Samaritan does not even care for the man overnight, and then depart, having certainly done his duty.  No, the Samaritan even pays for the man to stay and promises to return and pay for whatever else is due.  This is not a one-time exchange, or even a short-term exchange.  This exchange is a commitment to the long haul – a dedication not just to help but to be in relationship.  This is what Jesus means when he says we are to “go and do likewise.”

What is tricky about this kind of relationship is that this kind of relationship is messy.  Though there is some debate among scholars, many seem to think that the victim on the side of the road was a Jew.[i]  So not only was this victim beaten, robbed, and abandoned by those who should have cared for the victim, he was helped and tended to by a Samaritan – a man who was his enemy.  The Jews and Samaritans had a long-standing conflict.  The Jews had a very low opinion of the Samaritans.  Samaritans were seen as second-class citizens to be avoided at all costs.  So imagine when the victim woke up at that inn to find a Samaritan nursing him back to health.

Not to mention how complicated this is for the Samaritan.  He knows how most Jews feel about him.  He may have even felt the same way about the Jewish people.  But somehow, his sense of pity gets the best of him, and he finds himself not just asking if the guy is okay, but spending his time and resources on this complete stranger who is his enemy as well.  This encounter between these two men is not simply a one-way, clean exchange of helper and helped.  This is a messy encounter that leaves the two in a strange relationship that can only be possible through God’s grace.  Whatever biases the Jew had against Samaritans had to have been called into question that next morning.  Hatred of another cannot remain when one is the recipient of love as deep as the Samaritan shows.  And whatever biases the Samaritan had against Jews had to have weakened that day too.  You cannot dress a man’s wounds, care for him overnight, and return to check in on him without some of your defenses coming down.  The kind of neighborliness that Jesus is inviting people into is messy, complicated, and a bit scary.

Lisa, Leroy, and Dartanyon knew a little about this kind of messiness.  Dartanyon and Leroy not only faced the challenges of their own physical limitations, they also lived in a world of struggle.  Their school was a school marked by violence and active police presence.  Books were handed out and locked back up after each class.  Less than forty percent would ever graduate and untold numbers were left pregnant.  And white people were not necessarily seen as allies.  Meanwhile, Lisa had grown up on the other side of Cleveland.  Her parents scraped together money just so that she would not have to go to school with those her parents would call, “those people.”  Lisa and Leroy and Dartanyon grew up knowing each other as “the other,” and any attempt at a relationship brought these biases, baggage, and burdens to the foreground.

The funny thing is that when we read our gospel lesson day, we can feel that Jesus is scolding the lawyer in some way.  But I think what is actually happening here is a bit of healthy challenge.  Jesus fully admits that if the lawyer simply does what the law calls for:  to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself – then the lawyer will be fine.  Jesus is saying that even the slightest effort of loving God and loving neighbor is good and to be commended.  But in the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus is hinting to the lawyer that there is a potential for more – a potential to know God more fully and to love more deeply than he could even imagine is possible.  And that kind of amped up grace and blessing can only come from messy, complicated, scary relationships with the other.

Recently, while Lisa, Leroy, and Dartanyon prepared for a follow-up story with ESPN, Dartanyon quietly asked Lisa the question that probably many others had wondered about but never asked.  “Why did you stay?”  Lisa’s response was automatic.  “I love you,” she answered.  “That’s what I thought you’d say,” he replied.  “But … why … why did you stick around and do everything you did?”  Lisa’s response was long and complicated because their relationship was messy, complicated, and at times maybe even scary.  But after much reflection, Lisa concludes, “I stayed because we can change the world only when we enter into another’s world.”[ii]  Though I have no idea whether Lisa is a person of faith, Lisa is preaching Jesus’ words today with her life.  She understands that being neighbors means not just helping people, but entering into their lives, and taking on whatever messiness that involves – because only then can we know the kind of love Jesus has for us.  In that sacred, vulnerable, tenuous reality that is relationship with the other is where we experience Jesus and the love Jesus has for all of us – even those we might label as the other.  Jesus knows how hard this will be.  But Jesus tells us to “Go and do likewise,” anyway because Jesus knows that we can.  Amen.

[i] Matthew L. Skinner, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 241.

[ii] Lisa M. Fenn, “‘Carry On’: Why I Stayed,” as found on http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/9454322/why-stayed on July 9, 2013.