Saturday, December 27, 2014

Christmas 2014

 
This is my favorite time of the year. I love the decorations. I love the music. I love the story. Throughout my life I have participated in many pageants and choirs. I have played my trumpet in many church balconies and I have played carols next to Salvation Army bell ringers. I have decorated with ladders and beeswax candles and real evergreen branches. I love the smell of sap on my hands. I love the smell of gingerbread cookies baking in the oven. I listen to old songs and I read old books over and over again. I watch the same old movies and TV specials. I look forward to seeing the transformation of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch. I can’t wait to see the renewal of faith in Charlie Brown and George Bailey.

Mostly, my faith is restored by what I hear each year in church, with the familiar retelling of the nativity story. I don’t want to change a thing. I want to sing every single note just like I remember – especially the tenor part with my father singing bass on one side and my mother singing soprano on the other. We all become lost in happy memories at this story. We remember our childhood. We keep up old family traditions. We put decorations in the same places. We keep trying to recreate the joy we remember.

All of this is wonderful, with maybe just a touch of wishful thinking. For no matter how hard we try, we can never have a perfect Christmas. Someone is always sick or unhappy. Someone is missing. Someone is troubled or broke or unemployed. As hard as we try, every gift cannot be the perfect gift. We get stressed and depressed. We make plans and a snowstorm (or a thunderstorm!) comes and changes everything.

Our trouble is we think that Christmas is some kind of perfect event that we have to re-create or live up to.

The reality is that Christmas isn’t about permanence. It’s about transformation. God didn’t choose to make everything stay the same. God didn’t choose to restore everything back to the good old days. God chose to turn everything upside down. God chose a poor young woman to bear his Son. God chose a poor village in the middle of nowhere as a birthplace. The news wasn’t reported to the usual media outlets, but to shepherds: the workers with the lowest status who happened to be awake at the time.

God made all of these surprising choices to tell us that everything we thought we knew was wrong. We don’t need more stuff. We don’t need to have everything perfect. Jesus isn’t born in the best place with everything in order. He enters a world of disorder and pain. He enters a world of poverty and loss. He enters a world of violence and racism and greed. He enters our world – the one we live in all the time.

Jesus came to show us love and give us life. Our brave attempts to look cheerful aren’t nearly good enough. God’s gift freely given mocks all our attempts at generosity.  But we are not called to be as good as God. We are called simply to accept the gift that has been given and live into the love that we have been shown. We have been given a great gift. We can only marvel like the shepherds and rejoice and share the good news.

Maybe we can give up all the striving for the perfect Christmas. God has already given us the perfect present. We keep Christmas best by seeking a world transformed by God’s love. Jesus is not born to bless the way we’ve made things. Jesus comes to offer us a new way of living and loving each other.

Friday, December 19, 2014

Advent 4


         We’re at the end of our preparations. The house is decorated. Cookies are baked. The gifts are in piles in the bedroom closet (no peeking!) We’re ready to receive all our guests. Soon the whole family will gather again. We’ll share old stories. We’ll catch up with each other. After a week, we’ll also begin to get on each other’s nerves as we remember old wounds and hurts. We will face the myth of the perfect family. Maybe we will have the grace to accept what we’ve become and appreciate what’s true.

         What are we trying to make or create in this holiday? Old King David is thinking about his legacy. He is wondering what he will leave behind. He intends to build a great temple. After all, how can God live in a tent after David lives in a great mansion? David is thankful for all that God has done for him. I wonder if David’s impulse might just be a little self-serving – a pious edifice Built to glorify David as much as to God. God tells Nathan the prophet, “Tell David, I don’t need what you want. I’ll build him a “house.” God promises that David will have a future descendant who will rule well forever.

         This is the trick of the Christian faith. We work and pray and submit and try to change – all in an attempt to do better and to be better. This is all to our credit. Like David our sacrifices are often unconsciously self-serving. We want to lose weight or give up a bad habit so that we can be more successful or so that we can like ourselves more. What exactly are our standards of success? What is our motivation? Are we really so selfless or virtuous as we claim in our aspirations?

         The angel Gabriel tells Mary, “You have found favor with God.” Was she looking for favors? This visit comes as a surprise. There is a legend that the angel first visited Mary at the well. She was so afraid that she ran away and the angel had to go find her hiding in her bedroom. Mary is certainly virtuous, but her goodness is not the cause of God’s great gift.

         This is how God works. God chooses to bless us and to love us. The best we can do is to be open to what God might be offing us, and to be willing to accept it. This is what Mary does. This is what Mary is commended for.

         Over the years there has been much theological reflection around who Mary might be and why God chose her. Much of this reflection justifies the inferiority of women (she must be extraordinary to bear the son of God), or it rationalizes the inferiority of the body (she must have been sinless to bear Jesus.) There may be merit in admiring Mary, as long as we remember her shared humanity. It is more of a miracle if Mary is one of us than if she is somehow supernaturally different.

         Mary herself acknowledges how this great blessing is grounded in what is most real. When Mary responds to Elizabeth’s blessing, she glorifies how God works. God lifts up the poor. God feeds the hungry. God acts within the lives of real people who have done nothing to bring attention to themselves. We might surmise that God looks out for people who are faithful and who try to love their neighbor. Mary simply reflects on how God rescues all of God’s people. I imagine many don’t deserve the help that is offered.

         Mary reminds us that God comes to the people who need God. Instead of running from our brokenness, it’s likely where we are to find God. Instead of building up our lives virtuously, productively and blamelessly (so that we don’t really need God, we can seek God in all our failures and weakness. This is where God seeks us first. We are not ultimately saved if we live as if we need no saving. We are saved when we can face our sin, our loss, our death, and accept that life is a gift we have not earned. We are most blessed when we see God’s unexpected and surprising love break into the patterns we have no strength to change.

         As we continue our advent preparation, we may find that self-mortification has its place. Maybe it is time to clean out a few closets and make ourselves ready for God to visit. And we need to let go of the belief that we have anything to wrap up and give to God. This is not what we are waiting for. We are waiting for the surprise that God will give us – if we are willing. Are we ready to set aside our holiday plans of perfection and success? Are we willing to accept our own poverty? Can we say that we have no power in this homecoming at all? However we prepare, God is ready to come among us. We can wait for the blessing if we can get out of God’s way.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Advent reatreat notes

Since I offered a retreat on Saturday, I'm offering my notes for reflection.


Call described by blessing – Luke 1

            This is a story about three people and two children. As it happens they are all related and their unusual stories wrap around each other – as our lives do. An old couple, Elizabeth and Zechariah, learn of an unexpected birth. They are happy. I wonder is they are also concerned. My wife says that it’s not the birth late in life that is hard; it’s chasing the toddler in middle age. They live in a time when fertility is sign of God’s favor or disfavor. There is a lot of hope and relief invested in this child.
            This is also a story of another kind of unexpected birth. This one raises eyebrows for different reasons. The young woman is unmarried. She must have done something wrong – or she’s hiding something. (Of course she is!) She is also on the outside of things. It’s not as if a child had never been born out of wedlock before – but respectable people do things better. She will notorious and her child will be suspect.
            The funny thing is that no one is worried. They are all just delighted. They don’t worry about the practical problems to be overcome. They are simply full of joy for the miracle that God is working in them (literally!)
            Of course we can’t help but hear the echo of all out theological justifications. Jesus is the Son of God and John will be the one sent by God to prepare the way. The Holy Spirit has worked this unbelievable thing. It’s all part of God’s plan. True – but how would we feel if we were in their shoes?
            When we are surprised by unexpected birth it means the reconfiguration of our household. Someone has to watch the infant. Someone has to chase the toddler. We may love and rejoice at new life – but new responsibilities? And how often do we judge the foolishness of young people who have children before they are ready? Don’t we all have a life checklist in our mind that we think should be checked off in the right order? Finish your education. Get a steady job. Get settled. Find a nice neighborhood (with good schools.) Then it’s time for kids. It doesn’t work out that way for Mary (and honestly it doesn’t often work out that way for us.)
            Mary is understandably afraid (as well as Zechariah.) Legend has it that when she first met Gabriel she dropped her jug at the well and the angel had to go find her hiding in her bedroom. Do not be afraid? It seems the appropriate response to me. The next response is harder to see. Mary is accepting – and it seems to lead to her rejoicing.
            Throughout our lives we are offered a different path. Sometimes we have courage to take it and sometimes not. When we do we enter into a new landscape and we encounter experience that we would not have imagined. Perhaps this is the joy for our characters this morning. They are on an adventure. They are going new places. More important, they know that they are journeying with God. They have been invited into God’s work of saving the world.

For reflection:
Remember a time in your life when you felt called to something. What new thing was begun in you? What emotions did you have? What changed for you? What did you have to give up?

The songs of Advent – Our work described by blessing - 
the Song of Mary, Canticle 15, Prayer Book page 91

            The canticles we speak or sing from the prayer book can become for us a kind of artwork from the past. It is as if we have entered into a sort of museum of praise. We hear the cadence of the words and we marvel at the beauty. Isn’t it nice?
            The song of Mary is crafted within the Gospel of Luke to tell a larger story. It is also Mary’s song. She sings it in response to all that she has experienced. We could be suspicious and examine the text through modern scholarship, but let’s listen to what she has to say (leaving aside the impossible question about what really happened and what her actual words might have been.)
            Mary praises God for all that God has done and for what God has done for her. We admire her great faith, and her willingness to do what God has asked – but what a big job! There is a lot of getting out of the way and letting God do whatever is necessary. We talk about living like this. Doing it is the trick. We want so much. We need so much. We are so busy. Mary just says, “Let it be for me according to your word.”
            What happens when she gets out of the way? Jesus is born, or course. Before that happens, Mary has a few things to say about what God does when we get out of the way. The poor rejoice. The rich and powerful are empty-handed. The world is flipped upside down. The words are beautiful, but have we listened? All of the things we admire, all of the things for which we strive will be swept aside. The people we ignore (or despise) may just move up a few rungs on the ladder ahead of us.
            I think this is what happens when we get out of the way and we let God bless us. So often we come with our to-do list for God. Rightly so, and as soon as we send in our list the better, so we can get down to the real business of getting out of God’s way.
            The vision Mary shares may not go down so well with the one-percenters, but she describes a world where everyone if filled and all are honored and blessed. It’s what we really want anyway. We’re just too afraid to leave it to God.

For reflection:

Read the Song of Mary of the Song of Zechariah (BCP 91, 92). When have you had a glimpse of God working and at the same time you knew you were doing God’s will? How does this make you see the world differently? How does this change what you desire? How does this change how you feel about your own gifts? How does this strengthen your faith?


What blessing will we bear to the world? Titus 2:11-14, 3:4-7 (below)

            We are encouraged by the heroes and heroines of our faith. Their stories remind us of how God is faithful and powerful to save. They remind us that God will work wonders through us, as we are willing to be open to God’s leading. The bible can only help us if we want help. Mary, Elizabeth, and Zechariah lived through miraculous and difficult times. So do we. Our civilization and culture are different. We speak different languages. God is still at work and still seeking the salvation of the world.
            Unlike the characters in these stories, we have the advantage of knowing the ending. We know Jesus in a way that they could not. We are reborn and inspired. We believe God’s spirit lives in us. God has called us and transformed us. Now God would send us to bear the good news.
            Our trouble is that we cannot see that which we take for granted. We know we’re saved, but isn’t everybody? We know God loves us. What does it matter what we do? God will always forgive us. All true – or not nearly true enough.
            God has let us in on a secret. Life is not that hard. Most of what we worry about will be all right in the end. We need to love and trust. On the other hand life is hard. It is unimaginably difficult for people who do not know the love of God. It is frightening for people who cannot trust that God will take care of them. We live in an age when no one knows what is going to happen next or what will happen to us.
            God comes to us in the form of a child to tell a new story. We don’t have to earn respect or honor, for we have that already by being God’s children. We don’t have to protect ourselves with wealth, or weapons, or achievement, for God gives us all that we need. We don’t have to earn love, for God has already given us all the love we can imagine in the gift of Jesus.
            Knowing this also is a responsibility. At the very least, we should seek to live as if what we believe is true. We should be rejecting the fear of our age and embracing values deeper that materialism or tribalism. If we have courage, we can declare what we know. We can serve with our hands. We can give our wealth. We can listen to people around us who are discouraged and afraid and we can give them our faith. The hands we have are God’s anyway, as well as our money and our faith.
            We are good news to the world. We are the face of God to the stranger. We get to pass on the best news there ever was. God loves the world and the world will be made new.

For reflection: When have you been able to share good news (of any kind) with someone else? When is it easy to share? What gets in the way? How can you share or be good news to someone today?

Titus 2:11-14
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

 

Titus 3:4-7

When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.


Sunday, December 7, 2014

Second Sunday of Advent

This sermon is quite different from what I ended up preaching. I went another direction but I hope these words are helpful too.


         “Comfort, comfort my people.” We rejoice at words of hope. We look forward to an end of our troubles and worries. We don’t look too closely at the people to whom these words are addressed. We assume it’s us. We assume that we are God’s sheep and Jesus will take us up in his arms and carry us across his shoulders into the peace we have been promised. The prophet is speaking to people in a different time and place. They were lost and broken. They were people without status. They were people without a country. They had no resources at hand to use for their self-improvement.



         We assume we are in line at the river Jordan to hear the words of John the Baptist. I don’t think his crowd was well-heeled. The people who came to John seeking a radical change were people on the edges of society. They had no power or position. The respectful religious folks only came later, and then to study and judge.



         The Psalm offers the hopeful message, “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” It is a beautiful sentiment. We might even hang it on our wall. I wonder if we have thought about it. How rare it is to have mercy and truth! How impossible it is for us to find righteousness and peace!



         When we seek to uncover the truth, there is no room for mercy. Just remember the reaction to grand jury decisions in Ferguson and New York. The truth wants no forgiveness. All over the world people are struggling to support the rightness of their cause. In Syria and Palestine, in Hong Kong and Nigeria – the desire for righteousness overpowers the desire for peace. We can only seem to set things right with the use of force which leads to no lasting peace.



         This is a stern reminder of how far we are from the hopeful promise of God. We talk generally about loving our neighbor – and it costs us nothing as we have retreated into safe spaces where we never see suffering or injustice. We live in a polarized and fragmented society. We zip along in our cars from school to work and home again. We never see the other side except from our car windows as we drive through the city. We have worked hard and done our best so we assume that this path is open to everyone who is willing to work as hard as us.



         We have moved away from the struggles and violence of our cities. In moving out we made ourselves comfortable but this is not a solution to racism or poverty. Much of the noise on the airwaves is about a “war on Christmas.” I think we are living in an age that is at war with advent. The proper way for us to get ready isn’t in judging someone else’s holiday greeting, but in how we are preparing ourselves to meet our Savior. It’s not in the over-commercialization of our age – in fact it may be in the opposite. We are not going to buy or produce our way to God. We can’t settle for simple answers to terrible divisions among the people of God.



         The prophet promises to make a way to God. The mountains will be brought low and the valleys will be filled. This is hard and dirty work. It won’t be done by looking and wishing. We have to be willing to enter the rough places and to get our hands dirty. We have to want to sit with the people God promises to save. We have to want the discomfort and the confusion of the place of injustice – and we have to give up our slogans and easy answers (that we tell ourselves to comfort ourselves.)



         God is with the city. We’ve built a comfortable existence for ourselves in the suburbs. We speak of our towns as beacons of family virtues and values. We talk ourselves into believing that we’ve left sin behind by changing our zipcode. God promises peace to Jerusalem (not the countryside,) because God is interested in saving people where they are. God is not put off by the noise and dirt of the city. God isn’t interested in the racial backgrounds or educational attainment of its citizens. God meets people where they are. Our willingness (especially in Connecticut) to abandon the city is not of God – it is a choice of convenience. “It’s not our problem,” we say – but God has a different opinion.



         God is with the alien. God sides with the people who have no country. He adopts the slave and the outsider and makes them God’s people. This should be easy for us to embrace. We are a nation of immigrants and outsiders who came to this land to re-create ourselves. Now in our fear we want to build walls and lock the gates and deny opportunity to people who are desperate for freedom and safety and a future for their children.



         God is with the poor. We are tired of our own difficult economic problems. In our jealousy, we complain about the waste of our welfare system. We are not nearly as generous as we think we are. Our largess is a small percentage of all our tax expenditures (we each only pay a few dollars a year in our taxes towards welfare of any kind.) Angry commentators pick a few statistics or find a few examples of waste as an excuse to wipe it all away. In reality, the main recipients of welfare are children, the elderly and people with disabilities. They can’t work and they are not thriving on what little they get.



         My father was laid off in the early seventies. Pratt and Whitney laid off five thousand workers in one day without warning. It took my father years to find any kind of decent employment. Food stamps put food on our table. There were no leftovers. Bills didn’t get paid. I don’t know how my parents kept their house. They stayed poor the rest of their lives – but we are grateful for the help. I was not one of the deserving poor. We were simply poor. With help, we moved on. That’s the least we can do for others.



         So we come to the Jordan to hear the cry of John the Baptist. We want to be better. Are we willing to pay the cost we need to pay so that we can change? With all the suffering and rage we hear around us, perhaps it’s time we stopped looking at our hearts and started looking at our hands. What are we really willing to do so that we will be different. Do we really want the different world that God promises? Do we want mercy and truth to meet together? Do we want to see righteousness and peace kiss each other? What self-righteousness are we willing to give up so that we can live into a new righteousness?



         We may get to the point where we realize we are unable and unworthy to live into such a vision. That’s where God can begin to work in us.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Parish Goals 2014-2015

Instead of a sermon we talked about parish goals that the vestry derived from our many conversations over the past year. They follow below - 



GOALS FOR ST. PAUL’S CHURCH – COMPILED FROM PARISH CONVERSATIONS
1.      Adult Formation/Bible Study.
Currently have 4 opportunities for this:
Weekly morning study at Louise Smith’s house                      
Saturday afternoon class for those interested in joining the Episcopal Church/renewing their vows.
Lenten season offerings
Advent season offerings
Goal:
§  Increase adult spiritual development and growth opportunities by 50% for a total of 6.

2.      Youth programs/Youth Formation.
Goals:            
§   Delay confirmation until 15/16.
§   Develop/Provide additional opportunities for adults/church family to   support youth ministries.
§   Identify people in the church who would want to be involved with youth.
§   Work with current parents to develop a program to get both parents and kids involved in the process of confirmation, and beyond.

3.      Social/Community Formation.
Currently have:
Men’s Wednesday lunch.
Two stewardship events
Lunch at the annual meeting
Progressive dinner
Annual Parish picnic
Informal dinners after 5:00 service
Coffee hours
Goal:
§   To promote bonding among parish members, initiate and improve relationships, and increase congregation’s (and their friends!) participation at social events. Need a metric to assess this; count participants at social/church and community service events.


4.      Outreach.

Goal:
§  Encourage more “hands on” connections with organizations that St. Paul’s already contributes to financially. Go out to organizations and ask what we can do for them (Outreach Committee is already beginning to do this). Assess success of goal by how many people show up, participate.
           
5.      Fundraising/Stewardship.

Goal:
§  Increase Stewardship. Specifically increase both pledge income and total number of families pledging by 5%. At end of year, assess how well these goals have been met.


 
 Then we talked about personal participation, and we are using a handout to think about how we might follow up on some of these goals.



Saint Paul’s Church Goals
Personal Action Plan
The goal that interests me is:

I will participate in achieving this goal though the following specific action(s):

I will act within this time period:

Resources – tools – assistance I need to accomplish these actions:
  

Thursday, November 13, 2014

11/16/2014

Proper 28A


           Jesus gives us a parable about the kingdom of heaven. I wonder if this is what we hope for. The ruler or rich and powerful boss treats his slaves pretty harshly. Two invest and make a profit and they are rewarded with more responsibility. The timid slave returns what he was given, but since he made no profit he is shown the door. This picture of God’s kingdom doesn’t give us comfort or any kind of a certain path. This story touches all our fears about scarcity and  our uncertainty about our adequacy. Will God judge us this harshly? Will there be no room for error?

            One of the ways we approach this story is through the language of stewardship. The word “steward” comes from an old English term meaning the ward of the sty –or the keeper of the pigs. Since the animals were valuable it was a very responsible position. The servant owns nothing and is responsible for the health and safety of the lord’s possessions. We have this in mind when we think of ourselves as stewards. We are using something that is not ours. What we have is given to us from God and meant to be used in the name of God. We know this and believe it. How hard it is to live as if it is true! We act as if what we have is ours. We plan our own plans. We seek our own ends. We give what we think we can spare.

            The other trouble with this parable is the double meaning of the word “talent.” For us, a talent is a gift or ability that is unique and special to us. The word in the parable means simply a sum of money – an ingot of silver worth many years’ wages. It is difficult for us to separate ourselves from what we do or who we are – as if my ability to sing or to tell a story is a discreet thing I could cut off and use apart from myself. In the story, the “talent” is simply a sum of money that can be used to invest in some other enterprise.

            We are not called to surrender ourselves blindly. We are being urged to risk what we have to seek God’s kingdom. There is an important distinction. The first is a kind of passive surrender to whatever we think God may wish of us. The second is more of an intentional offering of ourselves to seek the way of God. The two commended slaves actively sought to achieve a purpose for their master’s money. The sought a profit. What do we seek in the name of God? I don’t think we fail to show courage only because we are afraid. I believe we fail to act because we lack something more compelling than the possible result of failure.

            Today is the end of our stewardship appeal for the year. We are seeking to grow in the total amount pledged and the total number of households who pledge. This is always a difficult process. We are uncomfortable talking about money. Given our anxiety about the economy, it is always difficult to get a commitment for the next year ahead. The question goes beyond our fear. The true question is to ask, “What compelling purpose will help us to commit to supporting this community that we love?” The truth is that despite our fears we manage to find the money for the things that are important to us. So why do we always find it difficult to gather the resources we need for this community of faith?

            I could offer as a compelling purpose, simply our relationship to God. God gives us all that we need and far more than we deserve. What we give back is our expression of thanks. Are we not thankful? Are we not joyful for being loved and forgiven? Do we not have hope of eternal life? I think this purpose may fail to compel us because we remember that God has given love freely, without cost, without asking anything from us. It is hard to believe that God will stop loving us after first giving us everything. It’s not that we are ungrateful. We simply hope for more of the same. We’ll try our best. We’ll be good. God will still love us no matter how weakly we limp along.

            I could offer as a compelling purpose the reward of spiritual discipline. If we begin with an intention and slowly work towards a goal, let’s say a tithe, then we gain the reward of losing our dependence on things. We gain freedom from our possessions. We can trust that God will provide even as we see how God gives us all that we need even as we live with less. This is a compelling purpose because I believe that we could all use a little freedom from our money. We worry and we hoard and then we splurge on things we don’t need. God would have us control our money and not be controlled by it.

            I third compelling purpose to pledge is this community. We treasure this place and these people. If it is important to us, then why wouldn’t we want to support it? If we wait for someone else or expect others to make sacrifices for community that we aren’t willing to make, then what does that say about our commitment to community? On the other hand, if we have made a conscious decision to promise a regular and intentional financial offering to this church then we are participating in what we build together. This is true no matter how much we have or how gifted we think we are. If we offer the best we can offer – if we risk creating something together – then we truly belong to something bigger than ourselves.

            I could tell you all about how important it is to work together to create a community of faithful people, trying to walk together towards the way of God. The proof is in what we do together. As we help each other, as we work together, as we share our faith – we see for ourselves how important we are to one another. We are challenged by Jesus’ parable to think about what we are willing to risk. It’s not that we are afraid of some stern master to judge our mistakes. God is ready to reward our risk. What are we willing to risk to create something new? What are we willing to risk to become a new people together?