Learning the Word and Other Murmurings

I grabbed a program this morning, not when I ran in the door late, but at the last minute, on the way up to the altar for communion. I don’t really need the prayer book because whatever responses I don’t know off the top of my head are usually pretty easy to read on Patricia’s lips. But if I do go by the book, I always have to look up the Eucharist—though it’s pretty much always on page 369. (The Nicene Creed is page 358, Prayers for the People start around page 383.) The prayer after communion, “Eternal God, Heavenly Father, you have graciously accepted us . . .” is committed to memory, as is the Confession of Sins.

Anyway, a couple of Sundays ago, at the altar for communion during the 8:30 service, I was standing beside Lucy Kaltenbach, a regular service person. Things go a little differently in the early service and she hadn’t brought her prayer book to the altar. I actually had brought a book and was thinking of pushing it over so she could read the responses off the page rather than Patricia’s lips, when Renee Kastanakis, standing on Lucy’s left, beat me to the punch.

After the service, I felt compelled to go to this woman, who I don’t think I’ve ever had a conversation with, and apologize. There’s just something about the Episcopal service, it’s one of the most beautiful yet one of the easiest to find yourself lost. I told Lucy about bringing my little nephew, Candler, to church, how he swung on the altar rail like it was a jungle gym during communion, and how when the congregation recited the regular, pat responses, he joined in with, “murr, murr, murr, murr, murr”, what he was certain we were saying.

Here now this morning, I thought about Candler as I watched little Grant Witczak in his green shirt with the thin, white stripes and little boy tennis shoes with the Velcro straps, wiggling at the altar. Precious. I don’t know his age but I began to wonder if what Grant heard was similar to what Candler had heard when he visited St. Dunstan’s.

Oddly, that seemed to be the question that Joe Monti was asking us in Sunday School this morning. Joe didn’t directly say, “Are you hearing ‘murr-murr-murr’ or are you hearing ‘Language shapes reality. Words have consequences.’ Or ‘One of the signs of being created in God’s image is our ability to speak. Our words, like God’s word, have creative powers. We create worlds of meaning with our words.’”

Are we coming to church for a pleasant morning out, or is what we hear something that changes the way we view and behave in the world on all of the days of the week that are not Sunday? Are we able to take the opportunities that are presented to us to sometimes repair even a small piece of injustice in the world?

And sometimes the injustices are maybe the ones we create through intolerance, with me anyway. For instance, there’s a woman I work with who drives me nuts. Because I generally feel that I’m in the right, I sometimes say things that could be said in a less direct way. However, this past week I have been more mindful of the sharp words that seem to leap off my tongue wherever this person is concerned. I’m sure her life was more pleasant as a result, though she’ll never know my improved nature was because I actually listened to Patricia’s sermon on the “Evils of the Tongue”, which came through louder than the murmurings.

How to Go to Sunday School

I have had more than my fair share of kindnesses since I’ve been at St. Dunstan’s these past few years. But one of the best things anybody did for me was to repeatedly invite me to Sunday School. Why should anymore need more than one invitation, right?

Well, the thing is, if you’re a regular service person, then going to Sunday School means you have to get up an hour earlier, brush your teeth an hour earlier, and pull out of your driveway an hour earlier. If you’re an early service person, that means staying a little longer. After all, why go sit around and make your brain work overtime to dissect psalms when you’re already spiritually nourished from one of Patricia’s sermons, and ready to go out into the world and do better anyway?

Tim Black, our seminarian, was the kind person who instinctively knew that I was unaware of what I was missing in Sunday School. So he asked me and invited and reminded me, here a Sunday, there a Sunday, and finally one morning wooed me back to the founders room to the sofa in the back. Before I knew it, I was completely engaged in the topic at hand. The class was interesting and funny and thought provoking, laughter and intensity. Everyone in the class had their hand up, and comments and questions bounced around the room like atoms under an atomic microscope.

What makes this class so special? Patricia, of course, and also Joe Monti, whose intellect and analysis and humor (and patience) make the class like an upper level college course with a visiting lecturer from Sweden or some other far-away place where special people tend to come from. Anyway since I’ve been going to Sunday School, it’s made me read and study and think, and my mind is appreciative for the experience. Nobody watches the clock in Sunday School and half the time it runs over its allotted hour as a result.

Last Sunday in the kitchen, I heard a person (who shall remain nameless) say that they couldn’t wait for Sunday School to start again. This person, in fact, seldom attends the services. Sunday School, for this nameless person, is the prime rib. Personally, I love both and find they complement each other perfectly. But be forewarned--if you make three Sunday School classes in a row, you are very likely to form a habit. And that’s how I go to Sunday School.

Faith that Does Justice

“What does the Lord require of us?” the Old Testament prophet Micah asks. The answer is “Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” First comes justice, an imperative in both the Old Testament and the teachings of Jesus. This fall, our adult Sunday School class will focus on what it means to do justice – as individuals, as a church, and as a nation. The series, which begins at 9:30 a.m. on September 13, will be led by Joe Monti, emeritus professor of Christian Ethics and Moral Theology at the School of Theology at Sewanee. Here is the schedule for the series:

9/13 1. Faith that Does Justice: The View from Here:A Christian Church In Late Modern and Suburban America.
a. Texts and Narratives of Faith and Justice: Ancient and New
b. Justice as Repairing the World: Anne Tyler’s “Saint Maybe”
c. New Forms of “Normalcy:” Justice, Worship, and the Moral Life

9/20 2. The Forms of Justice: The Perspective of “the LeastAdvantaged” and the “Priority of the Poor”
a. The Convergence of Social Theory and the Teachingof Jesus: John Rawls & the Judeo-Christian Scriptures

9/27 3. Justice, Class, and Privilege in American Society:Economics, Politics, and Making Just Policy
a. Justice and the Environment: Who “Owns” the Mountains?
b. A Just Health Care Policy

10/4 Justice and All Creatures Great and Small: The Blessing of the Pets(No Class)

10/11 4. Justice and Race: White Privilege, Affirmative Action,and The Obligations of Reparationa. J. Monti: “Dynamite Hill: Fountain Heights in the 1950’s:White Privilege in Mid-Century Birmingham”b. Katrina Brown: “Traces of the Trade” (Documentary DVD shown duringcoffee hour after the 10:45 Eucharist)

10/18 5. Justice and Gender: Taking Others’ Experience Seriously
a. Women’s Experience: Carol Gilligan’s “In a Different Voice”
b. GLBT Christians: “The Bible Tells Me So” (Documentary DVD shown duringcoffee hour after the 10:45 Eucharist)

10/25 6. Justice, Forgiveness, and the Law: What Would Jesus Do?
a. The “Unbalanced” Example of the Amish and Other Forms ofthe Radical Religion of Jesusb. Protecting the Weak and the innocentc. Making Justice: Worship, and the Moral Life

Getting the Voodoo Out of My Car

By Peter Bauer

I drive a 2000 Jeep Cherokee Sport. It’s black and it has over 283,000 miles on it. It has been a very dependable vehicle until about the last two years. I don’t know, but I think it’s possessed. There are times for no predictable reason the engine light will come on and then there have been several occasions when the odometer will flat line out and read “No bus” and sometimes even when the speedometer and RPM gauge will bounce back and forth. I have taken this car into be “repaired” several times and yet the peculiar problems continue.

The latest incident was this morning. I was leaving my apartment at Fort McPherson, and I had on NPR. Garrison Keillor ( bless his heart, I hope he recovers completely from the minor stroke ) was doing a piece on the 10th anniversary of President Bill Clinton and Monica Lewisnsky. Garrison stated “Bill Clinton did a terrible thing,” but then he added, “Kenneth Starr has spent millions of dollars in investigation costs, and what has resulted resembles a Harold Robbins novel.” I chuckled as I heard this and then I heard Garrison Keillor mention Monica Lewinsky’s friendship with Linda Tripp.

Ah yes, all of those names and all of those scenes from 10 years ago were coming back to me.

At this point, I looked down at my speedometer and it read “ No bus.” Was my car reacting to the retelling of this steamy, torrid story involving a former president and a White House intern ? Was this just too much for this 10-year-old car to hear ?

This morning at church and during the Christian Education hour, I thought a lot about justice. We have become so desensitized as a nation and society to all of the suffering that is around us. It’s pathetic that we now react with “good news” that there are only nine million children dying of starvation in the world.

Yes, justice means that we have to be intentional; we have to repair what has gone wrong. We have to do beyond the dispensation that we are forgiven and we actually have to do something. When Jesus heals Jairius’ daughter and the girl revives, it’s interesting that the first thing he says to her family is to get her something to eat.

We come to church to worship but we also come to church to be fed on the Word of God as well as to experience life in the spirit of God and in Christian community. This becomes the medicine that helps either to inoculate or heal and disintegrate the “voodoo” that affects our lives and our world.

I am still going to try and get my car well. A friend of mine at work recently gave me a Kleenex box cover. He picked it up in New Orleans and the cover has the logo of a Louisiana license plate, with white back ground and red lettering with Louisiana at the top and Sportsman Paradise at the bottom.

But the blue letter on the plate reads “ VOODOO.”

I am fond of saying at work when anything goes awry, “Get the Voodoo out.”

I hope I can get the voodoo out of my car.