Posts
Check out this article about what the Bible says about gay marriage. Very interesting, and not just because it supports what Jack Black says as Jesus in this post.
Looking back on all the articles I've posted to this blog about "the homosexual controversy" (as I have tagged it), I feel like I might be going overboard on the topic. However, since this is an Episcopalian blog, this controversy naturally stands out to us, since it is the wedge point the "Anglican Church in America" uses to break free from those of us who listen to Jesus' admonishment for us to love one another.
Does anyone else think that the Karl Rove-inspired smear machine of the Republican Party would attack Jesus on the homosexuality issue if He were around today? And who else thinks they'd probably use the exact arguments that the Pharisees did? He hangs out with prostitutes! He said to love everyone, probably even terrorists! He is a terrorist himself! He said he'd tear down the Temple!
Monday, December 8, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
They Have a Point, Twice (Videos!)
Here's a Funny or Die take on Proposition 8, in musical form!
And with all the discussion of gay marriage destroying family values and needing to be outlawed, this video makes a similarly valid point.
See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die
And with all the discussion of gay marriage destroying family values and needing to be outlawed, this video makes a similarly valid point.
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
Will it be called the Close-Minded Bigots' Movement?
The NY Times had this article today about a group of conservative (which is pronounced "anti-homosexual and often misogynistic") Episcopal bishops wants to start their own branch of Anglicanism in America as legitimate alternative to the Episcopal church. Nowhere in the article does it say what they want to be called, hence the title of this post.
I'm sorry. After close reading, they want to be called the Anglican Church in North America. So I guess they are also anglophiles too. No word if they discussed hating gays over tea.
As Tricia pointed out to me when she alerted me to this story, the comments section heavily supports our good ol' inclusive Episcopal Church. Even probably among tea drinkers.
I'm sorry. After close reading, they want to be called the Anglican Church in North America. So I guess they are also anglophiles too. No word if they discussed hating gays over tea.
As Tricia pointed out to me when she alerted me to this story, the comments section heavily supports our good ol' inclusive Episcopal Church. Even probably among tea drinkers.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Tricia's Sermon for 11/30
The first sermon of Advent.
Advent 1B
November 20, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
During Thanksgiving weekend 30 years ago the phone rang in the midst of the holiday festivities. It was my editor at The Greenville (SC) News, where I was a reporter in my first job out of college.
She was calling to tell me that my holiday weekend might be cut short. Word had just come out that the bodies of some of the 900-plus Americans who died in a mass suicide ritual in Jonestown, Guyana, were being flown to Charleston, and the paper might need me to go cover their arrival.
That assignment did not happen, but I, like most of the nation, spent that holiday weekend transfixed by the bizarre and horrific tragedy.
I don’t know if the Sunday after Thanksgiving that year was the first Sunday of Advent, but the events that unfolded in those last days of November 1978 were definitely in keeping with the apocalyptic tone on which we always begin the new church year.
Tim Reiterman was in Jonestown 30 years ago, a journalist covering Congressman Leo Ryan, who was there to investigate allegations of abuse and other horrors in the Peoples’ Temple compound run by the charismatic Rev. Jim Jones.
Reiterman remembers a freakish storm that day, which in retrospect seemed an ominous warning of what was to come. Dark clouds unexpectedly tumbled through the blue sky, a powerful wind tore through the pavilion where Reiterman was interviewing Jones, and the skies suddenly dumped torrents of rain.
“I felt evil itself blow into Jonestown when that storm hit,” one of the few survivors of that day remembers.
Within hours the congressman and three others were dead, shot by temple assassins as they tried to board an airplane. Reiterman was wounded in the gunfire.
Those events were just the beginning of the horror.
When the gunmen returned to Jonestown, Jones had gathered his people into the pavilion, and weaving words of desperation, had begun preparing them for the end.
As Reiterman writes in a recent story remembering those dark days, Jones used the news of Ryan’s shooting to convince his followers that they had no hope, no future, no place to go.
“The congressman has been murdered!” he announced. “Please get the medication before it is too late…Don’t be afraid to die.”
Then cyanide-laced grape Kool Aid was brought out. Jones insisted the children drink first, sealing everyone’s fate because the parents and elders of the community would then follow in despair.
Unbelievably, more than 900 people died in the suicide and murder ritual that has come to epitomize the ultimate power of a charismatic leader over his followers.
As horrific and bizarre as the events in Jonestown were, they have scriptural overtones. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus talks about strange meteorological events being a sign of the coming end time.
Advent begins not on a note of hope about the impending birth of the savior, but on a note of despair at the depths to which humanity has sunk.
Each year we begin the liturgical new year with humankind at the end of its rope. One commentator writes that at the start of Advent, “We have realized at the deepest level of our being that we cannot save ourselves, and that apart from the intervention of God, we are totally and irretrievably lost.”
Those words sound strikingly similar to the message Jim Jones gave his followers that fateful day – they had no hope, no future, no place to go.
In many ways that was the situation of the people of Israel in today’s reading from Isaiah. The Israelites have been in exile in Babylon. That long exile is now coming to an end, and some Jews are beginning to return to Israel.
But the Israel they return to is not the one they left. The Temple, the very home of God, has been destroyed. Streets are in ruin. Being back is almost worse than being exiled. There seems to be no hope for the future.
The people feel what one writer calls “a deep sense of desperation about a situation out of control.”
No hope, no future, no where to go. The same emotions of despair voiced by Jim Jones three decades ago.
But here is the difference between the two situations – and it is a big one.
In their despair, the people of Israel turn not to the vagaries of a false prophet whose only alternative to the current situation is suicide and murder. The people of Israel turn to God.
They turn to God even when God seems absent.
The passage of Isaiah we hear today is a prayer, a bid for God’s intrusiveness into the despair and hopelessness that God’s people are experiencing.
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence,” the people pray.
And they remember their history – that in the past God did just that. When the people of Israel were wandering in the wilderness, God did come down and meet them on the mountain, which quaked in God’s presence.
They remember the awesome deeds God did for them in past times of darkness and despair, and pray that God will be present with them again. They remind themselves that “God works for those who wait for him.”
And they admit that they have responsibility for the situation in which they find themselves.
“We sinned,” they say. “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
They admit that they are so tainted and stained with sin that it is likely God will not want to have anything to do with them.
But then comes the most important word of this passage – YET.
“Yet, O Lord, you are our Father: we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
With these words of affirmation, Israel reminds God: “You made us, you own us, you are responsible for us, we belong to you.”
Yes, we have sinned, we have sunk to new depths, but we are still yours. The people remind God of God’s deep obligation to Israel.
They remind God that it is time for God to act; that God is obligated to act.
The people of Israel show a deep faith that even when God is absent, even when their own sins seem to have separated them from God, that the story is not over.
The world of Jim Jones was a closed world, clothed in anxiety, despair, and distrust. In the narrative that he told his followers there was no way out except death.
But for people of faith in Isaiah’s time and in our own, the world in which we live, no matter how dark and desperate, is never closed.
Our stories of faith show us again and again that God can and does break through.
In our narrative, God the creator is never finished creating.
We begin this Advent deeply aware that many people in our community, in our nation, in our world are feeling a deep sense of desperation about a situation out of control. We live in dark times. For far too many, the future is bleak.
Advent acknowledges the reality of the times in which we live. But the season also reminds us that we worship a God who has and will intervene to redeem life.
And so this Advent, we, like the people of Israel, pray that God will once again break into a world of hopelessness. We pray that God will once again intervene, and shine a light of justice and generosity into the darkest corners of our despair.
Consider, O God, we are all your people.
This Advent we wait and boldly trust that God will, indeed, appear again.
Amen.
Advent 1B
November 20, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
During Thanksgiving weekend 30 years ago the phone rang in the midst of the holiday festivities. It was my editor at The Greenville (SC) News, where I was a reporter in my first job out of college.
She was calling to tell me that my holiday weekend might be cut short. Word had just come out that the bodies of some of the 900-plus Americans who died in a mass suicide ritual in Jonestown, Guyana, were being flown to Charleston, and the paper might need me to go cover their arrival.
That assignment did not happen, but I, like most of the nation, spent that holiday weekend transfixed by the bizarre and horrific tragedy.
I don’t know if the Sunday after Thanksgiving that year was the first Sunday of Advent, but the events that unfolded in those last days of November 1978 were definitely in keeping with the apocalyptic tone on which we always begin the new church year.
Tim Reiterman was in Jonestown 30 years ago, a journalist covering Congressman Leo Ryan, who was there to investigate allegations of abuse and other horrors in the Peoples’ Temple compound run by the charismatic Rev. Jim Jones.
Reiterman remembers a freakish storm that day, which in retrospect seemed an ominous warning of what was to come. Dark clouds unexpectedly tumbled through the blue sky, a powerful wind tore through the pavilion where Reiterman was interviewing Jones, and the skies suddenly dumped torrents of rain.
“I felt evil itself blow into Jonestown when that storm hit,” one of the few survivors of that day remembers.
Within hours the congressman and three others were dead, shot by temple assassins as they tried to board an airplane. Reiterman was wounded in the gunfire.
Those events were just the beginning of the horror.
When the gunmen returned to Jonestown, Jones had gathered his people into the pavilion, and weaving words of desperation, had begun preparing them for the end.
As Reiterman writes in a recent story remembering those dark days, Jones used the news of Ryan’s shooting to convince his followers that they had no hope, no future, no place to go.
“The congressman has been murdered!” he announced. “Please get the medication before it is too late…Don’t be afraid to die.”
Then cyanide-laced grape Kool Aid was brought out. Jones insisted the children drink first, sealing everyone’s fate because the parents and elders of the community would then follow in despair.
Unbelievably, more than 900 people died in the suicide and murder ritual that has come to epitomize the ultimate power of a charismatic leader over his followers.
As horrific and bizarre as the events in Jonestown were, they have scriptural overtones. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus talks about strange meteorological events being a sign of the coming end time.
Advent begins not on a note of hope about the impending birth of the savior, but on a note of despair at the depths to which humanity has sunk.
Each year we begin the liturgical new year with humankind at the end of its rope. One commentator writes that at the start of Advent, “We have realized at the deepest level of our being that we cannot save ourselves, and that apart from the intervention of God, we are totally and irretrievably lost.”
Those words sound strikingly similar to the message Jim Jones gave his followers that fateful day – they had no hope, no future, no place to go.
In many ways that was the situation of the people of Israel in today’s reading from Isaiah. The Israelites have been in exile in Babylon. That long exile is now coming to an end, and some Jews are beginning to return to Israel.
But the Israel they return to is not the one they left. The Temple, the very home of God, has been destroyed. Streets are in ruin. Being back is almost worse than being exiled. There seems to be no hope for the future.
The people feel what one writer calls “a deep sense of desperation about a situation out of control.”
No hope, no future, no where to go. The same emotions of despair voiced by Jim Jones three decades ago.
But here is the difference between the two situations – and it is a big one.
In their despair, the people of Israel turn not to the vagaries of a false prophet whose only alternative to the current situation is suicide and murder. The people of Israel turn to God.
They turn to God even when God seems absent.
The passage of Isaiah we hear today is a prayer, a bid for God’s intrusiveness into the despair and hopelessness that God’s people are experiencing.
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence,” the people pray.
And they remember their history – that in the past God did just that. When the people of Israel were wandering in the wilderness, God did come down and meet them on the mountain, which quaked in God’s presence.
They remember the awesome deeds God did for them in past times of darkness and despair, and pray that God will be present with them again. They remind themselves that “God works for those who wait for him.”
And they admit that they have responsibility for the situation in which they find themselves.
“We sinned,” they say. “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
They admit that they are so tainted and stained with sin that it is likely God will not want to have anything to do with them.
But then comes the most important word of this passage – YET.
“Yet, O Lord, you are our Father: we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
With these words of affirmation, Israel reminds God: “You made us, you own us, you are responsible for us, we belong to you.”
Yes, we have sinned, we have sunk to new depths, but we are still yours. The people remind God of God’s deep obligation to Israel.
They remind God that it is time for God to act; that God is obligated to act.
The people of Israel show a deep faith that even when God is absent, even when their own sins seem to have separated them from God, that the story is not over.
The world of Jim Jones was a closed world, clothed in anxiety, despair, and distrust. In the narrative that he told his followers there was no way out except death.
But for people of faith in Isaiah’s time and in our own, the world in which we live, no matter how dark and desperate, is never closed.
Our stories of faith show us again and again that God can and does break through.
In our narrative, God the creator is never finished creating.
We begin this Advent deeply aware that many people in our community, in our nation, in our world are feeling a deep sense of desperation about a situation out of control. We live in dark times. For far too many, the future is bleak.
Advent acknowledges the reality of the times in which we live. But the season also reminds us that we worship a God who has and will intervene to redeem life.
And so this Advent, we, like the people of Israel, pray that God will once again break into a world of hopelessness. We pray that God will once again intervene, and shine a light of justice and generosity into the darkest corners of our despair.
Consider, O God, we are all your people.
This Advent we wait and boldly trust that God will, indeed, appear again.
Amen.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Tricia's Sermon, 11/24
Here's Tricia's last sermon of the liturgical year (her reminder, not mine).
Today is the last Sunday in the season of Pentecost, the longest season of the church year.
At one time the church referred to the season of Pentecost as “ordinary” time. From May through the end of November there are no big festivals or celebrations on the church calendar.
Just the ordinary day in, day out of church life.
There is a temptation to become bored with ordinary time, to quit paying attention to what begins to seem mundane. Of course, even extraordinary events and places, when seen often enough, begin to seem routine, mundane, ordinary.
That was the case for me on a trip to Burma. One of the places we visited was the ancient city of Pagan, considered one of Buddhism’s holiest cities. There are more than 5,000 pagodas – or Buddhist temples – in this small town.
The first day we were there we looked at each pagoda with great fascination, taking in every detail, comparing one to the other. Each seemed wildly exotic, unlike anything we had ever seen before.
By the second day our interest was not so keen. When we contemplated hiking up a steep hill to see what was at the top, my friend said, “We don’t need to hike up that hill. I can already tell you what’s up there.
“It’s just another pagoda.”
Sometimes by this point in the season of Pentecost I begin to feel the way I did on that trip to Burma.
For week after week now we have focused on the stories of Jesus’ daily life – his teachings, his run-ins with the religious authorities, his healings and miracles.
And I must admit that after a while one story begins to sound a lot like another story. One healing blends into another. Haven’t we already heard that one before?
Maybe Jesus’ disciples even felt that way as Jesus began to tell the story we hear in today’s Gospel.
By this time the disciples have been travelling with Jesus for three years. They’ve seen him perform many miracles; they’ve heard him tell many stories. They have been an intimate part of his daily, ordinary life.
“What’s he talking about?” you can imagine one of the disciples asking another. “Oh, it’s just another parable.”
Just another pagoda.
But in this last parable, this last story Jesus tells before he is betrayed, arrested, and crucified – Jesus gives us an extraordinary message about ordinary life.
There will come a time, he says, when I will judge all of you. And the criteria for judgment is this: Not what extraordinary accomplishments you have achieved in your life, not what knowledge you have amassed, not even what faith you have professed.
None of these things are what matters at the day of judgment. What matters that day are the ordinary acts of kindness you have shown to people in need. When you truly see them, then you have seen me.
Surely the main character in Ernest Gaines’ short story, Christ Walked Down Market Street, is familiar with these words of Jesus.
“It is raining, it’s windy and cold,” the nameless character recounts. “Twelve-thirty, maybe one o’clock in the afternoon. Umbrellas all over the place, but doing little good against the wind. Must be 50, 60 people on the block, all in a hurry to get out of the weather.
“I saw him maybe a hundred feet away. But I’m sure he had seen me long before then. There were probably a dozen people between us, so he didn’t have much trouble picking me out.
“And you have never seen a more pathetic figure in your life. Barefoot. Half of his denim shirt inside his black trousers, the other half hanging out. No belt, no zipper – holding up his trousers with one hand. They were much too big for him, much too long, and even holding them up as
high as he could, and as tight as he could, they still dragged in mud on the sidewalk.
“From the moment I saw him, I told myself that I was not going to give him a single dime. I had already given a quarter to one who stood out in the rain in front of the post office.
“As we came closer, I saw him passing the other people like they weren’t even there. And they were doing the same to him, avoiding him like they didn’t even see him. I could see from 25, 30 feet away that he was angling straight toward me.
“Then at a distance of about six feet away he reached out his hand in slow motion. The palm of his hand was black with grime, his fingers were long and skeletal, I went by him without looking into his face.
“I made two more steps, then I jerked around. Because I had seen something in the palm of that hand that looked like an ugly sunken scar.
“But as God be my witness, He was not there.” (At this point in the story, the pronouns referring to the beggar are capitalized.)
“He was not there; He was not there. No one was within 10 or 15 feet of where He should have been.
“I had not made more than two or three steps before I turned around. And I should have seen Him as clearly as I’m seeing you now – but He was not here. Just this empty space between me and all the other people. Just empty space.”
The man goes home, but he is haunted by the Christ he passed in contempt on the street. He returns and walks up and down Market Street a dozen times, looking for the Christ. Each day after work he goes back, searching, searching, searching.
“For a couple of years, day or night, I would walk down Market Street. When I didn’t see Him again, I got the idea that maybe He would not come back in that same form. Maybe He had already returned in a different form and I hadn’t recognized Him. Maybe He was one of my neighbors.
“Now I searched the face of anyone and everyone I passed. I also looked closely at the palm of all hands I came in contact with, whether it was black or white, whether it was the left or right hand of a store clerk, a bus driver when I got my transfer, or the butcher who gave me my change – I looked at all their hands.
“And I have searched thousands of faces. I have been insulted, threatened with violence for looking too closely in the face of man, woman, or child. You have no idea what names you are called for looking people in the face.
“At least half a dozen times in the past 30 years I’ve been arrested for soliciting. And do you know what that means, soliciting? It means looking into someone’s eyes, hoping that He’s Christ.”
The endless, obsessive search for Christ turns the character into a bum himself. The story ends with him telling his saga to a bartender, who responds by throwing him out on the street.
“Just get out of here,” the bartender says.
“I’m on my way, sir,” the character replies. “If I hurry, maybe I’ll see Him again!”
Of course, the irony is that in his searching the man has seen Christ thousands of times and failed to recognize him. And the sad thing is that we have, too.
The homeless person we ignore as we dash into the store for our Christmas shopping, the checkout clerk we treat with impatience and contempt, the co-worker whose problems we cannot bear to listen to one more time, the elderly neighbor or relative we don’t have time to visit – all of these may be missed opportunities to see and serve the Christ.
This week is the end of ordinary time in the liturgical year. But we know that no time is truly ever ordinary, that any time may be the moment when Christ is revealed to us, if we only slow down, look, and respond.
Amen.
Today is the last Sunday in the season of Pentecost, the longest season of the church year.
At one time the church referred to the season of Pentecost as “ordinary” time. From May through the end of November there are no big festivals or celebrations on the church calendar.
Just the ordinary day in, day out of church life.
There is a temptation to become bored with ordinary time, to quit paying attention to what begins to seem mundane. Of course, even extraordinary events and places, when seen often enough, begin to seem routine, mundane, ordinary.
That was the case for me on a trip to Burma. One of the places we visited was the ancient city of Pagan, considered one of Buddhism’s holiest cities. There are more than 5,000 pagodas – or Buddhist temples – in this small town.
The first day we were there we looked at each pagoda with great fascination, taking in every detail, comparing one to the other. Each seemed wildly exotic, unlike anything we had ever seen before.
By the second day our interest was not so keen. When we contemplated hiking up a steep hill to see what was at the top, my friend said, “We don’t need to hike up that hill. I can already tell you what’s up there.
“It’s just another pagoda.”
Sometimes by this point in the season of Pentecost I begin to feel the way I did on that trip to Burma.
For week after week now we have focused on the stories of Jesus’ daily life – his teachings, his run-ins with the religious authorities, his healings and miracles.
And I must admit that after a while one story begins to sound a lot like another story. One healing blends into another. Haven’t we already heard that one before?
Maybe Jesus’ disciples even felt that way as Jesus began to tell the story we hear in today’s Gospel.
By this time the disciples have been travelling with Jesus for three years. They’ve seen him perform many miracles; they’ve heard him tell many stories. They have been an intimate part of his daily, ordinary life.
“What’s he talking about?” you can imagine one of the disciples asking another. “Oh, it’s just another parable.”
Just another pagoda.
But in this last parable, this last story Jesus tells before he is betrayed, arrested, and crucified – Jesus gives us an extraordinary message about ordinary life.
There will come a time, he says, when I will judge all of you. And the criteria for judgment is this: Not what extraordinary accomplishments you have achieved in your life, not what knowledge you have amassed, not even what faith you have professed.
None of these things are what matters at the day of judgment. What matters that day are the ordinary acts of kindness you have shown to people in need. When you truly see them, then you have seen me.
Surely the main character in Ernest Gaines’ short story, Christ Walked Down Market Street, is familiar with these words of Jesus.
“It is raining, it’s windy and cold,” the nameless character recounts. “Twelve-thirty, maybe one o’clock in the afternoon. Umbrellas all over the place, but doing little good against the wind. Must be 50, 60 people on the block, all in a hurry to get out of the weather.
“I saw him maybe a hundred feet away. But I’m sure he had seen me long before then. There were probably a dozen people between us, so he didn’t have much trouble picking me out.
“And you have never seen a more pathetic figure in your life. Barefoot. Half of his denim shirt inside his black trousers, the other half hanging out. No belt, no zipper – holding up his trousers with one hand. They were much too big for him, much too long, and even holding them up as
high as he could, and as tight as he could, they still dragged in mud on the sidewalk.
“From the moment I saw him, I told myself that I was not going to give him a single dime. I had already given a quarter to one who stood out in the rain in front of the post office.
“As we came closer, I saw him passing the other people like they weren’t even there. And they were doing the same to him, avoiding him like they didn’t even see him. I could see from 25, 30 feet away that he was angling straight toward me.
“Then at a distance of about six feet away he reached out his hand in slow motion. The palm of his hand was black with grime, his fingers were long and skeletal, I went by him without looking into his face.
“I made two more steps, then I jerked around. Because I had seen something in the palm of that hand that looked like an ugly sunken scar.
“But as God be my witness, He was not there.” (At this point in the story, the pronouns referring to the beggar are capitalized.)
“He was not there; He was not there. No one was within 10 or 15 feet of where He should have been.
“I had not made more than two or three steps before I turned around. And I should have seen Him as clearly as I’m seeing you now – but He was not here. Just this empty space between me and all the other people. Just empty space.”
The man goes home, but he is haunted by the Christ he passed in contempt on the street. He returns and walks up and down Market Street a dozen times, looking for the Christ. Each day after work he goes back, searching, searching, searching.
“For a couple of years, day or night, I would walk down Market Street. When I didn’t see Him again, I got the idea that maybe He would not come back in that same form. Maybe He had already returned in a different form and I hadn’t recognized Him. Maybe He was one of my neighbors.
“Now I searched the face of anyone and everyone I passed. I also looked closely at the palm of all hands I came in contact with, whether it was black or white, whether it was the left or right hand of a store clerk, a bus driver when I got my transfer, or the butcher who gave me my change – I looked at all their hands.
“And I have searched thousands of faces. I have been insulted, threatened with violence for looking too closely in the face of man, woman, or child. You have no idea what names you are called for looking people in the face.
“At least half a dozen times in the past 30 years I’ve been arrested for soliciting. And do you know what that means, soliciting? It means looking into someone’s eyes, hoping that He’s Christ.”
The endless, obsessive search for Christ turns the character into a bum himself. The story ends with him telling his saga to a bartender, who responds by throwing him out on the street.
“Just get out of here,” the bartender says.
“I’m on my way, sir,” the character replies. “If I hurry, maybe I’ll see Him again!”
Of course, the irony is that in his searching the man has seen Christ thousands of times and failed to recognize him. And the sad thing is that we have, too.
The homeless person we ignore as we dash into the store for our Christmas shopping, the checkout clerk we treat with impatience and contempt, the co-worker whose problems we cannot bear to listen to one more time, the elderly neighbor or relative we don’t have time to visit – all of these may be missed opportunities to see and serve the Christ.
This week is the end of ordinary time in the liturgical year. But we know that no time is truly ever ordinary, that any time may be the moment when Christ is revealed to us, if we only slow down, look, and respond.
Amen.
Monday, November 24, 2008
My Devotional Assembly
This is a rather long post, but it is the text of the devotional assembly I delivered to the junior high students at school on Friday. Devotional assemblies are the chance for faculty members to talk to the kids and essentially tell them about something important to the teacher, some lesson they want the students to reflect upon. Think of it as a half-step more informal than a sermon. This one went over pretty well, I think . The teachers liked it at least.
On September 12th, one of my favorite writers, David Foster Wallace died. The newspapers and literary websites and journals all commented on what a loss it was for American literature. His novel, Infinite Jest, was listed in Time Magazine as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, which I would agree. In my opinion, it might the greatest novel of the 1990s, but I am biased since I wrote my master’s thesis on it.
After learning of his death, I turned not to his fictions, or his essays, but to his commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. In this speech, Wallace discusses the old chestnut that education’s main goal is to teach us how to think. But Wallace discussed how the truth to that statement does not necessarily apply to only academics. He said in the speech:
Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
To Wallace, only by learning how to control how you think and what you think about do you truly have an open mind and the freedom to control your life completely and truly. He discusses how most people when they aren’t thinking get upset and angry at the thousands of petty irritations and annoyances we experience, but that by choosing how we think, by trying to be empathetic, we might be able to see the world differently and change our lives.
He uses the example being stuck in traffic. Most people get angry that they are stuck in traffic. “How dare you cut me off! Get off the road, you drunk driver! Do you have to be completely stupid to have a driver’s license in this city!” And that’s just me driving to school in the morning! But seriously, Wallace points out that the person who just cut you off could be a father taking their child to the emergency room, or that slow car could be a woman driving slowly because she’s been up all night working the night shift because she lost her prior job and can only support her family this way.
But I could change Wallace’s examples to ways that apply to your life in junior high. Like waiting in line at lunch. You can, like Wallace says, choose to think about how you respond to being stuck in the infamous breakfast for lunch line, and realize that everyone else feels the same way you do, but some of them are probably having a worse day than you: they might have flunked a test, or they’re brother or sister fought with them this morning, or even worse, their parents are getting divorced. And now they, like you, have to wait in line. Suddenly, your life isn’t too bad.
Just like Wallace’s point, if we choose how we think and react, and act to the world around us, we really have gained freedom. We aren’t mindless slaves with no ability to decide how we think and act. As Wallace says,
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, [uninteresting] ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
This applies everywhere in our lives: we must think about what we are doing and thinking because it is just too easy to do what society and culture is telling us to do. Do we really care what celebrities are doing with their lives, what Paris Hilton is buying at the store or what car Will Farrell drives? Is that what we want to spend our time caring about? Do we even want to spend our time caring about these things?
The world is bent upon making you mindless consumers, whether it is the clothes you buy or the shows you watch, or the ideas you swallow from radio or television. And when you become a mindless swallower of culture, you begin to worship the things that popular culture tells you to, that popular culture thinks are important. And Wallace says the danger is that if you do this, you will never be happy. He says
If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship beauty and looks, [the unreal body images society forces on us,] and you will always feel ugly. . . . The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings [of daily life].
Only if you do the hard work about thinking for yourself, you’ll realize that you don’t want to be mindless in your thoughts and actions. We can apply the same ideas to the classroom not only in the everyday events of our lives, as I said earlier, but also in matters of honor. Hard to believe this, but all of us teachers remember (recently like me, or years ago like some of your other teachers) how scary it was as a student to admit to a teacher that you didn’t do your work, you didn’t remember to get a test signed. And out of fear, it is tempting to avoid problems and avoid disappointing or angering a teacher by lying to them. But to do so is, as Wallace says, to lose something valuable.
In this case it is your honor.
So far this year, as honor council sponsor with Ms. Thomas, we have had several such incidents of lost honor. We often think because these are not made public, that they don’t happen, but they do. So far, without naming names, we’ve had 7 lying offenses, 4 cheating offenses, 2 forged signatures, and nearly dozen other hearsays or questionable cases that we didn’t pursue. I bring these up not to embarrass anyone, but to encourage you to become active thinkers, to have the freedom to control your thoughts and actions, and by doing so, do the right thing, keeping your honor and the trust of your classmates and teachers by not cheating.
In the coming weeks, as finals loom and projects get turned in, the temptation to betray our best selves can be overwhelming. In fact, already in the last week, our honor council activities have nearly doubled from the rest of the semester. In the weeks ahead, I encourage all of us to think about how we act and think for ourselves. How can we be the best people we can be, how can we control our thoughts and actions honorably?
The baptism service in the Episcopal church has a wonderful prayer that fits so beautifully with what I’ve been talking about with you. In welcoming a person or baby into a life with Jesus Christ, the priest prays in a way that could serve as a reminder for all of us, regardless of our religion. The priest asks God to give the newly baptized “an inquiring mind and discerning heart, and the courage to will and to persevere” in life; it seems the authors of the baptismal service recognize that to have an inquiring mind and discerning heart is important right from the start, but that it also takes will and perseverance to do it right in big ways (like keeping your honor) or little (like waiting in the line for ice cream when we have it).
Please pray with me.
Dear God please grant us “inquiring minds and discerning hearts, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. May we be thankful for the things we have and the people we are blessed with, and may we seek always and everywhere to be our best selves in our thoughts and our actions.
Amen.
On September 12th, one of my favorite writers, David Foster Wallace died. The newspapers and literary websites and journals all commented on what a loss it was for American literature. His novel, Infinite Jest, was listed in Time Magazine as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, which I would agree. In my opinion, it might the greatest novel of the 1990s, but I am biased since I wrote my master’s thesis on it.
After learning of his death, I turned not to his fictions, or his essays, but to his commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. In this speech, Wallace discusses the old chestnut that education’s main goal is to teach us how to think. But Wallace discussed how the truth to that statement does not necessarily apply to only academics. He said in the speech:
Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.
To Wallace, only by learning how to control how you think and what you think about do you truly have an open mind and the freedom to control your life completely and truly. He discusses how most people when they aren’t thinking get upset and angry at the thousands of petty irritations and annoyances we experience, but that by choosing how we think, by trying to be empathetic, we might be able to see the world differently and change our lives.
He uses the example being stuck in traffic. Most people get angry that they are stuck in traffic. “How dare you cut me off! Get off the road, you drunk driver! Do you have to be completely stupid to have a driver’s license in this city!” And that’s just me driving to school in the morning! But seriously, Wallace points out that the person who just cut you off could be a father taking their child to the emergency room, or that slow car could be a woman driving slowly because she’s been up all night working the night shift because she lost her prior job and can only support her family this way.
But I could change Wallace’s examples to ways that apply to your life in junior high. Like waiting in line at lunch. You can, like Wallace says, choose to think about how you respond to being stuck in the infamous breakfast for lunch line, and realize that everyone else feels the same way you do, but some of them are probably having a worse day than you: they might have flunked a test, or they’re brother or sister fought with them this morning, or even worse, their parents are getting divorced. And now they, like you, have to wait in line. Suddenly, your life isn’t too bad.
Just like Wallace’s point, if we choose how we think and react, and act to the world around us, we really have gained freedom. We aren’t mindless slaves with no ability to decide how we think and act. As Wallace says,
The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, [uninteresting] ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
This applies everywhere in our lives: we must think about what we are doing and thinking because it is just too easy to do what society and culture is telling us to do. Do we really care what celebrities are doing with their lives, what Paris Hilton is buying at the store or what car Will Farrell drives? Is that what we want to spend our time caring about? Do we even want to spend our time caring about these things?
The world is bent upon making you mindless consumers, whether it is the clothes you buy or the shows you watch, or the ideas you swallow from radio or television. And when you become a mindless swallower of culture, you begin to worship the things that popular culture tells you to, that popular culture thinks are important. And Wallace says the danger is that if you do this, you will never be happy. He says
If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship beauty and looks, [the unreal body images society forces on us,] and you will always feel ugly. . . . The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings [of daily life].
Only if you do the hard work about thinking for yourself, you’ll realize that you don’t want to be mindless in your thoughts and actions. We can apply the same ideas to the classroom not only in the everyday events of our lives, as I said earlier, but also in matters of honor. Hard to believe this, but all of us teachers remember (recently like me, or years ago like some of your other teachers) how scary it was as a student to admit to a teacher that you didn’t do your work, you didn’t remember to get a test signed. And out of fear, it is tempting to avoid problems and avoid disappointing or angering a teacher by lying to them. But to do so is, as Wallace says, to lose something valuable.
In this case it is your honor.
So far this year, as honor council sponsor with Ms. Thomas, we have had several such incidents of lost honor. We often think because these are not made public, that they don’t happen, but they do. So far, without naming names, we’ve had 7 lying offenses, 4 cheating offenses, 2 forged signatures, and nearly dozen other hearsays or questionable cases that we didn’t pursue. I bring these up not to embarrass anyone, but to encourage you to become active thinkers, to have the freedom to control your thoughts and actions, and by doing so, do the right thing, keeping your honor and the trust of your classmates and teachers by not cheating.
In the coming weeks, as finals loom and projects get turned in, the temptation to betray our best selves can be overwhelming. In fact, already in the last week, our honor council activities have nearly doubled from the rest of the semester. In the weeks ahead, I encourage all of us to think about how we act and think for ourselves. How can we be the best people we can be, how can we control our thoughts and actions honorably?
The baptism service in the Episcopal church has a wonderful prayer that fits so beautifully with what I’ve been talking about with you. In welcoming a person or baby into a life with Jesus Christ, the priest prays in a way that could serve as a reminder for all of us, regardless of our religion. The priest asks God to give the newly baptized “an inquiring mind and discerning heart, and the courage to will and to persevere” in life; it seems the authors of the baptismal service recognize that to have an inquiring mind and discerning heart is important right from the start, but that it also takes will and perseverance to do it right in big ways (like keeping your honor) or little (like waiting in the line for ice cream when we have it).
Please pray with me.
Dear God please grant us “inquiring minds and discerning hearts, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. May we be thankful for the things we have and the people we are blessed with, and may we seek always and everywhere to be our best selves in our thoughts and our actions.
Amen.
Friday, November 21, 2008
My Favorite Hymn
I remember when I was a kid, my family often went to the 5 pm service at our Catholic church. That meant that there was no choir. Often there was no music until one guy decided to play the electric guitar for the service. Sometimes he got carried away and his responsorial Psalm would turn into a Hendrix imitation, albeit without the flaming guitar.
So I distinctly remember going to the 10 a.m. service one week and hearing the church's choir sing (which they only did once a month). And they sang this hymn, "There is a Balm in Gilead", beautifully. To this day, this remains my favorite hymn, though the other two I posted are up there too.
So I distinctly remember going to the 10 a.m. service one week and hearing the church's choir sing (which they only did once a month). And they sang this hymn, "There is a Balm in Gilead", beautifully. To this day, this remains my favorite hymn, though the other two I posted are up there too.
Advent Conspiracy
Join the advent conspiracy! This video is pretty cool, even if it seems a little preachy, because it makes some good points about Christmas.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Another favorite hymn
Tricia's comment about the last hymn post was coincidentally appropriate. (How's that for the Department of Redundancy Department?) I had intended today's hymn to be "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." So enjoy this.
Anyone else share to care their favorite hymns?
Anyone else share to care their favorite hymns?
Monday, November 17, 2008
My Favorite Hymns (with video!)
Singing the hymn "The Doxology" (also known as ""Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow") I realized how much I love the music at church, especially at St. Dunstan's. Them choir folks sure can sing, that's for sure! And when they sing some of my favorite hymns, I find myself being like my grandfather.
See, every Sunday after going to church, Grandpa would half sing, half mumble whatever hymn was stuck in his head. It was pretty much a standard part of spending time with Grandpa growing up, and one of my fondest memories of him. And I find myself doing the same thing now. Yesterday I raked leaves (lots and lots of leaves) while humming the tune of "The Doxology."
So this week, I hope to embed a video version of some favorite hymns of mine. While the lyrics of "Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow" are nice, it is really the tune, "The Old 100th" is my favorite part. The best version is this one, with different lyrics. (I can't get the video to embed properly, sorry.)
Thanks, Grandpa!
See, every Sunday after going to church, Grandpa would half sing, half mumble whatever hymn was stuck in his head. It was pretty much a standard part of spending time with Grandpa growing up, and one of my fondest memories of him. And I find myself doing the same thing now. Yesterday I raked leaves (lots and lots of leaves) while humming the tune of "The Doxology."
So this week, I hope to embed a video version of some favorite hymns of mine. While the lyrics of "Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow" are nice, it is really the tune, "The Old 100th" is my favorite part. The best version is this one, with different lyrics. (I can't get the video to embed properly, sorry.)
Thanks, Grandpa!
Monday, November 10, 2008
Guest Post by Sibley Fleming
Sibley Fleming wrote this for our blog here. I'm merely posting it for her.
I missed a stewardship meeting Saturday. It promised to be lovely and enlightening, an evening talking about the meaning of giving--attitudes toward money against the backdrop of our current national financial crisis.
I had known about the meeting. Nancy Dillion had called me at the end of the day Friday to remind me and re-extend the invitation. I told her it was unlikely given the amount of extra freelance work that I'’d taken on lately, but I’'d try. Nancy encouraged me to come at a break point and promised a glass of wine and good company if I did.
The next morning at the early service, Nancy slid into a pew behind me somewhere around the reading of Matthew. A sanctuary of deep brown wood, the trees blazing red through the windows. A beautiful Patricia sermon about being the recipient of giving, about expanding. About experiencing the joy of gratitude, about looking around us, and acknowledging our many, many blessings. In the time of circling the wagons around, of people losing their jobs, the need to replace fear with concern.
As we were confessing our sins— -- something I’m particularly fond of doing, mainly because I have so many— -- the sermon rolled around in my head. How did I deal with giving? What had I been taught? No matter how little a person has, he should not be denied the joy of giving, even if it means giving away something received as a gift. Of course that was my grandmother’'s wisdom, formed in the Great Depression. In those same years when my views of the world were being learned, my young hippie mother would get a big smile on her face, dramatically throw back her long hair and recite: "What’'s yours is mine and what’'s mine is mine", as if it were Shakespeare.
The split-even image of my grandmother and mother dissolved into the words that dutifully fell from my lips, a murmuring chant . . . that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the Glory of your name, forever and ever amen."
The altar was dressed with a fall floral arrangement, warm oranges and bright yellows, reds, all that picked up the colors outside, framed by the clear windows as if they were stained glass. As I knelt for communion, I quickly reminded myself— -- courage and strength—, not just forgiveness and comfort. In the end, I prayed for all four. The piece of bread, the sip of wine, and thanks be to God!
I quickly dropped my prayer book into its place underneath the pew in front of my pew, and turned to catch Nancy before she rose. I apologized for missing the stewardship meeting and asked what had happened, what had been said, thought or decided. The conversation quickly turned to the current financial crisis, the state of our culture, the evil empire of credit. An overindulgent period of having so much more than we need.
Nancy is a realtor so she knows what’'s going on at ground zero. These days, she told me, people are mostly moving because of job changes. They’'re getting jobs in other places so far away from home that they have to pull up all their tent stakes, pack the camels and leave. Up goes the for-sale sign, but it’s not that simple—. They must deal with all their stuff, the mounds and mounds of stuff from catalogues, malls and shopping centers. And I imagine in this climate, in that particular situation, there are people out there having a very Come-to-Jesus moment. What do I need with all of this junk?
I am a U.S. citizen and I know firsthand--we are a nation of people who have more than we need. Should I be wasteful with my resources when just by being mindful, I might find I have more than enough to share with others who are in need?
Personally, at my company, it was in the Spring when they told us we were in a hiring and salary freeze. No cost of living increase. Be glad you have a job. As the months have passed I find more and more that I am indeed happy to be employed. When I talk to others who are working for a steady pay check, they seem to feel the same, "thank God" we say in secret code. We prosper or at least survive while others are not so lucky, a number that grows each day by thousands. We hear stories on the radio about food stamps, how much they’'ll buy, what people do when they run out. They’'ll turn to churches and charity organizations.
So what do I have? I have a family and a job and a roof over my head. I have early morning services at St. Dunstan’'s and on this beautiful fall Sunday afternoon, I have a fire in the fireplace. I’ll actually have to get my extra work done at one point, maybe in the next 15 minutes. And truth be told, I should be grateful for that.
I missed a stewardship meeting Saturday. It promised to be lovely and enlightening, an evening talking about the meaning of giving--attitudes toward money against the backdrop of our current national financial crisis.
I had known about the meeting. Nancy Dillion had called me at the end of the day Friday to remind me and re-extend the invitation. I told her it was unlikely given the amount of extra freelance work that I'’d taken on lately, but I’'d try. Nancy encouraged me to come at a break point and promised a glass of wine and good company if I did.
The next morning at the early service, Nancy slid into a pew behind me somewhere around the reading of Matthew. A sanctuary of deep brown wood, the trees blazing red through the windows. A beautiful Patricia sermon about being the recipient of giving, about expanding. About experiencing the joy of gratitude, about looking around us, and acknowledging our many, many blessings. In the time of circling the wagons around, of people losing their jobs, the need to replace fear with concern.
As we were confessing our sins— -- something I’m particularly fond of doing, mainly because I have so many— -- the sermon rolled around in my head. How did I deal with giving? What had I been taught? No matter how little a person has, he should not be denied the joy of giving, even if it means giving away something received as a gift. Of course that was my grandmother’'s wisdom, formed in the Great Depression. In those same years when my views of the world were being learned, my young hippie mother would get a big smile on her face, dramatically throw back her long hair and recite: "What’'s yours is mine and what’'s mine is mine", as if it were Shakespeare.
The split-even image of my grandmother and mother dissolved into the words that dutifully fell from my lips, a murmuring chant . . . that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the Glory of your name, forever and ever amen."
The altar was dressed with a fall floral arrangement, warm oranges and bright yellows, reds, all that picked up the colors outside, framed by the clear windows as if they were stained glass. As I knelt for communion, I quickly reminded myself— -- courage and strength—, not just forgiveness and comfort. In the end, I prayed for all four. The piece of bread, the sip of wine, and thanks be to God!
I quickly dropped my prayer book into its place underneath the pew in front of my pew, and turned to catch Nancy before she rose. I apologized for missing the stewardship meeting and asked what had happened, what had been said, thought or decided. The conversation quickly turned to the current financial crisis, the state of our culture, the evil empire of credit. An overindulgent period of having so much more than we need.
Nancy is a realtor so she knows what’'s going on at ground zero. These days, she told me, people are mostly moving because of job changes. They’'re getting jobs in other places so far away from home that they have to pull up all their tent stakes, pack the camels and leave. Up goes the for-sale sign, but it’s not that simple—. They must deal with all their stuff, the mounds and mounds of stuff from catalogues, malls and shopping centers. And I imagine in this climate, in that particular situation, there are people out there having a very Come-to-Jesus moment. What do I need with all of this junk?
I am a U.S. citizen and I know firsthand--we are a nation of people who have more than we need. Should I be wasteful with my resources when just by being mindful, I might find I have more than enough to share with others who are in need?
Personally, at my company, it was in the Spring when they told us we were in a hiring and salary freeze. No cost of living increase. Be glad you have a job. As the months have passed I find more and more that I am indeed happy to be employed. When I talk to others who are working for a steady pay check, they seem to feel the same, "thank God" we say in secret code. We prosper or at least survive while others are not so lucky, a number that grows each day by thousands. We hear stories on the radio about food stamps, how much they’'ll buy, what people do when they run out. They’'ll turn to churches and charity organizations.
So what do I have? I have a family and a job and a roof over my head. I have early morning services at St. Dunstan’'s and on this beautiful fall Sunday afternoon, I have a fire in the fireplace. I’ll actually have to get my extra work done at one point, maybe in the next 15 minutes. And truth be told, I should be grateful for that.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Henry Louis Gates Jr's' View on Obama's win
Like I said in the previous post, I'll let better writers than me discuss Obama's victory and what it means to them, especially those from the African-American community. Here is another great essay on the subject from TheRoot.com (parts of which appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered" on Wednesday afternoon), this one by the great scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. While Alice Walker's letter was great about Obama's victory and the resulting expectations, Gates discusses what the win means and how it fits into a historical context. And, once again, the writing is terrific. (Because the essay is so long, I've just included the link.)
Alice Walker's Open Letter to Barack Obama
I didn't discuss Obama's historic win here yet; I'll leave that to those more knowledgeable and more talented than I. But this letter by Alice Walker about Obama's emotional win and the expectations that await him is worth reading. To give credit where credit is due, my department chair at school sent this to all the English teachers after her priest sent it to her. It is worth reading not just for the sentiments, but it is also worth seeing how a great writer makes points with wonderful imagery and beautiful language. Enjoy!
From TheRoot.com.
Nov. 5, 2008
Dear Brother Obama,
You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.
I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.
I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.
A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.We are the ones we have been waiting for.
In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker
From TheRoot.com.
Nov. 5, 2008
Dear Brother Obama,
You have no idea, really, of how profound this moment is for us. Us being the black people of the Southern United States. You think you know, because you are thoughtful, and you have studied our history. But seeing you deliver the torch so many others before you carried, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, only to be struck down before igniting the flame of justice and of law, is almost more than the heart can bear. And yet, this observation is not intended to burden you, for you are of a different time, and, indeed, because of all the relay runners before you, North America is a different place. It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength. Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.
I would advise you to remember that you did not create the disaster that the world is experiencing, and you alone are not responsible for bringing the world back to balance. A primary responsibility that you do have, however, is to cultivate happiness in your own life. To make a schedule that permits sufficient time of rest and play with your gorgeous wife and lovely daughters. And so on. One gathers that your family is large. We are used to seeing men in the White House soon become juiceless and as white-haired as the building; we notice their wives and children looking strained and stressed. They soon have smiles so lacking in joy that they remind us of scissors. This is no way to lead. Nor does your family deserve this fate. One way of thinking about all this is: It is so bad now that there is no excuse not to relax. From your happy, relaxed state, you can model real success, which is all that so many people in the world really want. They may buy endless cars and houses and furs and gobble up all the attention and space they can manage, or barely manage, but this is because it is not yet clear to them that success is truly an inside job. That it is within the reach of almost everyone.
I would further advise you not to take on other people's enemies. Most damage that others do to us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion. We must learn actually not to have enemies, but only confused adversaries who are ourselves in disguise. It is understood by all that you are commander in chief of the United States and are sworn to protect our beloved country; this we understand, completely. However, as my mother used to say, quoting a Bible with which I often fought, "hate the sin, but love the sinner." There must be no more crushing of whole communities, no more torture, no more dehumanizing as a means of ruling a people's spirit. This has already happened to people of color, poor people, women, children. We see where this leads, where it has led.
A good model of how to "work with the enemy" internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet. Because, finally, it is the soul that must be preserved, if one is to remain a credible leader. All else might be lost; but when the soul dies, the connection to earth, to peoples, to animals, to rivers, to mountain ranges, purple and majestic, also dies. And your smile, with which we watch you do gracious battle with unjust characterizations, distortions and lies, is that expression of healthy self-worth, spirit and soul, that, kept happy and free and relaxed, can find an answering smile in all of us, lighting our way, and brightening the world.We are the ones we have been waiting for.
In Peace and Joy,
Alice Walker
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
All Saint's Sunday Sermon
All Saints Sunday
November 2, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
Of Saints and Parachute Packers
Charlie Plumb was a fighter pilot in Vietnam. He returned safely from 75 combat missions. But on his 76th flight, his plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile.
Plumb ejected from the plane just in time, pulled his parachute, and drifted to the ground. He was captured and spent six years as a prisoner of war. He survived that ordeal, and now is a motivational speaker, giving lectures on what he learned from his war experiences.
One day many years after his plane had been shot down, Plumb and his wife were in a restaurant in Kansas City, when a man approached him. “You’re Captain Plumb,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” Plumb replied.
“You flew jet fighters in Vietnam,” the man said. “You were on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down. You parachuted into enemy hands and spent six years as a prisoner of war.”
“How in the world did you know all that?” Plumb asked in amazement.
“Because I packed your parachute,” the man answered.
Plumb was speechless. He staggered to his feet and held out his hand. The man grabbed it, pumped Plumb’s arm and said, “I guess it worked.”
“Yes sir, indeed it did,” Plumb replied.
Plumb didn’t get much sleep that night.
“I kept thinking about that man,” he writes in his autobiography. “I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform – a Dixie cup hat, a bib in the back and bell bottom trousers.
“I wondered how many times I might have passed him on board the Kitty Hawk. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not even said “good morning,” “how are you,” or anything because you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.
“How many hours did he spend on that long wooden table in the bowels of that ship weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of those chutes?
“I could not have cared less…until one day my parachute came along and he packed it for me.”
Plumb now begins his speeches with these important questions: Who is packing your parachute?
Who do you depend on? Who provides what you need to make it through the day?
Do you take them for granted? Do you even know who they are?
Today we celebrate All Saints’ Sunday. It’s a day when we remember all the faithful saints who have gone before us and who live among us. Those who we know – our parents, grandparents, teachers, mentors, godparents.
And those who we don’t – the unknown parachute packers who shape our lives in ways we may never even realize.
In her reflection on this day, our Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori asks questions remarkably similar to those Charlie Plumb asks.
“What saints will you remember this year?” she asks. “It’s an occasion to remember all the faithful, whether we know their names or not.
“In your neighborhood, who is the saint who picks up the trash? Who looks out for the children on their way to and from school?
“Who looks after an elderly or frail neighbor, running errands or checking to be sure that person has what is needed? In your community, who labors on behalf of the voiceless?”
These are the people we remember on this day – not the superstars of the faith, those whose names are immortalized in scripture or who have their own day on the church calendar, but the millions of ordinary Christians, ordinary people, who quietly go about their lives in faithful service to God and their neighbors.
The word “saint” comes from the word “sanctus,” meaning holy. A saint is a holy one. Really, all of us are saints because all of us are holy.
One of our scripture readings for today puts it this way: “See what love God has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
God’s love for each and every one of us makes us holy, makes us numbered among the saints.
On this All Saints’ Day we especially recognize two types of saints – those who are new to the community of faith and those who have joined what St. Paul calls “the great cloud of witnesses.”
In just a few moments we will baptize two babies. We’ll begin by renewing our own baptismal vows, reminding us of the promises of faith that shape the lives of saints.
We’ll promise, with God’s help, to resist evil, to gather together for fellowship, the breaking of the bread and prayers. We’ll promise to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.
And in our role as parachute-packers of the faith, we’ll promise to seek and serve Christ in all people, to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being.
Then we will baptize Jack and Avery with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and anoint them with oil, making the sign of the cross on their foreheads, marking them as Christ’s own forever.
With their baptisms, we welcome Jack and Avery into the communion of saints, recognizing that they are God’s beloved children, that they will always belong to Christ.
As we welcome new saints into our fold, we also remember the saints who are no longer physically with us, but who still are part of us.
As we come to the altar for the Eucharist, we will remember the names of those saints who we still love, but see no longer. All Saints’ Sunday is one of those times when the veil between this life and the next seems to be momentarily lifted, when we sense the presence of that great cloud of witnesses surrounding us at God’s table.
Scripture tells us something about that great cloud of witnesses. They come from every nation and tribe and people and language. They neither hunger, nor thirst, nor suffer or cry because God has wiped away every tear. They feast at a banquet of rich foods and well-aged wines.
Today, as we gather at the altar to join in the feast of bread and wine, a foretaste of that heavenly banquet, we stand with those whom we love and miss, and remember and name today.
We do so knowing that this Eucharist joins us with all the saints. Those who are famous and those who are unknown. Those whom we remember with love and those of whom there is no memory.
All present with God, and with us in this holy communion.
Amen.
November 2, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
Of Saints and Parachute Packers
Charlie Plumb was a fighter pilot in Vietnam. He returned safely from 75 combat missions. But on his 76th flight, his plane was hit by a surface-to-air missile.
Plumb ejected from the plane just in time, pulled his parachute, and drifted to the ground. He was captured and spent six years as a prisoner of war. He survived that ordeal, and now is a motivational speaker, giving lectures on what he learned from his war experiences.
One day many years after his plane had been shot down, Plumb and his wife were in a restaurant in Kansas City, when a man approached him. “You’re Captain Plumb,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” Plumb replied.
“You flew jet fighters in Vietnam,” the man said. “You were on the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down. You parachuted into enemy hands and spent six years as a prisoner of war.”
“How in the world did you know all that?” Plumb asked in amazement.
“Because I packed your parachute,” the man answered.
Plumb was speechless. He staggered to his feet and held out his hand. The man grabbed it, pumped Plumb’s arm and said, “I guess it worked.”
“Yes sir, indeed it did,” Plumb replied.
Plumb didn’t get much sleep that night.
“I kept thinking about that man,” he writes in his autobiography. “I kept wondering what he might have looked like in a Navy uniform – a Dixie cup hat, a bib in the back and bell bottom trousers.
“I wondered how many times I might have passed him on board the Kitty Hawk. I wondered how many times I might have seen him and not even said “good morning,” “how are you,” or anything because you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor.
“How many hours did he spend on that long wooden table in the bowels of that ship weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of those chutes?
“I could not have cared less…until one day my parachute came along and he packed it for me.”
Plumb now begins his speeches with these important questions: Who is packing your parachute?
Who do you depend on? Who provides what you need to make it through the day?
Do you take them for granted? Do you even know who they are?
Today we celebrate All Saints’ Sunday. It’s a day when we remember all the faithful saints who have gone before us and who live among us. Those who we know – our parents, grandparents, teachers, mentors, godparents.
And those who we don’t – the unknown parachute packers who shape our lives in ways we may never even realize.
In her reflection on this day, our Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefforts Schori asks questions remarkably similar to those Charlie Plumb asks.
“What saints will you remember this year?” she asks. “It’s an occasion to remember all the faithful, whether we know their names or not.
“In your neighborhood, who is the saint who picks up the trash? Who looks out for the children on their way to and from school?
“Who looks after an elderly or frail neighbor, running errands or checking to be sure that person has what is needed? In your community, who labors on behalf of the voiceless?”
These are the people we remember on this day – not the superstars of the faith, those whose names are immortalized in scripture or who have their own day on the church calendar, but the millions of ordinary Christians, ordinary people, who quietly go about their lives in faithful service to God and their neighbors.
The word “saint” comes from the word “sanctus,” meaning holy. A saint is a holy one. Really, all of us are saints because all of us are holy.
One of our scripture readings for today puts it this way: “See what love God has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
God’s love for each and every one of us makes us holy, makes us numbered among the saints.
On this All Saints’ Day we especially recognize two types of saints – those who are new to the community of faith and those who have joined what St. Paul calls “the great cloud of witnesses.”
In just a few moments we will baptize two babies. We’ll begin by renewing our own baptismal vows, reminding us of the promises of faith that shape the lives of saints.
We’ll promise, with God’s help, to resist evil, to gather together for fellowship, the breaking of the bread and prayers. We’ll promise to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ.
And in our role as parachute-packers of the faith, we’ll promise to seek and serve Christ in all people, to strive for justice and peace, and to respect the dignity of every human being.
Then we will baptize Jack and Avery with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and anoint them with oil, making the sign of the cross on their foreheads, marking them as Christ’s own forever.
With their baptisms, we welcome Jack and Avery into the communion of saints, recognizing that they are God’s beloved children, that they will always belong to Christ.
As we welcome new saints into our fold, we also remember the saints who are no longer physically with us, but who still are part of us.
As we come to the altar for the Eucharist, we will remember the names of those saints who we still love, but see no longer. All Saints’ Sunday is one of those times when the veil between this life and the next seems to be momentarily lifted, when we sense the presence of that great cloud of witnesses surrounding us at God’s table.
Scripture tells us something about that great cloud of witnesses. They come from every nation and tribe and people and language. They neither hunger, nor thirst, nor suffer or cry because God has wiped away every tear. They feast at a banquet of rich foods and well-aged wines.
Today, as we gather at the altar to join in the feast of bread and wine, a foretaste of that heavenly banquet, we stand with those whom we love and miss, and remember and name today.
We do so knowing that this Eucharist joins us with all the saints. Those who are famous and those who are unknown. Those whom we remember with love and those of whom there is no memory.
All present with God, and with us in this holy communion.
Amen.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Triumph of the Mediocre = Feminist Advance?
An interesting article on the op-ed page of the NY Times website today about how Sarah Palin is a triumph of feminism. Certainly a controversial definition of feminist progress and equality between the sexes, the piece argues that Palin's advance despite her mediocrity signals a sign of equality among the sexes in leadership (especially in politics) since mediocre men have been promoted forever. Think Warren G. Harding or some other, more recent presidents who don't inspire awe in the abilities department (What ever Would that mean?).
What do you think?
What do you think?
Monday, October 27, 2008
What's Right with the Episcopal Church: Tricia's Sermon
If you missed this post last week, here is George Will's column that Tricia responds to in this week's sermon.
Proper 25A
October 26, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
What’s Right with the Episcopal Church
Last Sunday evening I came home feeling tired, but good after a very long day.
October 26, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
What’s Right with the Episcopal Church
Last Sunday evening I came home feeling tired, but good after a very long day.
Discussion in Sunday School had been so lively that we only got through half of the lesson I had prepared. There was a good spirit in the air during worship. That afternoon the choir, which always sounds good, reached new heights of beauty in the service of Evensong.
After the reception following Evensong, I joined a group of young adults from the parish for drinks and dinner and animated conversation.
I got home late feeling energized by the level of vitality, enthusiasm, and dedication I had felt from so many different parts of the parish that day.
Then I sat down to read the paper, turned to the AJC’s editorial page, and saw this headline about the Episcopal Church on a column by George Will: “Progressive church engineers its own irrelevance.”
Will’s article focused on Bob Duncan, the former bishop of Pittsburgh, who was deposed, or removed from office by his fellow bishops, for “abandoning the communion of the church.”
Duncan was leading an effort to convince the clergy and people of his diocese to leave the Episcopal Church and come under the jurisdiction of a conservative Anglican archbishop from Brazil.
Duncan was leading an effort to convince the clergy and people of his diocese to leave the Episcopal Church and come under the jurisdiction of a conservative Anglican archbishop from Brazil.
Will’s column was filled with the usual charges. The church, he said, has “become tolerant to the point of incoherence.” We’ve abandoned scripture and don’t believe in the divinity of Christ. We are too quick to embrace popular culture.
“The Episcopal Church once was America’s upper crust at prayer,” Will said. “Today it is ‘progressive’ politics cloaked – very thinly – in piety.”
There was nothing in Will’s column that I have not heard or read before. But the church he describes bears no resemblance to the Episcopal Church I know. And so today I’d like to use his column as an occasion to talk about what is right with our denomination.
My family joined the Episcopal Church, St Martin-in-the-Fields here in Atlanta, when I was about 10 years old. I’m not sure why my parents left the Methodist Church we had been attending. But I quickly came to love our new church.
When I was in college, like many young adults, I wandered away from the Church. When I came back, more than a decade later, it was to the Episcopal Church, partly because it was the denomination I had grown up in, but primarily because it was a church that allowed for questioning and searching.
I had hesitated going back to church in part because I wasn’t sure exactly what I believed. I had the mistaken, but common, notion that I had to have it all figured out before I could comfortably take my place in the pew, like there was some sort of entrance exam on faith I had to pass to get in.
But at St. Ann’s, the church in Nashville that brought me back into the fold, I discovered a whole congregation full of people who saw the life of faith as a journey. Asking questions was encouraged; no one claimed to have the definitive answers, but wrestling with the issues and discussing sometimes wildly opposing viewpoints was seen as the way to grow in faith and understanding.
There was a time when I had a poster on my office door with a picture of Jesus and these words, “He came to take away your sins, not your mind.” One of the primary strengths of the Episcopal Church is that we don’t require you to leave your brain at the door.
We believe Jesus’ words that we heard in today’s Gospel, that we are to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, and all our souls, and all our minds. Certainly we know that there are elements of faith beyond our understanding, but we also know that God expects us to use our God-given intelligence.
Another strength of the Episcopal Church is our comfort with ambiguity. We know that the world is not black and white, and that efforts to divide it, and our faith, up that way will not sustain us for long.
That does not mean that we do not know the difference between right and wrong, or that “anything goes,” as our critics sometimes charge. It does mean that we recognize that the world is a complicated place, and there are times when there is no absolute answer or “one size fits all” solution to a question or problem.
That way of seeing the world means that you are not likely to receive a checklist of dos and don’ts in the Episcopal Church. “Ten things you must believe to be a Christian,” or “Ten things you must not do to go to heaven” are not sermon topics you are likely to hear in the Episcopal Church.
A common criticism of the Episcopal Church is that we have abandoned the Bible. It is true we do not always go with a literal interpretation of scripture. As I’ve heard someone say, “We take scripture far too seriously for that.”
Taking scripture literally has led to persecution of Jews, the defense of slavery, the subjugation of women, and the condemnation of gays and lesbians. All of these positions can be defended by passages of scripture.
But taking scripture seriously means looking at the overall message of the Bible, not isolated passages taken out of context. It means looking at the good news, or gospel tidings that are found in both testaments of scripture.
It means looking at the context in which a passage was written, and comparing it to the times in which we live. And sometimes it means proclaiming or doing things that a reading of isolated passages of scripture would condemn.
The most recent controversy in the Episcopal Church, the full inclusion of gay and lesbian Christians in the life of the church, including ordination and the blessing of relationships, is one that has brought the charge that the church has abandoned scripture.
Yet people I know who support those changes in the life of the Church do so after much prayer and study of scripture. They do so believing that Jesus’ message of love and acceptance of those who society has cast out overrides any isolated verse of condemnation.
They do so because they believe the Holy Spirit is still at work in the Church; and because God is still able to do new things.
One might disagree with the interpretation, but the charge that Episcopalians have thrown scripture out the window is a false accusation.
George Will is critical of the Episcopal Church’s involvement in what he dismissively calls “progressive politics.” But I believe one of our strengths is that we do not isolate ourselves from the world.
We take to heart the admonition that we heard today in both our Old Testament and Gospel readings – to love our neighbors as ourselves. Indeed, we know that loving God means loving our neighbors – which means working for justice and peace, standing up for the poor, being good stewards of the environment, and speaking out against the greed and consumerism rampant in our culture.
We know that being faithful does not mean withdrawing from the world, but instead means working to help make the kingdom of God a reality here and now.
Finally, another strength of our church is that we do not insist that we have all the answers, and are the only path to salvation.
For most of us here today Jesus is indeed the way, the truth, and the life. In Jesus we see both the embodiment of God and what it means to live a human life fully attuned to God’s presence and will. For us, Jesus is our way to salvation.
But most Episcopalians I know also respect people of other faiths, and believe that they, too, are on paths that can lead to God.
Most of us believe that God is bigger than any one denomination or faith; that the God who created all humans in the divine image, who created the diversity of peoples and languages and cultures, has also created different and diverse paths to the divine.
Of course, we have our weaknesses, as do all human institutions.
The leadership of our church, particularly our bishops and clergy, have not done enough to educate and help people articulate the nuances of our faith. Too many times I’ve heard Episcopalians say, “I just don’t know what to say,” when our more fundamentalist neighbors or friends criticize our denomination.
Too often our so-called leaders have simply failed to lead. In the aftermath of the ordination of Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire, I heard too many clergy say, “I knew this was going to happen, but I just didn’t want to bring it up in my congregation. I didn’t want people getting angry or upset.”
Clergy who are too afraid to even discuss controversial or difficult topics probably shouldn’t be leading congregations.
But not all the onus is on clergy. People who want to be able to articulate their faith need to regularly be part of a community where those discussions take place.
The only time I feel a little bit envious of Baptists is when I drive past the full parking lots in the Baptist Church on Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings, even in the summer.
I respect the priority that church attendance is in the life of those congregations, and like most Episcopal clergy I know, wish that it were of equal importance in the lives of more of our members.
We’ve talked a lot at St. Dunstan’s about the need for growth. What we have been more reluctant to talk about publicly is the need for those who are members here to be more active in the life of the church, to be present.
If all the children on our rolls came to Sunday School, our classes would be full. If all our members regularly attended worship, the rafters would ring.
St. Dunstan’s, and indeed, the Episcopal Church, are not alone in this challenge. Last spring, I attended a conference with clergy from several denominations across the country. Our styles of worship and theology were different, but one lament spread across geographical and denominational bounds – how to get people to church on Sundays.
One Episcopal priest from Atlanta confessed the despair she felt when she was told by several parishioners they wouldn’t be at church on Easter Sunday because their children were playing in a soccer tournament that morning.
We as the church have been too reluctant to say what the soccer coaches have no problem saying – we need you. When you’re not here we miss you. We are less than we could be without you.
Despite what George Will says, we have a vibrant, vital denomination that offers a perspective on Christianity that the world needs to hear, a message that is particularly relevant for our time.
Just before worship started this morning, Sallie Smith shared a poem with me that I believe sums up the Episcopal Church at its best.
Just before worship started this morning, Sallie Smith shared a poem with me that I believe sums up the Episcopal Church at its best.
“You drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took you in.”
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win.
We drew a circle that took you in.”
Let’s not be reluctant to share our circle of love with the world around us.
Amen.
Monday, October 20, 2008
George Will's Column
George Will wrote a troubling column that was published yesterday, called "A Faith's Dwindling Following." In it, Will claims that the Episcopal Church in America has lost its way and does not seem relevant anymore, given all the problems confronting the church. Will's conclusion pretty much sums up his (in my opinion, short-sighted) argument:
Today [the Episcopal Church] is "progressive" politics cloaked — very thinly — in piety. Episcopalians' discontents tell a cautionary tale for political as well as religious associations. As the church's doctrines have become more elastic, the church has contracted. It celebrates an "inclusiveness" that includes fewer and fewer members.
So now popular opinion determines theological arguments? Or is religion a popularity contest instead?
To say that being inclusive is merely "politics cloaked in piety" seems to ignore Jesus' teaching here on Earth. For wasn't it Jesus who hung out with the tax collectors and prostitutes and other "unclean" people, inviting them to join him in God's love? I guess Jesus was just too inclusive and political for true conservatives these days. (Which is, incidentally, the premise of this novel; evidently the Christian NeoCons would have a problem with Jesus Christ Himself).
Today [the Episcopal Church] is "progressive" politics cloaked — very thinly — in piety. Episcopalians' discontents tell a cautionary tale for political as well as religious associations. As the church's doctrines have become more elastic, the church has contracted. It celebrates an "inclusiveness" that includes fewer and fewer members.
So now popular opinion determines theological arguments? Or is religion a popularity contest instead?
To say that being inclusive is merely "politics cloaked in piety" seems to ignore Jesus' teaching here on Earth. For wasn't it Jesus who hung out with the tax collectors and prostitutes and other "unclean" people, inviting them to join him in God's love? I guess Jesus was just too inclusive and political for true conservatives these days. (Which is, incidentally, the premise of this novel; evidently the Christian NeoCons would have a problem with Jesus Christ Himself).
Tricia's Sermon, 10/19/08
Proper 24A
October 19, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
Just a Glimpse
Today’s reading from the Book of Exodus is like the second half of a very complex TV mini series. If you don’t have some idea of what happened earlier, it’s not going to make much sense.
So here is a quick recap of what leads up to today’s story. The people of Israel are in the wilderness with their leader Moses. God has liberated them from slavery in Egypt, and delivered a crushing defeat to the Egyptian army that pursues them.
God has sustained them in the wilderness, making water spring from rocks and manna magically appear each morning. God has actually even been their tour guide, leading them through the wilderness in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
By this time, one would think that God, and God’s servant Moses, would have earned the people’s trust. But when Moses goes atop Mt. Sinai to converse with God and receive God’s laws under which the people will live, things go terribly wrong.
The people become convinced that Moses has been gone too long, and that he and God have abandoned them. What they need is a new god, they say, and so they make the image of a calf from the collected gold of the community, and they build an altar and bow down and worship it.
To say that this does not sit well with God is an understatement. Committing oneself to the service of wealth is a sure way to earn God’s wrath.
“Get down there at once!” God says to Moses. “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, are acting perversely.”
God wants nothing more to do with these difficult, ungrateful people. “Leave me alone,” God says to Moses, “so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”
God is ready to do away with the people who were so quick to switch their allegiance to the idolatry of wealth, and to start over again with Moses alone.
But Moses, whose job as prophet is to mediate between God and God’s people, begs God to reconsider. Think how this will look, he tells God. What will the Egyptians think and say about you when they hear what you’ve done?
Think about Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the promises you made to them. Yes, these people are difficult and they have done a horrible thing. But don’t destroy them. You’re God, you’re better than that.
This appeal works. God changes God’s mind, and the people are spared.
But things aren’t the same.
God will let the people continue to the Promised Land, but God will no longer accompany them on the journey. Instead, an angel will guide them.
Give the people this message for me, God tells Moses, “You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you.”
That’s where today’s story begins. Moses is distraught at God’s insistence that the divine days as tour guide are over. He realizes that Israel’s very identity is at stake here.
Only in God’s presence does Israel have any claims of distinction among the nations.
Moses is a prophet of great courage and daring. He has no problem expressing God’s wishes and demands to the people. But he is equally bold in speaking on behalf of the people to God.
“This nation is your people,” Moses reminds God.
God replies, “My presence will go with you,” but this “you” in Hebrew is the singular “you.” God will be present with Moses, but not with the rest of the people of Israel.
Moses will have none of it.
“If you don’t go with us, all of us, then forget the whole thing,” Moses in effect says to God. “Don’t even try to get us to the Promised Land. Without you, we are nothing.”
God relents, saying to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you ask.”
But Moses is still not satisfied. He needs a sign from God that he is in God’s favor. And so he makes one more demand.
“Show me your glory,” he says.
It is an audacious request, demanding to see the fullness of God’s awesome, shrouded, magisterial, magnificent presence, demanding to be allowed into the very core of God’s self.
And amazingly, God agrees. To a point.
“I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘the Lord,’” God says. “But you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.
“See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
Not even Moses, the most faithful of prophets, can withstand being in the full presence of God. Even at the moment when Moses is closest to the divine, he is reminded of the distance between the Creator and the created.
Moses’ desire to see God, to be assured of God’s presence reminds me of a story about a young child whose mother asked him to go outside one night and put his toys away.
The child went outside, but soon reappeared. “It’s dark out there and I’m scared,” he said. “Won’t you come with me?”
The mother reminded the boy that he was not really alone, that God was with him.
Reluctantly, the child went out again, but quickly was back inside. “I know that God is always with me,” he said, “but sometimes I need somebody with skin on.”
Moses was looking for the same kind of reassurance that the young boy needed. Moses, too, needed somebody “with skin on,” some tangible proof of God’s presence with him and the people of Israel.
Moses’ experience is extraordinary; he comes closer to experiencing the fullness of God than any human.
But his experience is also one that parallels that of many people of faith. We long for God’s presence, for reassurance that God is with us.
We yearn for somebody “with skin on” to be with us, to guide us through our wilderness.
We want some tangible proof of the promise God makes in the book of Hebrews, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Or that Jesus makes to his disciples before he ascends to heaven, “I will be with you always.”
Those promises are still with us. We do not have pillars of clouds and fire; we have not been invited to catch a fleeting glimpse of God’s back passing by. We cannot see the face of God.
By God does still promise to be with us. Sometimes in a thought or dream, or unexplained occurrence. Sometimes in a gentle nudge in a direction we had not planned to take. Sometimes in the majesty of nature.
And sometimes with skin on, in the presence of a person who sits with us through our anxiety and fears and despair, who holds our hand in the dark and rejoices with us in the light.
None of us can fully know God. But we can get glimpses.
And just a glimpse of God’s presence and glory can be enough.
Amen.
October 19, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
Just a Glimpse
Today’s reading from the Book of Exodus is like the second half of a very complex TV mini series. If you don’t have some idea of what happened earlier, it’s not going to make much sense.
So here is a quick recap of what leads up to today’s story. The people of Israel are in the wilderness with their leader Moses. God has liberated them from slavery in Egypt, and delivered a crushing defeat to the Egyptian army that pursues them.
God has sustained them in the wilderness, making water spring from rocks and manna magically appear each morning. God has actually even been their tour guide, leading them through the wilderness in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.
By this time, one would think that God, and God’s servant Moses, would have earned the people’s trust. But when Moses goes atop Mt. Sinai to converse with God and receive God’s laws under which the people will live, things go terribly wrong.
The people become convinced that Moses has been gone too long, and that he and God have abandoned them. What they need is a new god, they say, and so they make the image of a calf from the collected gold of the community, and they build an altar and bow down and worship it.
To say that this does not sit well with God is an understatement. Committing oneself to the service of wealth is a sure way to earn God’s wrath.
“Get down there at once!” God says to Moses. “Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, are acting perversely.”
God wants nothing more to do with these difficult, ungrateful people. “Leave me alone,” God says to Moses, “so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them; and of you I will make a great nation.”
God is ready to do away with the people who were so quick to switch their allegiance to the idolatry of wealth, and to start over again with Moses alone.
But Moses, whose job as prophet is to mediate between God and God’s people, begs God to reconsider. Think how this will look, he tells God. What will the Egyptians think and say about you when they hear what you’ve done?
Think about Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and the promises you made to them. Yes, these people are difficult and they have done a horrible thing. But don’t destroy them. You’re God, you’re better than that.
This appeal works. God changes God’s mind, and the people are spared.
But things aren’t the same.
God will let the people continue to the Promised Land, but God will no longer accompany them on the journey. Instead, an angel will guide them.
Give the people this message for me, God tells Moses, “You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you.”
That’s where today’s story begins. Moses is distraught at God’s insistence that the divine days as tour guide are over. He realizes that Israel’s very identity is at stake here.
Only in God’s presence does Israel have any claims of distinction among the nations.
Moses is a prophet of great courage and daring. He has no problem expressing God’s wishes and demands to the people. But he is equally bold in speaking on behalf of the people to God.
“This nation is your people,” Moses reminds God.
God replies, “My presence will go with you,” but this “you” in Hebrew is the singular “you.” God will be present with Moses, but not with the rest of the people of Israel.
Moses will have none of it.
“If you don’t go with us, all of us, then forget the whole thing,” Moses in effect says to God. “Don’t even try to get us to the Promised Land. Without you, we are nothing.”
God relents, saying to Moses, “I will do the very thing that you ask.”
But Moses is still not satisfied. He needs a sign from God that he is in God’s favor. And so he makes one more demand.
“Show me your glory,” he says.
It is an audacious request, demanding to see the fullness of God’s awesome, shrouded, magisterial, magnificent presence, demanding to be allowed into the very core of God’s self.
And amazingly, God agrees. To a point.
“I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘the Lord,’” God says. “But you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.
“See, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock; and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by; then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen.”
Not even Moses, the most faithful of prophets, can withstand being in the full presence of God. Even at the moment when Moses is closest to the divine, he is reminded of the distance between the Creator and the created.
Moses’ desire to see God, to be assured of God’s presence reminds me of a story about a young child whose mother asked him to go outside one night and put his toys away.
The child went outside, but soon reappeared. “It’s dark out there and I’m scared,” he said. “Won’t you come with me?”
The mother reminded the boy that he was not really alone, that God was with him.
Reluctantly, the child went out again, but quickly was back inside. “I know that God is always with me,” he said, “but sometimes I need somebody with skin on.”
Moses was looking for the same kind of reassurance that the young boy needed. Moses, too, needed somebody “with skin on,” some tangible proof of God’s presence with him and the people of Israel.
Moses’ experience is extraordinary; he comes closer to experiencing the fullness of God than any human.
But his experience is also one that parallels that of many people of faith. We long for God’s presence, for reassurance that God is with us.
We yearn for somebody “with skin on” to be with us, to guide us through our wilderness.
We want some tangible proof of the promise God makes in the book of Hebrews, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Or that Jesus makes to his disciples before he ascends to heaven, “I will be with you always.”
Those promises are still with us. We do not have pillars of clouds and fire; we have not been invited to catch a fleeting glimpse of God’s back passing by. We cannot see the face of God.
By God does still promise to be with us. Sometimes in a thought or dream, or unexplained occurrence. Sometimes in a gentle nudge in a direction we had not planned to take. Sometimes in the majesty of nature.
And sometimes with skin on, in the presence of a person who sits with us through our anxiety and fears and despair, who holds our hand in the dark and rejoices with us in the light.
None of us can fully know God. But we can get glimpses.
And just a glimpse of God’s presence and glory can be enough.
Amen.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Tricia's Sermon for 10/12
As Jesus says in Matthew 18:20, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them," which means that Jesus had a great time grilling a bunch of pork and chicken in a pit next to the beech grove. I bring this up because I helped with the cooking for Sunday's great barbeque. This also means that I attended the early service which was held outside for us cooks. Tricia's sermon was slightlyi abbreviated (by about 95%), but here is the full text which she delivered at the later service.
The Welcome Table
I begin this morning with a confession.
The story we just read from Matthew’s gospel is probably my least favorite parable in the scriptures. I wish it wasn’t in the Bible. I wish it wasn’t in the lectionary. I wish I could just ignore it and preach on something else, but when something this distasteful is part of our Sunday readings I feel an obligation to not let it go uncommented upon.
This parable is an allegory, a story in which each of the characters stands for someone else; a story that has a wider symbolic meaning. When Matthew wrote his gospel, he was addressing members of the new, and very small, Christian movement.
The followers of Jesus were often persecuted by the religious establishment. They were such a minority that they must have sometimes wondered if following Jesus was the right thing to do, whether it was worth the risks they were taking.
This story must have bolstered their confidence and faith. Surely they would recognize that those who ignored the king’s invitation to the wedding banquet were the religious establishment. The refusal to accept the invitation led to their deaths.
And then who gets invited to the wedding feast? The riff-raff, the nobodies, the people off the street – in other words, the very people to whom Jesus reached out in his ministry.
But all of them are not allowed to stay. The king looks over his assembled guests and notices one who is not dressed properly. “How did you get in here without a robe?” the king demands.
Scripture tells us that the guest is speechless, which is understandable. How could he be expected to dress properly if he just came in – was just invited in -- off the street?
A king who kills those who ignore him and ousts people who are dressed improperly is hardly an appealing image of God. What has happened to the God of love, justice, and inclusivity? That God seems to be absent from this parable.
Obviously this is a story about the battle being waged between the religious establishment and the new radical sect of believers who followed Jesus. And it must have comforted that ragtag group to recognize themselves as the winners in this story.
But there is a big difference between those early Christians who heard this story, and we Christians we hear it today.
The difference is that we are not a ragtag group of nobodies. The difference is that we are the religious establishment.
And as the establishment, the ones in power, it is all too easy for us to hear this story as a justification of our own lack of hospitality, our own mean-spiritedness and hardness of heart.
It is all too easy for us to hear this story as a justification of our divisions of God’s world into those who are in and those who are out; those who are saved and those who are damned; those who are blessed and those who are cursed.
It is all too easy for us to hear this story and see ourselves as the ones who have on the right wedding garments and remain at the table and those others – who are not like us – as the ones who do not have the right garments and who are justifiably cast out.
Hearing the parable this way, it is no longer an allegory of God’s love for those who the world casts aside. Instead, it becomes a parable of inhospitality, cruelty and hatred.
And so we who are the establishment must hear this story in a new way. It must be retold in a way that captures the good news of a God who is, as we hear today from Isaiah, “a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm, and a shade from the heat.”
A God who Isaiah proclaims will “make for all peoples a feast of rich food.” A God who will swallow up death forever.
I recently read another kind of parable, one that captures the spirit of the gospel by twisting the parable of the wedding feast. This parable by Alice Walker, The Welcome Table, is an allegory closer to our own time and place.
The title comes from the words of a spiritual:
I begin this morning with a confession.
The story we just read from Matthew’s gospel is probably my least favorite parable in the scriptures. I wish it wasn’t in the Bible. I wish it wasn’t in the lectionary. I wish I could just ignore it and preach on something else, but when something this distasteful is part of our Sunday readings I feel an obligation to not let it go uncommented upon.
This parable is an allegory, a story in which each of the characters stands for someone else; a story that has a wider symbolic meaning. When Matthew wrote his gospel, he was addressing members of the new, and very small, Christian movement.
The followers of Jesus were often persecuted by the religious establishment. They were such a minority that they must have sometimes wondered if following Jesus was the right thing to do, whether it was worth the risks they were taking.
This story must have bolstered their confidence and faith. Surely they would recognize that those who ignored the king’s invitation to the wedding banquet were the religious establishment. The refusal to accept the invitation led to their deaths.
And then who gets invited to the wedding feast? The riff-raff, the nobodies, the people off the street – in other words, the very people to whom Jesus reached out in his ministry.
But all of them are not allowed to stay. The king looks over his assembled guests and notices one who is not dressed properly. “How did you get in here without a robe?” the king demands.
Scripture tells us that the guest is speechless, which is understandable. How could he be expected to dress properly if he just came in – was just invited in -- off the street?
A king who kills those who ignore him and ousts people who are dressed improperly is hardly an appealing image of God. What has happened to the God of love, justice, and inclusivity? That God seems to be absent from this parable.
Obviously this is a story about the battle being waged between the religious establishment and the new radical sect of believers who followed Jesus. And it must have comforted that ragtag group to recognize themselves as the winners in this story.
But there is a big difference between those early Christians who heard this story, and we Christians we hear it today.
The difference is that we are not a ragtag group of nobodies. The difference is that we are the religious establishment.
And as the establishment, the ones in power, it is all too easy for us to hear this story as a justification of our own lack of hospitality, our own mean-spiritedness and hardness of heart.
It is all too easy for us to hear this story as a justification of our divisions of God’s world into those who are in and those who are out; those who are saved and those who are damned; those who are blessed and those who are cursed.
It is all too easy for us to hear this story and see ourselves as the ones who have on the right wedding garments and remain at the table and those others – who are not like us – as the ones who do not have the right garments and who are justifiably cast out.
Hearing the parable this way, it is no longer an allegory of God’s love for those who the world casts aside. Instead, it becomes a parable of inhospitality, cruelty and hatred.
And so we who are the establishment must hear this story in a new way. It must be retold in a way that captures the good news of a God who is, as we hear today from Isaiah, “a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress, a shelter from the rainstorm, and a shade from the heat.”
A God who Isaiah proclaims will “make for all peoples a feast of rich food.” A God who will swallow up death forever.
I recently read another kind of parable, one that captures the spirit of the gospel by twisting the parable of the wedding feast. This parable by Alice Walker, The Welcome Table, is an allegory closer to our own time and place.
The title comes from the words of a spiritual:
“I’m going to sit at the Welcome table,
Shout my troubles over
Walk and talk with Jesus
Tell God how you treat me
One of these days!”
* * *
Hear then, this modern day parable.
The old woman stood with eyes uplifted in her Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes: high shoes polished about the tops and toes, a long rusty dress adorned with an old corsage, long withered, and the remnants of an elegant silk scarf as headrag stained with grease from the many oily pigtails underneath. Perhaps she had known suffering…
Some of those who saw her there on the church steps spoke words about her that were hardly fit to be heard, others held their pious peace, and some felt vague stirrings of pity, small and persistent and hazy, as if she were an old collie turned out to die.
Those who knew the hesitant creeping up on them of the law, looked at her and saw the beginning of the end of the sanctuary of Christian worship, saw the desecration of the Holy Church, and saw an invasion of privacy.
She had come down the road toward the big white church alone. Just herself, an old forgetful woman, nearly blind with age. Just her and her eyes raised dully to the glittering cross that crowned the sheer silver steeple.
She had walked along the road in a stagger from her house a half mile away. Perspiration, cold and clammy, stood on her brow. She stopped to calm herself on the wide front steps, not looking about her as they might have expected her to do, but simply standing quite still.
The reverend of the church stopped her pleasantly as she stepped into the vestibule. “Auntie, you know this is not your church?” he said. As if one could choose the wrong one.
But she brushed past him anyway, as if she had been brushing past him all her life, except this time she was in a hurry. Inside the church she sat on the very first bench from the back, gazing with concentration at the stained glass window over her head. It was cold, and she was shivering.
Everyone could see. They stared at her as they came in and sat near the front. It was cold, very cold, to them, too: outside the church it was below freezing and not much above inside. But the sight of her, sitting there somehow passionately ignoring them, brought them up short, burning.
The young usher, never having turned anyone out of his church before, but not even considering this job as that (after all, she had no right to be there, certainly) went up to her and whispered that she should leave.
She did not pay him any attention, just muttered, “Go ‘way,” in a weak, sharp, bothered voice, waving his blond hair and eyes from near her face.
It was the ladies who finally did what had to be done. Daring their burly indecisive husbands to throw the old colored woman out they made their point. God, mother, country, earth, church. It involved all that and well they knew it.
Leather bagged and shoed, with good calfskin gloves to keep out the cold, they looked with contempt at the bloodless gray arthritic hands of the old woman, clenched loosely, restlessly in her lap.
Could their husbands expect them to sit up in church with that? No, no, the husbands were quick to answer and even quicker to do their duty.
Under the old woman’s arms they placed their hard fists. Under the old woman’s arms they raised their fists, flexed their muscular shoulders, and out she flew through the door, back under the cold blue sky.
This done, the wives folded their healthy arms across their trim middles and felt at once justified and scornful.
Inside the church it was warmer. They sang, they prayed. The protection and promise of God’s impartial love grew more desirable as the sermon gathered fury and lashed out above their penitent heads.
* * *
The old woman stood at the top of the steps looking about in bewilderment. She had been singing in her head. They had interrupted her. Promptly she began singing again, though this time a sad song.
Suddenly, however, she looked down the long gray highway and saw something interesting and delightful coming.
She started to grin, toothlessly, with short giggles of joy, jumping about and slapping her hands on her knees.
And soon it was apparent why she was so happy. For coming down the highway at a firm though leisurely pace was Jesus. He was wearing an immaculate white, long dress trimmed in gold around the neck and hem, and a bright red cape. He was wearing sandals and a beard and he had long brown hair parted on the right side. His eyes, brown, had wrinkles around them as if he smiled or looked at the sun a lot.
She would have known him, recognized him, anywhere. There was a sad but joyful look to his face, like a candle was glowing behind it, and he walked with sure steps in her direction, as if he were walking on the sea.
Ecstatically she began to wave her arms for fear he would miss seeing her.
All he said when he got close to her was, “Follow me,” and she bounded down to his side. For every one of his long determined steps she made two quick ones.
They walked along in deep silence for a long time. Finally she started telling him about how many years she had cooked for them, cleaned for them, nursed them. He looked at her kindly but in silence.
She told him indignantly about how they had grabbed her when she was singing in her head and how they had tossed her out of his church. An old heifer like me, she said, straightening up next to Jesus, breathing hard.
But he smiled down at her and she felt better instantly and time just seemed to fly by. When they passed her house, forlorn and sagging, weather-beaten and patched, she did not even notice it, she was so happy to be walking along the highway with Jesus.
She broke the silence once more to tell Jesus how glad she was that he had come, how she had often looked at his picture hanging on her wall above her bed, and how she had never expected to see him down here in person. Jesus gave her one of his beautiful smiles and walked on.
She did not know where they were going; someplace wonderful, she suspected. The ground was like clouds under her feet, and she felt she could walk forever without becoming the least bit tired.
They walked on, looking straight over the treetops into the sky, and the smile that played over her dry, wind-cracked face was like the first clean ripples across a stagnant pond. On they walked without stopping.
* * *
The people in church never knew what happened to the old woman; they never mentioned her to one another or to anybody else. Most of them heard sometime later that an old colored woman fell dead along the highway. Silly as it seemed, it appeared she had walked herself to death.
Many of the black families along the road said they had seen the old lady high-stepping down the highway; sometimes jabbering in a low, insistent voice, sometimes singing, sometimes merely gesturing excitedly with her hands. Other times silent and smiling, looking at the sky. She had been alone, they said.
Some of them wondered aloud where the old woman had been going so stoutly that it had worn out her heart. They guessed maybe she had relatives across the river, some miles away, but none of them really knew.
* * *
I’m going to sit at the Welcome table
Shout my troubles over
Walk and talk with Jesus
Tell God how you treat me
One of these days!
Monday, October 6, 2008
A new look for Tricia?
I first heard of Skye Denno from the "News of the Weird" website last week. Evidently, Denno has been a big story across the Pond, becoming a very minor Eugene Robinson type. For Denno is the first openly punk minister, and has been profiled by The London Mail as well as The London Paper and The Mirror. So they aren't the Times, but the story is an interesting one.
Technically, as The Mail points out, Denno is still training to be a vicar, and is just an apprentice, or curate at the moment. But still, when she does become a vicar, her congregation will certainly be different. So she is essentially the Tim Black of St. James' the Great of Dursely. And while I like Tim Black, he clearly lacks Denno's style, since she goes to work as pictured. When she isn't wearing hot pants and a dog collar, that is.
But what I like most about this story--other than the possible style tips for Tricia--is that Denno sees her style not as something she should hide when going to work, but actually helps her at work. As many articles point out (and I've probably read too many about her already), she believes that 'it makes me more approachable and I haven't heard any grumbles. At the most people have been a little surprised." She even prays for and with people at the punk shows she attends.
Instead of trying to hide who she is, Denno is just herself, doing God's work as His tool. And in my opinion, that makes already makes her a good priest-in-the-making. If you can't accept who you are and how God made you, how can you help others learn to accept themselves as God has made them?
Monday, September 29, 2008
Tricia's Sermon 9/28
Proper 21A
September 28, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
All the Way Down
The great philosopher Alfred North Whitehead had just finished his opening lecture in a course on cosmology, the study of the universe, when an agitated student came up to him.
“I’m sorry, professor, but everything you said about the structure of the universe is wrong, dead wrong,” the student said.
The great philosopher patiently asked the young man to explain his own views on the subject.
“Well, the fact is that the entire universe sits on the back of a gigantic turtle,” the student said.
Whitehead was taken aback, but asked, “And what does that turtle stand on?”
Without blinking, the young man said, “Another turtle.”
“And what…” Whitehead began.
But before he could complete his question, his young challenger exploded with frustration.
“I know exactly what you’re going to ask, professor, and the answer is – it’s turtles, all the way down!”
Turtles all the way down. I thought of this story this week as I reflected on today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Philippi.
Paul has been imprisoned for preaching the gospel, and he is writing to the church in Philippi from his jail cell.
He urges those in the church “to live their lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.”
The church in Philippi is successful, cosmopolitan, ambitious and thriving. The congregation has a special place in Paul’s heart. “I thank my God every time I remember you,” he writes to them.
But because these Christians are so successful and ambitious, Paul offers them a warning.
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves,” he says.
And then, in an effort to show the Philippians how to live that way, the great teacher offers his own lesson on cosmology, the nature of the universe.
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
“And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”
In Paul’s view, the universe is supported on the back of a God who reaches all the way down to the depths of the earth, who empties the divine self and takes on human likeness.
The student in Whitehead’s philosophy class looks at the universe and see turtles all the way down. Paul looks at the universe and sees God all the way down.
The fact that God is not content to stay far away in the heavens, removed from the struggles of daily life on earth has profound implications for how we are to live.
We are to pattern our lives after the life of the God who was willing to come all the way down, who was willing to empty the divine self and take on human likeness.
Paul reminds us that the world’s standards of success are not God’s standards. By worldly standards, success is judged by one’s place in the hierarchy – climbing the ladder of success higher and higher. The more people below us on the ladder, the more successful we are.
But in God’s view of the universe there is no hierarchy. Instead there is a “lowerarchy,” a reaching down, a humbling of one’s self.
The word “humble” has at its root the Latin word humus, which means earth. For God, coming to earth in human form was an act of humbleness.
To be humble, or of the earth, does not mean to be weak or meek or self deprecating. To be humble means having the mind of Christ.
And having the mind of Christ means emptying ourselves of pride, ambition, and the need to always be climbing up the hierarchy. It means to empty ourselves of all that separates us from God, including all we associate with status and prestige.
Having the mind of Christ means to be willing to participate instead in the lowerarchy, in reaching out to be of service to others without regard for our own social status. It means putting others first, encouraging them, giving them a leg up, rejoicing when they succeed.
An episode in what was once one of my favorite TV shows, ER, features a hospital orderly, whose job it is to clean up the emergency room after the doctors’ work is finished. The orderly spends his day mopping up blood and vomit.
“I bet you hate your job,” one of the doctors says to him.
“No, I consider my job a privilege,” he replies.
When the doctor looks skeptical, the orderly continues, “You see, I’m a Christian. And I believe that all people are created in God’s image. And so when I come in here I don’t see blood and vomit. I see the image of God.”
The orderly may not be very high in the hospital’s hierarchy, but he has achieved the mind of Christ in his work.
When we learn, like the orderly, to live with compassion and sympathy, when we learn to reach out to others rather than climbing over them on the ladder to success, we find a paradox.
When Jesus, in the ultimate act of humility, died for us on the cross, he was exalted by God above all others, so that, as Paul says, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bed, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
The moment of Jesus’ greatest humility becomes the reason for his greatest exaltation. The last becomes first, the most despised receives the greatest honor. In the depths of the earth is the Lord of the heavens.
Jewish folklore tells the story of the rabbi who disappeared every Sabbath evening “to commune with God in the forest,” his congregation thought. So one Sabbath night they sent one of their members to follow the rabbi and observe the holy encounter.
Deeper and deeper into the woods the rabbi went until he came to the small cottage of an old Gentile woman who was extremely ill and crippled into a painful position.
Once there, the rabbi cooked for her, carried her firewood, and swept her floor. When the chores were finished, he returned to his little house next to the synagogue.
Back in the village, the people demanded of the one they sent to follow their leader, “Did our rabbi go up to heaven as we thought?”
“Oh no,” the man answered after a thoughtful pause. “Our rabbi went much higher than that.”
The one who humbles herself will be exalted. The one who serves will himself be served. That is the strange paradox of the gospel that proclaims that we will find God not only in the heavens, but all the way down.
Amen.
September 28, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
All the Way Down
The great philosopher Alfred North Whitehead had just finished his opening lecture in a course on cosmology, the study of the universe, when an agitated student came up to him.
“I’m sorry, professor, but everything you said about the structure of the universe is wrong, dead wrong,” the student said.
The great philosopher patiently asked the young man to explain his own views on the subject.
“Well, the fact is that the entire universe sits on the back of a gigantic turtle,” the student said.
Whitehead was taken aback, but asked, “And what does that turtle stand on?”
Without blinking, the young man said, “Another turtle.”
“And what…” Whitehead began.
But before he could complete his question, his young challenger exploded with frustration.
“I know exactly what you’re going to ask, professor, and the answer is – it’s turtles, all the way down!”
Turtles all the way down. I thought of this story this week as I reflected on today’s reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Philippi.
Paul has been imprisoned for preaching the gospel, and he is writing to the church in Philippi from his jail cell.
He urges those in the church “to live their lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ.”
The church in Philippi is successful, cosmopolitan, ambitious and thriving. The congregation has a special place in Paul’s heart. “I thank my God every time I remember you,” he writes to them.
But because these Christians are so successful and ambitious, Paul offers them a warning.
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves,” he says.
And then, in an effort to show the Philippians how to live that way, the great teacher offers his own lesson on cosmology, the nature of the universe.
“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.
“And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross.”
In Paul’s view, the universe is supported on the back of a God who reaches all the way down to the depths of the earth, who empties the divine self and takes on human likeness.
The student in Whitehead’s philosophy class looks at the universe and see turtles all the way down. Paul looks at the universe and sees God all the way down.
The fact that God is not content to stay far away in the heavens, removed from the struggles of daily life on earth has profound implications for how we are to live.
We are to pattern our lives after the life of the God who was willing to come all the way down, who was willing to empty the divine self and take on human likeness.
Paul reminds us that the world’s standards of success are not God’s standards. By worldly standards, success is judged by one’s place in the hierarchy – climbing the ladder of success higher and higher. The more people below us on the ladder, the more successful we are.
But in God’s view of the universe there is no hierarchy. Instead there is a “lowerarchy,” a reaching down, a humbling of one’s self.
The word “humble” has at its root the Latin word humus, which means earth. For God, coming to earth in human form was an act of humbleness.
To be humble, or of the earth, does not mean to be weak or meek or self deprecating. To be humble means having the mind of Christ.
And having the mind of Christ means emptying ourselves of pride, ambition, and the need to always be climbing up the hierarchy. It means to empty ourselves of all that separates us from God, including all we associate with status and prestige.
Having the mind of Christ means to be willing to participate instead in the lowerarchy, in reaching out to be of service to others without regard for our own social status. It means putting others first, encouraging them, giving them a leg up, rejoicing when they succeed.
An episode in what was once one of my favorite TV shows, ER, features a hospital orderly, whose job it is to clean up the emergency room after the doctors’ work is finished. The orderly spends his day mopping up blood and vomit.
“I bet you hate your job,” one of the doctors says to him.
“No, I consider my job a privilege,” he replies.
When the doctor looks skeptical, the orderly continues, “You see, I’m a Christian. And I believe that all people are created in God’s image. And so when I come in here I don’t see blood and vomit. I see the image of God.”
The orderly may not be very high in the hospital’s hierarchy, but he has achieved the mind of Christ in his work.
When we learn, like the orderly, to live with compassion and sympathy, when we learn to reach out to others rather than climbing over them on the ladder to success, we find a paradox.
When Jesus, in the ultimate act of humility, died for us on the cross, he was exalted by God above all others, so that, as Paul says, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bed, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
The moment of Jesus’ greatest humility becomes the reason for his greatest exaltation. The last becomes first, the most despised receives the greatest honor. In the depths of the earth is the Lord of the heavens.
Jewish folklore tells the story of the rabbi who disappeared every Sabbath evening “to commune with God in the forest,” his congregation thought. So one Sabbath night they sent one of their members to follow the rabbi and observe the holy encounter.
Deeper and deeper into the woods the rabbi went until he came to the small cottage of an old Gentile woman who was extremely ill and crippled into a painful position.
Once there, the rabbi cooked for her, carried her firewood, and swept her floor. When the chores were finished, he returned to his little house next to the synagogue.
Back in the village, the people demanded of the one they sent to follow their leader, “Did our rabbi go up to heaven as we thought?”
“Oh no,” the man answered after a thoughtful pause. “Our rabbi went much higher than that.”
The one who humbles herself will be exalted. The one who serves will himself be served. That is the strange paradox of the gospel that proclaims that we will find God not only in the heavens, but all the way down.
Amen.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Tricia's Sermon, 9/21/08
Proper 20A
September 21, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
September 21, 2008
St. Dunstan’s
The Rev. Patricia Templeton
The Reluctant Prophet
Several years ago a band called The Crashtest Dummies had a hit song entitled “God Shuffled His Feet.” In the song, it’s the Sabbath Day, and God has decided to enjoy the day of rest by taking some people on a picnic.
The people and God are kicking back, sitting on a blanket, drinking wine and chatting. After God tells a rather bizarre story, someone asks this question:
“I beg your pardon, God: I’m not sure what you just spoke –
“Was that a parable, or a very subtle joke?”
That question could be asked about the Book of Jonah, a bizarre little story, the ending of which we heard this morning.
The story of Jonah is a parable, a simple story used to illustrate a religious message, but it also a subtle joke, using humor to convey some very serious lessons.
My guess is that what most of us remember about Jonah is that he was swallowed by a big fish. It’s a favorite children’s Bible story, but there is much more to Jonah than that fanciful tale of being swallowed by a whale.
The story begins with God appearing to Jonah and ordering him to go to the great city of Nineveh to warn the people there that if they do not repent of their wicked ways, God will destroy them.
But Jonah doesn’t want to go to Nineveh, and so instead he hops on a boat, planning to sail across the sea to a place where he can escape from God’s presence.
Of course, that is impossible to do. God knows that Jonah is on the boat, and sends a huge storm that batters the ship across the sea.
While Jonah is asleep, the sailors struggle against the storm, praying to their gods for help. But no help comes, and finally the ship’s captain goes to Jonah.
“What are you doing sound asleep?” he asks. “Get up, call on your god! Perhaps your god will spare us a thought so that we will not perish.”
Jonah admits that his god is probably angry at him for running away, and suggests that the sailors throw him overboard to appease his god and stop the storm.
Reluctantly, they do so, and the storm stops. Then God sends the big fish to swallow Jonah, and Jonah stays in its belly for three days and nights.
Apparently, a sojourn in a fish’s stomach is enough to humble even the most rebellious prophet, and Jonah prays to God for forgiveness and deliverance. God directs the fish to spit Jonah out on dry land.
One would think after this kind of experience Jonah would have learned his lesson. And indeed, when God appears to Jonah again with the order to go warn the people of Nineveh, Jonah obeys.
Now remember that Jonah is a Hebrew, one of God’s chosen people of Israel. Nineveh is the capitol of Assyria, the historic enemies and enslavers of the Hebrew people.
The people of Nineveh are notoriously evil and wicked. Good Israelites have nothing to do with them.
But Jonah, fresh from the belly of the whale, sets out for Nineveh. He walks through the city, crying out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”
And then an amazing thing happens. The Ninevites, those notoriously evil people, repent.
“The people of Nineveh believed God,” the story says. “They proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.”
When the king of Nineveh hears Jonah’s warning, he orders everyone to “turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands.”
“Who knows?” the king says. “God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.”
And indeed, when God sees that the people of Nineveh have repented, have turned from their evil ways and begged forgiveness, God does relent, the divine mind is changed, and the people of Nineveh are spared.
One would think that Jonah would be delighted. He has done what God has asked him to do. He has been successful. People have listened to him. He has saved an entire city!
But Jonah is not happy. He is angry – furious at God.
“I knew this is what would happen,” he whines. “That’s why I ran away in the first place. I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”
Jonah does not mean those words as a compliment.
Jonah believes that God has wasted his time and put him through quite a lot – the stormy sea, the belly of the fish, the long trek to Nineveh, and the difficult task of preaching repentance.
Jonah doesn’t want God to be gracious and merciful, slow to anger and ready to relent from punishing. Jonah doesn’t want the Ninevites to be saved. He wants God to let them have it. They deserve to be destroyed, not forgiven.
Jonah is so angry that God has had compassion on his enemies that he wishes God would kill him. He goes to sit outside the city to pout and watch, on the slim hope that God might destroy Nineveh after all.
While Jonah is sitting there sulking in the hot sun, God appoints a bush to grow over his head and shade him. The bush makes Jonah happy.
But the next day, God sends a worm to attack the bush and kill it, leaving the sun to beat down on Jonah’s head. Once again, he is angry at God.
God asks Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush.”
“Yes,” Jonah retorts. “Angry enough to die.”
God responds, “You are concerned about the bush for which you did not labor, and which you did not grow. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”
With that question, the funny little book of Jonah, this parable with its subtle jokes, comes to an end.
But beneath the humor of this story of the rebellious prophet pouting because he has saved a city from destruction are some serious lessons.
First, we learn about the expansiveness of God’s caring, juxtaposed against the pettiness of Jonah, and ourselves. If we’re honest, how many of us really want good things to happen to our enemies?
How many of us really want to help save our foes? How many of us would react with delight to learn that the group of people we hated the most, that we looked upon with scorn and disgust, that we held up as the paragons, or axis, of evil – had suddenly changed their ways, become the good guys, were looked on with favor by God?
We’re really not that different from Jonah.
And yet, in contrast there is God – a God who cares about all of creation. A God who truly wants to see all of creation prosper.
A God who cares for creation this much is a God who is flexible in mind and heart.
God’s mind can and does change. God’s heart is moved by pity and compassion. One can imagine God sighing with relief when the people of Nineveh repent, allowing God to scrap the plan of destruction.
God’s ability to be moved by compassion, to be slow to anger and quick to forgive, is what makes Jonah angry.
Jonah has fallen into one of the most prevalent sins of those who believe they are part of a special, elite group. In fact, Jonah is one of God’s chosen people, the Israelites.
But Jonah has forgotten what it means to be chosen by God. God chooses people not for special privileges, but for special responsibilities. The special responsibility of the people of Israel is to be a blessing for all the peoples of the earth.
By going to warn the people of Nineveh, Jonah is doing just that. But he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want them to be blessed; he wants them to be destroyed.
The story of Jonah reminds us that no person or place is outside of God’s care and concern. Israel, and Jonah, have a special covenant with God, but the divine loves extends beyond any covenant. We should never begrudge the divine generosity.
The story of Jonah also reminds us that anyone or anything can be used for a divine purpose.
Even though Jonah doesn’t really like being a prophet, we can imagine that at times he may feel a little smug about being called by God for this important task, just as Israel at times feels smug about being God’s chosen people – just as we at times may feel smug about our own importance and usefulness.
But when we start feeling too smug, remember the story of Jonah. When important work is to be done, God calls on a fish, a storm, a bush – and even a worm – to aid in the divinely appointed task.
And conversely, when we’re feeling small and inconsequential, when we feel like nothing we can do will make a difference, when we think there is no use in even trying – remember that the God who appointed a worm to a divine task can surely make use of us.
Amen.
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