John 11:32-44
Ever since being a little boy I have been perplexed by this weekend’s coupling of feasts -- Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day. As a New Yorker Nevada Day at the time was not on my radar, but if it was it may have added to my state of confusion. Starting with Halloween I remember being told by one demanding adult giver of treats, “Little boy, what is your trick and then I will give you a treat. No trick then no treat”.
As a very bashful child an invitation to perform was not something I cherished. I would have rather walked away from a treat than to do a trick. And I was ready to walk away. I did not have any tricks. I never associated a trick with a treat. As a precious child I just thought that Trick or Treating was a dumb name for dressing up. I knew little about the significance of the day. I just knew it was about collecting candy like Easter but Halloween was not religious. I recall being in a bit of a haze as a child dressing up and going out trick or treating.
As quick as the confusion of Halloween was over, then my little mind had to wrestle with All Saints and All Souls Day. All Saints was festive. All Souls was about remembering the dead. And the memory of the dead seemed to trump the festive memory of saints and their good works. I had no idea how to reconcile the confusion of tricks and treats to the light and celebration of All Saints and to All Souls with its bittersweet memories of death.
Come with me on a journey.
Fast-forward thirty years and I was in a chaplaincy program as part of my ministry formation to be a priest. As a Hospital Chaplain I was visiting a woman in the hospital suffering from terminal cancer and she was praying for a miracle. I humored her but I could not match her faith. As I look back now I am thinking I was hearing her say that she wanted God to perform a trick for her treat of good health. This lack of belief was a matter of grave concern for my Pastoral Supervisor who could not believe my disbelief. I likewise was aghast that people actually believed the miracle stories and somehow expected them to be performed today. I admit that I had been uncomfortable for praying for miracles or worse people who prayed feeling God did not answer when the miracle did not come.
This inner confusion as a child and spiritual/pastoral challenges that I have just described are amplified in our Gospel text. Last week we heard the story of Jesus healing Bartimaeus’ sight and this week he gave Lazarus his life back.
Do you believe that Jesus truly healed Bartimaeus or Lazarus?
Have you ever doubted Jesus the healer? What are our expectations of this healer?
Martha doubted Jesus. By asking about the stench of the corpse she was asking a very practical question. When Jesus says to Martha remove the stone is it the literal stone or the stoned resistance of Martha to the healing power of Jesus?
If I look back at my younger days as a pastor in the mid eighties working as a hospital chaplain there was a stone in my heart that impeded me from caring as Jesus would have ministered. The stone was erected by a pattern of experiences where miracles had not happened in my life and I was left with the brute reality of being unhealed. As a young man the tremor in my hands was the cause of much shame. I was teased by children in school and as a young workingman written up on a performance evaluation for being too nervous. I prayed always for my tremor to go away, but it did not. On a cognitive level I decoupled the unhealed tremor from my ministry and belief in God. Psychologists would say that I repressed the feelings and I failed to address them.
I stood in that NYC hospital room unable to pray with the woman who sought a miracle. I thought miracles were tricks where God says, what is it that you seek, say your prayers and offer your sacrifices and you will be remarkably healed. The sacrifice/prayer/miracle relationship made as little sense to me as trick or treat did as a kid. The treat had nothing to do with the trick. Everybody received a treat. I even received a treat for not doing a trick for gratefully the giver felt some shame on humiliating me as a child.
We can turn to Jesus and in observing and being moved by his tears transfer shame to Martha. I do not recommend this. The Gospel is not about merely cognitive beliefs but rather about where we find intimacy in our faith. Mary speaks from the heart and Jesus is weeping. Watch Jesus in the text. To whom does he turn but his Father? Jesus is the instrument of his Father’s glory of a new heaven and a new earth. Jesus is not just the great pastor or even the caring social worker. These are important jobs and we do express our care for humanity through these and any other job, but the glory of God goes much further than our good works.
Jesus points to the glory of God. He says thank you Father. In and through the glory of God miracles are possible. I suspect that like Martha we all too often miss the miracles before our very eyes. I would like to suggest that there is little difference between demanding a miracle and rejecting the very possibility of miracles. Rejection and expectation is about us not about the glory of God. The glory of God is something unexpected that if we are spiritually aware we will recognize in the ordinary days of our lives. The glory of God is all around us and sometimes we are aware enough to catch a glimpse when the stone in our heart is moved to let the light of God enter.
Stay with me on this journey.
In another hospital room in NYC six years later, after my pastoral experience in the other NYC hospital room, we were keeping an all night vigil with my dying mother. My mother, Catherine was in end stage Alzheimer’s. On that September 1992 day my mom had multiple seizures common in late stage Alzheimer’s. These seizures accelerate the onset of Alzheimer’s. In one day mom went from walking around the nursing home able to talk though making little sense to dying. Before the seizures she was able to enjoy visits from people she cared though she was unable to articulate their names. However, mom had never stopped communicating. She used her eyes and was never without giving her visitors the gift of an unexpected hug, touch or kiss. All this would change due to these seizures. It was as if the lights in her mind went completely out with the seizures.
The entire family gathered expecting that mom would die that night. It was a 48 hours vigil. We each took our turns at her bed saying our last words saying our good-byes to her. We had made peace with mom’s death before she died. Then at about 3am on the second evening of our vigil watch the doctors came by to say that our mother would probably not live to sunrise. At 4am my mom’s eyes opened. I was there with my sister Kathy. It was amazing! Mom began to speak just as we expected her to die. The doctors came in and they removed her oxygen mask.
Mom began to speak with total clarity. She thanked each of us for our care and wondered when she could go home. She not only awoke from this deep seizure sleep; but rather she awoke from the last four stages of Alzheimer’s. She was back at a place we had not seen in over a decade. She was alert and asking for friends by their names. Then within hours it all disappeared again and she lost this acute awareness. She did leave the hospital and returned to the nursing home but her Alzheimers worsened leaving her largely bedridden. It would take her several years until January 1997 before mom finally came to her peaceful death.
But on that September night in 1992 I am certain that we witnessed a miracle. It was not the miracle of a healing from mom’s Alzheimers, but it was unexpected and for her son and daughter present it revealed the glory of God. The doctors could not explain it. Some ventured a guess that the oxygen she received the last 48 hours had helped her brain. One diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is that there is a deprivation of oxygen to the brain. Upon hearing this I asked if the doctors could keep my mom on oxygen for the rest of her life. In this question I moved from the experience of the glory of God in a miracle to my human expectations and demands of God.
The glory of God is in our midst.
When the stone in our hearts shifts ever so slightly then the glory of God pours through like a great light revealing God on God’s terms not on our terms.
It has been my spiritual practice for some time now to reflect on all that I am grateful for and less lamenting. As a result I am constantly aware of the glory of God as it manifests itself in my life.
This week I saw the glory of God several times.
I saw the glory of God on Tuesday morning as St. Stephen’s Bread Ministry team took off in three cars to feed the homeless with the bread of life.
I saw the glory of God when as Street Priests Donna Murphy-Sharp, Bonnie Strader and I heard the story of a homeless man who had nothing gave his only winter scarf to the man who had less.
I saw the glory of God when I visited Bev Sharpe with Julia and Bob Stoddard. The glory of God was in the celebratory music Julia and Bob played as an expression of their faith in God and love for Bev. Judy Eisele who has faithfully fed Bev with the Eucharist has expressed the glory of God. I saw the glory of God when Domine, a nurse’s aide, at the Lifecare Center heard us singing Amazing Grace and came into the room to sing with us. There we were not only as an extension of St. Stephen’s Church but also as an extension of the entire Body of Christ praising God. I saw the glory of God in the peace of Bev’s eyes.
The glory of God is here as two different reformation traditions join in worship of one God.
Where did you see the glory of God this past week?
How has the glory of God been revealed to you through these pictures of people and momentos on this altar?
In today’s closing hymn you will hear these words: “Awake from your slumber, arise from your sleep a new day is dawning, the people of darkness have seen a great light, the Lord of our longing has conquered the night.”
On this festive feast of All Saints Day, let us pray that our eyes will be set on the City of God when the glory of God will be revealed in its full splendor. In the meantime in the city of Reno, this day, the King of Glory calls us to be people of compassion who see the glory of God in each other, seeing beyond each other’s human weaknesses.
As we let go of our demands for specific miracles the inner stones of our hearts that block out the light of God will shift. Then as People of the Light we will see a glimpse of the glory of God in one another.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
God's Friends - October 11, 2009 at Camp Galilee for Trinity Church Reno Men's Retreat
Mark 10:17-31
Contrary to popular interpretations the Gospel is not about condemning the rich or those of us who have a few worldly possessions. The Gospel I think is asking all of us to think about what we treasure? This question is very closely related to another question -- Are these treasures ours or are they God’s? Our answers to these two questions suggest the key to living a different response than the rich young man who went away sad. Hopefully we will not leave from this time together in any way sad!
The focus of the Gospel is not that we go and sell all our possessions, give all our money to the poor and live as beggars. Such a choice overvalues poverty and diminishes the stewardship opportunity of privilege. At the same time we do need to ask some questions about what we treasure. My sense is that we are all men who cherish our spouse, our families and Trinity Church. Loving spouses, healthy families, good friends and vibrant churches are indeed good things for us to cherish too.
The emphasis of the Gospel goes a little bit further through Jesus’ question to the rich young man. My sense is that there is a little humor in Jesus’ response when he says, “don’t call me good teacher”. I sense him saying don’t try to snow me. I had a supervisor at Price Waterhouse who often said to me, “Joe don’t try to snow the snowman.” The rich young man seems to be trying to snow Jesus.
I read the Gospel as Jesus’ way of upping the ante. I think Jesus is poking fun at the young man. Jesus is asking if his treasure is only for himself or is it for others. Jesus contrasts the rich young man’s small circle of people he cherishes with Jesus’ larger circle of friends who are in communion with God. Jesus is asking us to put our treasure in service of this larger circle of God’s friends.
As men I think as a culture we are vulnerable to believe that our smarts, self-discipline and hard work have led to our privileges. So we could say, “we have earned what we have and it is ours”. Yet if we are not careful this way of thinking can lead to a defensive posture that the rich young man exhibits in this story. I can empathize with him. I sold all my possessions twice when I entered Roman Catholic seminaries and I can assure you that I did not have any better insight to this Gospel when I gave up my job, apartment and other worldly privileges and freedom.
There is another way to understand this Gospel though. It is a very different way of thinking to see all that we have received as a gift from God. To see that all we have received coming from God does not diminish our intellectual gifs, our self-discipline or even our masculine ingenuity. If all we treasure originated with God as gift to us than our discernment, indeed the rich young man’s discernment is about stewardship.
Stewardship is far more than deciding how much to pledge each year or how to be philanthropic in the greater community. Stewardship means that we acknowledge that all the gifts we have received including all of our possessions come from God’s grace. Stewardship means no longer living for our small circle of cherished ones but rather for the larger circle. Our challenge is recognizing the faces of people in need in the larger circle as our friends in communion with God.
A year ago working one night at Family Promise, I had a hard time making conversation with our guests. It was much easier for me to serve them than to call them by their name and talk about their circumstances. In future evenings it was a bit easier, but it was still a challenge for me. I have worked with the homeless before giving food through soup kitchens, staying overnight in shelters and giving to organizations that provide for the needs of the homeless. But as I look back on these ministries I see now the way I kept a safe distance.
What’s different for me now is that the homeless I am meeting in my work with Ted and others have names and stories. The homeless have ceased to be for me untouchable. I am in closer proximity. My friend Dan came with us on the street this week and several hours later he was thinking about Francis, an African-American woman who could have been anybody’s grandmother. Dan said he felt less sorry for the men but Francis melted his heart and he saw through her homelessness the way he was related to her through common humanity and communion with God.
As I read this Gospel and reflect on the work we have done, as street priests I think Jesus’ message is that we exercise stewardship over our treasures. This means recognizing God’s friends and using our judgment to make choices about how we care.
Not all of us are called to be Street Priests or even to work with Family Promise, just as Jesus is not asking all to sell all they have and move to the streets.
The Gospel does call all of us out of our small circle of friends and family with whom we share our treasures into relationship with God’s larger circle of friends.
The Gospel calls all of us out of defensive protection of our hard earned treasures to see God’s gracious hand serving our need through bestowing us with intellectual and financial gifts. In the second reading we heard that in Jesus we have one who is sympathetic to our needs.
The rich young man was not sympathetic to the needs of the poor rather he placed his sole treasure in his possessions. The Gospel calls all of us to be sympathetic to the needs of others in our community who may have not had our privileges or often through their one error in judgment have cost them the possibility of changing their plight.
Jesus called the young man’s bluff, but deeply embedded in that bluff is calling this man as well as all of us to be stewards of our treasures for a larger circle of friends.
The young man cherished his possessions above all else. Yet if he placed his treasure in being in communion with God then he would have approached Jesus differently. Indeed he would not have been self-righteously asking Jesus trick questions rather his focus would have been caring for a larger community of need than his own. As we leave this time of community and fellowship let us continue to be attentive to God’s friends in ways that expand the smaller circles we live so that our stewardship is about relationship not just providing service.
Contrary to popular interpretations the Gospel is not about condemning the rich or those of us who have a few worldly possessions. The Gospel I think is asking all of us to think about what we treasure? This question is very closely related to another question -- Are these treasures ours or are they God’s? Our answers to these two questions suggest the key to living a different response than the rich young man who went away sad. Hopefully we will not leave from this time together in any way sad!
The focus of the Gospel is not that we go and sell all our possessions, give all our money to the poor and live as beggars. Such a choice overvalues poverty and diminishes the stewardship opportunity of privilege. At the same time we do need to ask some questions about what we treasure. My sense is that we are all men who cherish our spouse, our families and Trinity Church. Loving spouses, healthy families, good friends and vibrant churches are indeed good things for us to cherish too.
The emphasis of the Gospel goes a little bit further through Jesus’ question to the rich young man. My sense is that there is a little humor in Jesus’ response when he says, “don’t call me good teacher”. I sense him saying don’t try to snow me. I had a supervisor at Price Waterhouse who often said to me, “Joe don’t try to snow the snowman.” The rich young man seems to be trying to snow Jesus.
I read the Gospel as Jesus’ way of upping the ante. I think Jesus is poking fun at the young man. Jesus is asking if his treasure is only for himself or is it for others. Jesus contrasts the rich young man’s small circle of people he cherishes with Jesus’ larger circle of friends who are in communion with God. Jesus is asking us to put our treasure in service of this larger circle of God’s friends.
As men I think as a culture we are vulnerable to believe that our smarts, self-discipline and hard work have led to our privileges. So we could say, “we have earned what we have and it is ours”. Yet if we are not careful this way of thinking can lead to a defensive posture that the rich young man exhibits in this story. I can empathize with him. I sold all my possessions twice when I entered Roman Catholic seminaries and I can assure you that I did not have any better insight to this Gospel when I gave up my job, apartment and other worldly privileges and freedom.
There is another way to understand this Gospel though. It is a very different way of thinking to see all that we have received as a gift from God. To see that all we have received coming from God does not diminish our intellectual gifs, our self-discipline or even our masculine ingenuity. If all we treasure originated with God as gift to us than our discernment, indeed the rich young man’s discernment is about stewardship.
Stewardship is far more than deciding how much to pledge each year or how to be philanthropic in the greater community. Stewardship means that we acknowledge that all the gifts we have received including all of our possessions come from God’s grace. Stewardship means no longer living for our small circle of cherished ones but rather for the larger circle. Our challenge is recognizing the faces of people in need in the larger circle as our friends in communion with God.
A year ago working one night at Family Promise, I had a hard time making conversation with our guests. It was much easier for me to serve them than to call them by their name and talk about their circumstances. In future evenings it was a bit easier, but it was still a challenge for me. I have worked with the homeless before giving food through soup kitchens, staying overnight in shelters and giving to organizations that provide for the needs of the homeless. But as I look back on these ministries I see now the way I kept a safe distance.
What’s different for me now is that the homeless I am meeting in my work with Ted and others have names and stories. The homeless have ceased to be for me untouchable. I am in closer proximity. My friend Dan came with us on the street this week and several hours later he was thinking about Francis, an African-American woman who could have been anybody’s grandmother. Dan said he felt less sorry for the men but Francis melted his heart and he saw through her homelessness the way he was related to her through common humanity and communion with God.
As I read this Gospel and reflect on the work we have done, as street priests I think Jesus’ message is that we exercise stewardship over our treasures. This means recognizing God’s friends and using our judgment to make choices about how we care.
Not all of us are called to be Street Priests or even to work with Family Promise, just as Jesus is not asking all to sell all they have and move to the streets.
The Gospel does call all of us out of our small circle of friends and family with whom we share our treasures into relationship with God’s larger circle of friends.
The Gospel calls all of us out of defensive protection of our hard earned treasures to see God’s gracious hand serving our need through bestowing us with intellectual and financial gifts. In the second reading we heard that in Jesus we have one who is sympathetic to our needs.
The rich young man was not sympathetic to the needs of the poor rather he placed his sole treasure in his possessions. The Gospel calls all of us to be sympathetic to the needs of others in our community who may have not had our privileges or often through their one error in judgment have cost them the possibility of changing their plight.
Jesus called the young man’s bluff, but deeply embedded in that bluff is calling this man as well as all of us to be stewards of our treasures for a larger circle of friends.
The young man cherished his possessions above all else. Yet if he placed his treasure in being in communion with God then he would have approached Jesus differently. Indeed he would not have been self-righteously asking Jesus trick questions rather his focus would have been caring for a larger community of need than his own. As we leave this time of community and fellowship let us continue to be attentive to God’s friends in ways that expand the smaller circles we live so that our stewardship is about relationship not just providing service.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
William Tyndale Feast - October 7, 2010 at Trinity Church, Reno
One of the first things I was taught at the Episcopal Divinity School in Church History class is that contrary to popular belief Henry VIII did not provoke the English Reformation and thus establishing the Church of England later becoming Anglicanism. This was a surprise to most students even many cradle Episcopalians. The English Reformation was coming of age for quite some time.
There are two major figures in history that did provoke the English Reformation: Erasmus and William Tyndale, both of whom were contemporaries. Tyndale is listed among Lesser Feasts and Fasts, Erasmus is not, but maybe he should. Tyndale lived 1495 to 1536. Erasmus’ famous line is that we are all theologians. Erasmus democratized the then dominant Roman Catholic emphasis on the sacred order and authority of priests as divine mediators. William Tyndale in a similar way translated the bible into English so that the common man could read, meditate and learn from the scriptures without dependence on the priest.
At the heart of the Reformation is a power analysis lessening the distance between priest and layperson as well as between layperson and God. Fredrica Harris Thompsett, an Episcopalian church historian wrote the book We Are Theologians in honor of Erasmus’ words. Thompsett wrote that the “principle of divine accessibility is the central inheritance of all reformed religions”. Baptism not ordination was central to the primary identity of these reformed Christians.
Central to this divine accessibility is having the bible available in one’s own language. In our age we typically take this privilege for granted. Indeed, many prophetic missionaries in the early 19th and even 20th centuries valued the importance of translating the bible into the language of the people. Some missionaries then thought it was still a radical act. Now it is commonplace around the world to have bibles printed in one’s native language, but that is a direct contribution to Christianity from the English Reformation and specifically William Tydale’s work.
Who was this William Tyndale? He completed a Masters at Oxford and later was ordained a priest. Tyndale was a revolutionary prophet of his time. Indeed Henry VIII and others of the period attempted to kill Tyndale to destroy his work. Tyndale once wrote to a prominent Churchman, “If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more scripture than thou doest.”
Before Tyndale was ultimately betrayed and burned to death, he had finished and revised his translation of the New Testament and had made it through many of the books of the Old Testament too. His work has been described as “a well of English undefiled”. Lesser Feasts and Fasts reports that “some eighty percent of his version has survived in the language of later and more familiar versions, such as the Authorized King James Version of 1611”.
In today’s language Tyndale would be described as a political theologian for he linked politics to theology through his assessment of power he liberated people through vernacular scriptures. Indeed his last recorded words were, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes”.
He might also be described as a prophetic priest who though not a scholar was forward thinking enough to consider how he might integrate his interest in politics, commitment to the people and love of scripture. There is no doubt that he had a special vocation from God communicated to him through a sense of the compulsion of the Holy Spirit to do this most marvelous work that would meet the test of generations after him.
It would be an understatement to say that today’s celebration of Wlliam Tyndale’s life and work is important. Our very identity as Episcopalians in an Anglican tradition can be traced to Tyndale’s contributions and his fierce independence from mediators of God’s grace. The English reformers rejected the need for a mediator of God’s grace. All had access to God and the Holy Spirit through the scriptures.
Why do we celebrate William Tyndale’s life today? At the very least so that we have a better sense of our own history as Episcopalians in an Anglican tradition. How might William Tyndale’s life be a source of encouragement for us today?
His passionate commitment to divine accessibility by all Christians through the scriptures is complemented by our Prayer Book of 1979 with its emphasis on Baptism as the primary sacrament of incorporation into the Body of Christ.
Collectively through today’s prayer book and the scriptures available in our native language we are equipped to do the work that God calls us to do. Indeed the very call to a particular vocation is channeled often through the Prayer Book and scriptures read in our native language. We must never underestimate the way we are called to exercise our faith with the same passionate determination of William Tyndale.
There are two major figures in history that did provoke the English Reformation: Erasmus and William Tyndale, both of whom were contemporaries. Tyndale is listed among Lesser Feasts and Fasts, Erasmus is not, but maybe he should. Tyndale lived 1495 to 1536. Erasmus’ famous line is that we are all theologians. Erasmus democratized the then dominant Roman Catholic emphasis on the sacred order and authority of priests as divine mediators. William Tyndale in a similar way translated the bible into English so that the common man could read, meditate and learn from the scriptures without dependence on the priest.
At the heart of the Reformation is a power analysis lessening the distance between priest and layperson as well as between layperson and God. Fredrica Harris Thompsett, an Episcopalian church historian wrote the book We Are Theologians in honor of Erasmus’ words. Thompsett wrote that the “principle of divine accessibility is the central inheritance of all reformed religions”. Baptism not ordination was central to the primary identity of these reformed Christians.
Central to this divine accessibility is having the bible available in one’s own language. In our age we typically take this privilege for granted. Indeed, many prophetic missionaries in the early 19th and even 20th centuries valued the importance of translating the bible into the language of the people. Some missionaries then thought it was still a radical act. Now it is commonplace around the world to have bibles printed in one’s native language, but that is a direct contribution to Christianity from the English Reformation and specifically William Tydale’s work.
Who was this William Tyndale? He completed a Masters at Oxford and later was ordained a priest. Tyndale was a revolutionary prophet of his time. Indeed Henry VIII and others of the period attempted to kill Tyndale to destroy his work. Tyndale once wrote to a prominent Churchman, “If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more scripture than thou doest.”
Before Tyndale was ultimately betrayed and burned to death, he had finished and revised his translation of the New Testament and had made it through many of the books of the Old Testament too. His work has been described as “a well of English undefiled”. Lesser Feasts and Fasts reports that “some eighty percent of his version has survived in the language of later and more familiar versions, such as the Authorized King James Version of 1611”.
In today’s language Tyndale would be described as a political theologian for he linked politics to theology through his assessment of power he liberated people through vernacular scriptures. Indeed his last recorded words were, “Lord, open the King of England’s eyes”.
He might also be described as a prophetic priest who though not a scholar was forward thinking enough to consider how he might integrate his interest in politics, commitment to the people and love of scripture. There is no doubt that he had a special vocation from God communicated to him through a sense of the compulsion of the Holy Spirit to do this most marvelous work that would meet the test of generations after him.
It would be an understatement to say that today’s celebration of Wlliam Tyndale’s life and work is important. Our very identity as Episcopalians in an Anglican tradition can be traced to Tyndale’s contributions and his fierce independence from mediators of God’s grace. The English reformers rejected the need for a mediator of God’s grace. All had access to God and the Holy Spirit through the scriptures.
Why do we celebrate William Tyndale’s life today? At the very least so that we have a better sense of our own history as Episcopalians in an Anglican tradition. How might William Tyndale’s life be a source of encouragement for us today?
His passionate commitment to divine accessibility by all Christians through the scriptures is complemented by our Prayer Book of 1979 with its emphasis on Baptism as the primary sacrament of incorporation into the Body of Christ.
Collectively through today’s prayer book and the scriptures available in our native language we are equipped to do the work that God calls us to do. Indeed the very call to a particular vocation is channeled often through the Prayer Book and scriptures read in our native language. We must never underestimate the way we are called to exercise our faith with the same passionate determination of William Tyndale.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Total MInistry Parish: Spiritual Freedom To Act Without Clinging - October 4, 2009 at St. Stephen's Church, Reno
Total Ministry in the life of the church, Wes Frensdorf once said, “involves all of those activities in which the members offer their gifts for worship, community life, caring and nurture as well as organizing and administration…But the life of the church, as the body of Christ, exists primarily for the sake of God’s mission.” For Wes Frensdorf Total Ministry was more than just the way a parish is organized or does its ministry. Wes’ core value was a spiritual one and he placed the emphasis on acting out of a compulsion of the Holy Spirit and freedom not to cling to each other especially not clinging to the priest.
Compulsion of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual freedom not to cling are deeply related. The church is not about our business, the plans we cling to but rather about the work of God channeled through the Holy Spirit manifested in our lives as one community among many other communities that make up the entirety of the body of Christ. The church is a place where we align our desires with God’s desires. It is neither pious nor straightforward work.
The way we live as a community now including gifts of time, talents and treasures will have much influence on the next generation who will come to St. Stephen’s. In our communion with God we are deeply connected with those who have come before us and to those who will come after us. We interpret God’s mission through a discernment process of deep communal listening. We listen for the often very subtle nudges of the Holy Spirit that ultimately establish a pattern that cannot be easily ignored. It is this steadily built pattern that contributes to the compulsion to act inspired by the Holy Spirit. Compulsion is different than self-determination requiring us to shed that to which we cling.
Fear, joy, ambiguity and even anger all get mixed in together when the Spirit calls us to places that we would rather not go. Giving up our control to follow the beckoning of the Holy Spirit can be downright scary. It is probably why the John 21 text has been my favorite text in all the Gospels for over two decades. I feel totally understood by Jesus’ words to Peter when he lets John stay and sends Peter on his way.
Peter wanted to stay with Jesus, but he was sent on to do ministry elsewhere. Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” and Peter, each time said, Yes”. Then Jesus concluded his conversation with Peter by saying when you were a young man you went about as you wished, but now that you are older you will go where you might rather not go. When we are following Jesus we are free to act through the compulsion of the Holy Spirit.
Yet we are typically like Peter faced with our conflicting emotions navigating between the joy of Jesus’ personal call and our resistance to letting go of our self-determination. This navigating can sometimes throw us off center. When it does not feel right then we can anxiously wonder, “Are we truly following the one Spirit?” The gap between that which we seek and what the Spirit seeks for us can be huge.
I would describe this gap as fully living into ambiguity with all its uncomfortable tensions and unanswered questions. I imagine spiritual ambiguity being something like turbulence in an airplane. In my earliest days of flying as a young businessman passenger whenever I felt turbulence I thought my death was imminent. One time I remember being on a flight from Ithaca, New York to New York LaGuardia airport, less than 500 miles in a propeller prop plane. I was so scared as the wind bounced the plane around that my hands were gripping on to the chair in front of me.
My hands were flying all over the place as the plane bound forward like what felt like a roller coaster in the sky. To my surprise and horror I slapped the head of the man in front of me. Oh my God, I was so embarrassed! Of course, he was surprised and to my even greater surprise he graciously accepted my immediate apology. Perhaps he had once walked in my terrified shoes.
The plane of course was safe and I have since learned that planes can withstand much more turbulence than most planes will ever experience in flight. The plane stays the course in turbulence perhaps the pilot adjusting altitude here and there, but rarely is it at risk. Likewise I have been learning that as I listen to the Holy Spirit it will inevitably involve some unexpected turbulence in my life, but I will be safe.
For most of my life I was convinced that the Holy Spirit was calling me to be a priest. I totally missed that I was called to be a priest just not a Roman Catholic priest. I should have known this. It looks so simple as I look back over my life. Now I see the pattern of questions that I asked even as a little boy were questions of a protestant as I always questioned authority over others where agency seemed to be diminished and at its worst lost.
As a Jesuit, I had affirmations by protestant ministers, I was curious of the lives of Episcopalian seminarians, invited by the Dean of an Episcopal seminary in NYC to even come to classes as a Roman Catholic and despite all of these things I stayed the course in seeking to be a Roman Catholic priest.
On his deathbed my staunchly Roman Catholic father said, “Joe I am convinced that you are being called to be an Episcopal priest.” I said, “No dad, I am suppose to be a Roman Catholic priest”. Dad said, “No, Joe, a time will come when you recognize your call and when you do, please know that you have my blessing and do not look back”. It was over ten years between that conversation and when I was received into The Episcopal Church.
In these years in between I was shedding my self-determination and embracing the Holy Spirit’s image of priest ministering in a parish like this one that rejects every form of imposed hierarchy and aspires to act on shared compulsion of the Holy Spirit and clinging only to God’s radical mission. Like you I was searching for a church that was not hierarchical.
Theologically speaking the greatest power we have is to live trusting the Holy Spirit. How do we know that we trust the Holy Spirit? One way we know is that we do not cling or clutch to our desires as I did to the seat in front of me on that plane to NYC or to a particular version of ordained ministry. We trust patterns pointing to the subtle direction of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Peter clung onto his own vision of ministry impeding his action to freely follow Jesus until Jesus challenged him. Like Jesus’ and Peter’s conversation the deathbed conversation with my dad marked a dramatic turn in my life. The turn has meant that I live less with following my self-determination and that I increasingly trust the still voice of the Holy Spirit dwelling not exclusively in me but in the relational patterns of my life.
As I listened to the Spirit in this place last June I was compelled to present myself to your Search Committee. At each turn in the process I was drawn deeper into a call to this place at this time. The Holy Spirit has led me to a place I never expected or planned to be. I am not alone in this unexpected place as we heard two weeks ago when our Senior Warden, Nancy Petersen said that St. Stephen’s Vestry was surprised by my very presence in the search process and later that they were being drawn to choose me through our conversations. These kinds of Divine interventions suggest to me that the Holy Spirit is hovering over St. Stephen’s with her hand placed gently on this congregation.
On the last night that I met with Eleanor, Nancy and Norm not one of us wanted our conversation to come to an end. One part of the conversation I think that energized all of us is when I suggested that we think about making this part-time paid priest position a two-year term. I made the suggestion that if we worked together truly implementing the entirety of Total Ministry emphasizing our shared Total Responsibility that it is possible that this parish in two years might need less of my time or that of any paid priest’s time.
I am ready to work with you to create more possibilities than you may seem to have as a congregation today. We can discover these possibilities by not clinging to the future but by staying open and available to being moved by the Holy Spirit. In this way we will continue to be led towards unexpected places that draw us deeper into the heart of God’s mission for this very special church.
I want to share with you a story of a way this kind of availability to be moved was recently manifested in my life. The Sunday I preached here in August I did not have time to go home to change out of my collar before picking up Stefani at Trinity. As I arrived at Trinity their coffee hour was just about over. A young couple came up to me on the lawn and asked if I was a priest. I said, yes and they asked me will you pray for us and I said of course.
Like Jesus asking Peter if he loved him this couple asked me three times to pray with them. Finally it dawned on me that they meant right now not later. A praying circle gathered around this couple. A few minutes later another man came and this homeless man wanted to talk with a priest. He said he felt like a bum and was concerned that people were afraid of him. I assured him of his humanity, we prayed and he left.
A parishioner by name of Ted Moore watched these two experiences unfold. Ted immediately connected that morning’s sermon to push the walls of Trinity’s Church into the streets of Reno with these two unexpected visitors. Ted said there is a real hunger in this city for invisible street people to be called by their name and to be touched and blessed. Ted suggested we go out that week to see if his intuition was true. For a few hours every week since that August Sunday morning Ted and I walk for a few hours through the streets of downtown Reno asking homeless when they had their last meal, shower and warm bed and we pray, touching them and calling them by their name. By being attentive to the Spirit a new ministry has emerged at Trinity.
As a street priest I am learning from those on the street how not to cling but remain free. This work is not new to most of you given your outreach ministries. I am not preaching outreach to you, as this is one of the highest priorities of this parish, rather I am pointing to our shared ministerial sensibilities. I commit myself to you to participate with you in relational attentiveness to the Spirit and practicing freedom from that which we cling to that would otherwise impede our radical following of Jesus and living out of God’s mission.
I am convinced that God has called us to work together because God knows at this point as our journeys intersect that we need each other’s gifts. You and I probably don’t know exactly the way the work we have been called to do together will manifest itself, but if we resist our fear of a little turbulence then we will safely land in the loving arms of God. In time our shared purpose will emerge through the direction of the Holy Spirit as we participate in Total Ministry and Total Responsibility through Wes Frendsorf’s inspired spirituality and communal discernment.
Compulsion of the Holy Spirit and the spiritual freedom not to cling are deeply related. The church is not about our business, the plans we cling to but rather about the work of God channeled through the Holy Spirit manifested in our lives as one community among many other communities that make up the entirety of the body of Christ. The church is a place where we align our desires with God’s desires. It is neither pious nor straightforward work.
The way we live as a community now including gifts of time, talents and treasures will have much influence on the next generation who will come to St. Stephen’s. In our communion with God we are deeply connected with those who have come before us and to those who will come after us. We interpret God’s mission through a discernment process of deep communal listening. We listen for the often very subtle nudges of the Holy Spirit that ultimately establish a pattern that cannot be easily ignored. It is this steadily built pattern that contributes to the compulsion to act inspired by the Holy Spirit. Compulsion is different than self-determination requiring us to shed that to which we cling.
Fear, joy, ambiguity and even anger all get mixed in together when the Spirit calls us to places that we would rather not go. Giving up our control to follow the beckoning of the Holy Spirit can be downright scary. It is probably why the John 21 text has been my favorite text in all the Gospels for over two decades. I feel totally understood by Jesus’ words to Peter when he lets John stay and sends Peter on his way.
Peter wanted to stay with Jesus, but he was sent on to do ministry elsewhere. Jesus asked Peter three times, “Do you love me?” and Peter, each time said, Yes”. Then Jesus concluded his conversation with Peter by saying when you were a young man you went about as you wished, but now that you are older you will go where you might rather not go. When we are following Jesus we are free to act through the compulsion of the Holy Spirit.
Yet we are typically like Peter faced with our conflicting emotions navigating between the joy of Jesus’ personal call and our resistance to letting go of our self-determination. This navigating can sometimes throw us off center. When it does not feel right then we can anxiously wonder, “Are we truly following the one Spirit?” The gap between that which we seek and what the Spirit seeks for us can be huge.
I would describe this gap as fully living into ambiguity with all its uncomfortable tensions and unanswered questions. I imagine spiritual ambiguity being something like turbulence in an airplane. In my earliest days of flying as a young businessman passenger whenever I felt turbulence I thought my death was imminent. One time I remember being on a flight from Ithaca, New York to New York LaGuardia airport, less than 500 miles in a propeller prop plane. I was so scared as the wind bounced the plane around that my hands were gripping on to the chair in front of me.
My hands were flying all over the place as the plane bound forward like what felt like a roller coaster in the sky. To my surprise and horror I slapped the head of the man in front of me. Oh my God, I was so embarrassed! Of course, he was surprised and to my even greater surprise he graciously accepted my immediate apology. Perhaps he had once walked in my terrified shoes.
The plane of course was safe and I have since learned that planes can withstand much more turbulence than most planes will ever experience in flight. The plane stays the course in turbulence perhaps the pilot adjusting altitude here and there, but rarely is it at risk. Likewise I have been learning that as I listen to the Holy Spirit it will inevitably involve some unexpected turbulence in my life, but I will be safe.
For most of my life I was convinced that the Holy Spirit was calling me to be a priest. I totally missed that I was called to be a priest just not a Roman Catholic priest. I should have known this. It looks so simple as I look back over my life. Now I see the pattern of questions that I asked even as a little boy were questions of a protestant as I always questioned authority over others where agency seemed to be diminished and at its worst lost.
As a Jesuit, I had affirmations by protestant ministers, I was curious of the lives of Episcopalian seminarians, invited by the Dean of an Episcopal seminary in NYC to even come to classes as a Roman Catholic and despite all of these things I stayed the course in seeking to be a Roman Catholic priest.
On his deathbed my staunchly Roman Catholic father said, “Joe I am convinced that you are being called to be an Episcopal priest.” I said, “No dad, I am suppose to be a Roman Catholic priest”. Dad said, “No, Joe, a time will come when you recognize your call and when you do, please know that you have my blessing and do not look back”. It was over ten years between that conversation and when I was received into The Episcopal Church.
In these years in between I was shedding my self-determination and embracing the Holy Spirit’s image of priest ministering in a parish like this one that rejects every form of imposed hierarchy and aspires to act on shared compulsion of the Holy Spirit and clinging only to God’s radical mission. Like you I was searching for a church that was not hierarchical.
Theologically speaking the greatest power we have is to live trusting the Holy Spirit. How do we know that we trust the Holy Spirit? One way we know is that we do not cling or clutch to our desires as I did to the seat in front of me on that plane to NYC or to a particular version of ordained ministry. We trust patterns pointing to the subtle direction of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Peter clung onto his own vision of ministry impeding his action to freely follow Jesus until Jesus challenged him. Like Jesus’ and Peter’s conversation the deathbed conversation with my dad marked a dramatic turn in my life. The turn has meant that I live less with following my self-determination and that I increasingly trust the still voice of the Holy Spirit dwelling not exclusively in me but in the relational patterns of my life.
As I listened to the Spirit in this place last June I was compelled to present myself to your Search Committee. At each turn in the process I was drawn deeper into a call to this place at this time. The Holy Spirit has led me to a place I never expected or planned to be. I am not alone in this unexpected place as we heard two weeks ago when our Senior Warden, Nancy Petersen said that St. Stephen’s Vestry was surprised by my very presence in the search process and later that they were being drawn to choose me through our conversations. These kinds of Divine interventions suggest to me that the Holy Spirit is hovering over St. Stephen’s with her hand placed gently on this congregation.
On the last night that I met with Eleanor, Nancy and Norm not one of us wanted our conversation to come to an end. One part of the conversation I think that energized all of us is when I suggested that we think about making this part-time paid priest position a two-year term. I made the suggestion that if we worked together truly implementing the entirety of Total Ministry emphasizing our shared Total Responsibility that it is possible that this parish in two years might need less of my time or that of any paid priest’s time.
I am ready to work with you to create more possibilities than you may seem to have as a congregation today. We can discover these possibilities by not clinging to the future but by staying open and available to being moved by the Holy Spirit. In this way we will continue to be led towards unexpected places that draw us deeper into the heart of God’s mission for this very special church.
I want to share with you a story of a way this kind of availability to be moved was recently manifested in my life. The Sunday I preached here in August I did not have time to go home to change out of my collar before picking up Stefani at Trinity. As I arrived at Trinity their coffee hour was just about over. A young couple came up to me on the lawn and asked if I was a priest. I said, yes and they asked me will you pray for us and I said of course.
Like Jesus asking Peter if he loved him this couple asked me three times to pray with them. Finally it dawned on me that they meant right now not later. A praying circle gathered around this couple. A few minutes later another man came and this homeless man wanted to talk with a priest. He said he felt like a bum and was concerned that people were afraid of him. I assured him of his humanity, we prayed and he left.
A parishioner by name of Ted Moore watched these two experiences unfold. Ted immediately connected that morning’s sermon to push the walls of Trinity’s Church into the streets of Reno with these two unexpected visitors. Ted said there is a real hunger in this city for invisible street people to be called by their name and to be touched and blessed. Ted suggested we go out that week to see if his intuition was true. For a few hours every week since that August Sunday morning Ted and I walk for a few hours through the streets of downtown Reno asking homeless when they had their last meal, shower and warm bed and we pray, touching them and calling them by their name. By being attentive to the Spirit a new ministry has emerged at Trinity.
As a street priest I am learning from those on the street how not to cling but remain free. This work is not new to most of you given your outreach ministries. I am not preaching outreach to you, as this is one of the highest priorities of this parish, rather I am pointing to our shared ministerial sensibilities. I commit myself to you to participate with you in relational attentiveness to the Spirit and practicing freedom from that which we cling to that would otherwise impede our radical following of Jesus and living out of God’s mission.
I am convinced that God has called us to work together because God knows at this point as our journeys intersect that we need each other’s gifts. You and I probably don’t know exactly the way the work we have been called to do together will manifest itself, but if we resist our fear of a little turbulence then we will safely land in the loving arms of God. In time our shared purpose will emerge through the direction of the Holy Spirit as we participate in Total Ministry and Total Responsibility through Wes Frendsorf’s inspired spirituality and communal discernment.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Arise My Love - August 30, 2009 at Trinity Church, Reno
Song of Solomon 2:8-13, James 1:17-27 and Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
Listen to the words and messages of this week’s scripture texts. In the Song of Solomon we heard, “Arise My love”; in the letter of James we are referred to as “my beloved” and in the Gospel of Mark Jesus reaches to the very center of God’s beloved, our hearts. These words describe a very special communion between God and all creation of which each of us are members.
Our capacity to respond to the way we are being addressed by God as “beloved” will be directly related to the way we have heard the bread texts in John’s Gospel over the last few weeks.
Christ loves us through Eucharist but there is a way we leave ourselves out of Holy Communion. Our lives can become so consumed in searching for Jesus that we miss the Christ before us. Due to our well-defined search we risk missing Jesus’ intimate relation to us when we are called by our name – “beloved”. Holy Communion is not only Divine presence. Holy Communion might be better described as radical communion.
The point of all the bread texts these last few weeks was far less about worshipping the most precious Body and Blood of Jesus and more about the way we are transformed by placing ourselves in intimate proximity to Christ through a communal Eucharistic feast. We become precious through Baptism and Eucharist.
The focus is not a temporary receiving of less than seconds each week, but rather, the way Eucharist opens us up. By frequently receiving the Body and Blood of Christ we radically open our lives to Christ. But this opening is not merely between each of us and God, but radically opens us up as a church. This radical opening is due to the way our hearts become commingled with God’s heart through the Eucharist.
Words such as “love” and “beloved” suggest an intimate communion between two lovers. Yet when the two lovers are God and ourselves we can be misled by the terms. The communion between two lovers is usually understood as an exclusive love. If we overlay this normative expectation on our communion with God then we justify a personal spirituality that sees all outsiders as intruders to our most sacred bond.
As a child I loved visiting the Blessed Sacrament in my parish church, but I always had an unspeakable question. I would name that childlike question this way - if we receive Jesus then how can Jesus be outside of ourselves?
As a theologian my concern has shifted to cautioning churches that reception of the bread and wine does not mean that we become the Body of Christ in a literal way that displaces or replaces the centrality of the Trinitarian reality for our lives. You see there is a very thin space between self-abandonment in a privatized relation to God and Divine inundation where we confuse and conflate ourselves for and with God creating our own false idols. Idols we then worship and protect from intrusion by others.
The call to the beloved is a public call to all creation. When we hear the words “my love” and “beloved” do we recognize ourselves, identify with, and feel called to respond? The scripture throws us a curve ball for God talks to us in today’s texts the way we often talk about God. God addresses us with awe and humility by naming us God’s “beloved”. Let’s just take a moment to savor our participation in this radical communion as God’s beloved.
If we can embrace and cherish our beloved nature then we will be freed from a fragmented and false humility where God is great and we are inferior missing the possibility of radical communion. That is the point of today’s texts and the tension between the law of the Pharisees and Jesus’ law. The Pharisees kept their distance as they scrupulously kept the law. Whereas, God’s law, the perfect law within us nurtured by the Eucharist frees us to live into God through each other in radical communion.
Arise my love is God’s call to all creation as “beloved”. As Trinity Church prepares to begin a new program year such recognition of being beloved frees us up from the necessity of tentatively seeking an overly defined passageway to God for ourselves or for others.
Our mission is to avoid building barriers that falsely seek to protect God’s communion from those we may see as intruders. With God there are no intruders. Therefore I want to preach beyond our Episcopalian notion of inclusion of strangers as inclusion is still about what we do and thus risks still seeing some people as intruders.
To free ourselves from this bind we have to redefine our communion with God. Holy Communion leads often to distancing the holy from the least worthy whereas radical communion abandons our inclusive responsibilities to God. The community of the “beloved” lives with a radical openness always pointing to God as the host to all. We practice this as a church when the presider says, “This is God’s table and all are welcome.”
Holy Communion may take place at this church’s table, but radical communion must be practiced at all tables. Nor does radical communion stop with an inclusive church community such as Trinity Church but goes beyond the gates of the church into the streets of downtown Reno and throughout our nation and the entire world.
Communion without intruders means each of us has the privilege to own our dignity as “beloved” and to serve with a deep sense that we are privileged to minister. The beloved is authorized in a very special way through the ministry of the baptized to care for the lover’s loved savoring the beloved in each person. Communities of beloved arise to their vocation in open communion with boundaryless space for all God’s beloved.
The time has come for us to arise out of our slumber and to celebrate God’s radical communion with all God’s beloved creation.
Listen to the words and messages of this week’s scripture texts. In the Song of Solomon we heard, “Arise My love”; in the letter of James we are referred to as “my beloved” and in the Gospel of Mark Jesus reaches to the very center of God’s beloved, our hearts. These words describe a very special communion between God and all creation of which each of us are members.
Our capacity to respond to the way we are being addressed by God as “beloved” will be directly related to the way we have heard the bread texts in John’s Gospel over the last few weeks.
Christ loves us through Eucharist but there is a way we leave ourselves out of Holy Communion. Our lives can become so consumed in searching for Jesus that we miss the Christ before us. Due to our well-defined search we risk missing Jesus’ intimate relation to us when we are called by our name – “beloved”. Holy Communion is not only Divine presence. Holy Communion might be better described as radical communion.
The point of all the bread texts these last few weeks was far less about worshipping the most precious Body and Blood of Jesus and more about the way we are transformed by placing ourselves in intimate proximity to Christ through a communal Eucharistic feast. We become precious through Baptism and Eucharist.
The focus is not a temporary receiving of less than seconds each week, but rather, the way Eucharist opens us up. By frequently receiving the Body and Blood of Christ we radically open our lives to Christ. But this opening is not merely between each of us and God, but radically opens us up as a church. This radical opening is due to the way our hearts become commingled with God’s heart through the Eucharist.
Words such as “love” and “beloved” suggest an intimate communion between two lovers. Yet when the two lovers are God and ourselves we can be misled by the terms. The communion between two lovers is usually understood as an exclusive love. If we overlay this normative expectation on our communion with God then we justify a personal spirituality that sees all outsiders as intruders to our most sacred bond.
As a child I loved visiting the Blessed Sacrament in my parish church, but I always had an unspeakable question. I would name that childlike question this way - if we receive Jesus then how can Jesus be outside of ourselves?
As a theologian my concern has shifted to cautioning churches that reception of the bread and wine does not mean that we become the Body of Christ in a literal way that displaces or replaces the centrality of the Trinitarian reality for our lives. You see there is a very thin space between self-abandonment in a privatized relation to God and Divine inundation where we confuse and conflate ourselves for and with God creating our own false idols. Idols we then worship and protect from intrusion by others.
The call to the beloved is a public call to all creation. When we hear the words “my love” and “beloved” do we recognize ourselves, identify with, and feel called to respond? The scripture throws us a curve ball for God talks to us in today’s texts the way we often talk about God. God addresses us with awe and humility by naming us God’s “beloved”. Let’s just take a moment to savor our participation in this radical communion as God’s beloved.
If we can embrace and cherish our beloved nature then we will be freed from a fragmented and false humility where God is great and we are inferior missing the possibility of radical communion. That is the point of today’s texts and the tension between the law of the Pharisees and Jesus’ law. The Pharisees kept their distance as they scrupulously kept the law. Whereas, God’s law, the perfect law within us nurtured by the Eucharist frees us to live into God through each other in radical communion.
Arise my love is God’s call to all creation as “beloved”. As Trinity Church prepares to begin a new program year such recognition of being beloved frees us up from the necessity of tentatively seeking an overly defined passageway to God for ourselves or for others.
Our mission is to avoid building barriers that falsely seek to protect God’s communion from those we may see as intruders. With God there are no intruders. Therefore I want to preach beyond our Episcopalian notion of inclusion of strangers as inclusion is still about what we do and thus risks still seeing some people as intruders.
To free ourselves from this bind we have to redefine our communion with God. Holy Communion leads often to distancing the holy from the least worthy whereas radical communion abandons our inclusive responsibilities to God. The community of the “beloved” lives with a radical openness always pointing to God as the host to all. We practice this as a church when the presider says, “This is God’s table and all are welcome.”
Holy Communion may take place at this church’s table, but radical communion must be practiced at all tables. Nor does radical communion stop with an inclusive church community such as Trinity Church but goes beyond the gates of the church into the streets of downtown Reno and throughout our nation and the entire world.
Communion without intruders means each of us has the privilege to own our dignity as “beloved” and to serve with a deep sense that we are privileged to minister. The beloved is authorized in a very special way through the ministry of the baptized to care for the lover’s loved savoring the beloved in each person. Communities of beloved arise to their vocation in open communion with boundaryless space for all God’s beloved.
The time has come for us to arise out of our slumber and to celebrate God’s radical communion with all God’s beloved creation.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Living Bread As Covenant: Our Gift of Holy Vulnerability - August 9, 2009 at St. Stephen's Church, Reno
John 6:35, 41-45
Bread is central to your identity as a congregation not the least through your bread program and love of hospitality. Bread is central to the larger church too. Stories about bread are stories about people in relationship with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Bread is the conduit of all of these relationships – but not just any bread -- the Living Bread.
One of my favorite bread stories is the one at Emmaus after Jesus’ resurrection when the disciples did not recognize Jesus until they saw him in the breaking of the bread. These were his closest friends, but they did not recognize Jesus until they shared a meal with him. The Emmaus story reminds us of the centrality of the Living Bread.
Bread was central to the Emmaus story, as Jesus had become the Living Bread. Bread was also essential to the disciples’ story in the way it helped them to recognize Jesus. At Emmaus, Jesus’ story and the disciples’ story became one in their shared communion. Living Bread was a sign of the diversity of their transformation. Their stories depended on one another through their relationship with each other. As Jesus was changed into the Living Bread the disciples began their transformation through the Living Bread.
I am reminded of the OT text – Jer 31:31 – the prophet said of the Lord, “I will make a new covenant with them….”I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” The new covenant in the New Testament is Jesus. Through Jesus’ passion and resurrection we have been gifted with the Living Bread as our means to deeper communion through an ongoing process of transformation.
One way of seeing the Living Bread is as our covenant with one another in and through Jesus. Often there has been some confusion that a covenant is the same as a binding contract. That is you do this and I will do that and if one of us fails we will take disciplinary action against the other. Covenants are not hierarchical pacts that coerce the other to stay in relationship, but rather an expression of our desire to be together. Christian covenants are based on the virtue of unconditional love. A covenant is less about finding the right words to exactly describe the relationship. Contracts can never be covenants as they attempt to freeze relationships into place so they will never change.
Covenants anticipate that people will change and thus leaves space for change to gracefully emerge and tenderly engaged. Covenant provides a structure so that our best intentions are given the space to breathe and unfold bringing us into unexpected places of grace. Structure should not be confused with authoritative top-down hierarchy. Living Bread transforms structure through covenant. Living Bread as covenantal structure reminds us what we want to be mutually intentional about with each other.
A covenant that has shaped my life is made up of only eight words. In 2005 when Stefani and I were preparing to be married we went on an eight days retreat in the Tetons between Idaho and Wyoming. It was an Episcopal parish whose primary ministry was to offer centering prayer retreats. The church was across the street from a small rustic hotel where retreatants stayed. Our time together initiated a process of an unfolding covenant.
During our one-week of being together on retreat we decided to keep a journal as a means of communicating through the silence. Stefani had the journal from the morning to the evening and I had it from evening to morning. We wrote our reflections on our prayer as well as expressions of our appreciation and affection for each other. We also wrote down the ways we were beginning to envision our life together. In addition to our individual reflections, we would also write responses in the margins on the other’s comments.
Out of this retreat/journaling experience emerged an expression of our love and commitment. Specifically eight words emerged telling our unfolding story. These words are: truth, intimacy, hospitality, table fellowship, celebration, abundance, vulnerability and joy.
With further reflection we saw natural pairs: truth/abundance, hospitality/table fellowship, celebration/joy and intimacy/vulnerability. As we designed our wedding rings it seem as natural to decouple the paired words. In each of our wedding rings we have four words from each of the four pairs of words. Stefani’s ring has truth, hospitality, intimacy and celebration. My ring has joy, vulnerability, abundance and table fellowship.
Together through these two rings is the expression of our shared vision for a full life. Through these rings we are saying to one another and publicly to others that we are more likely to live a life of truth, intimacy, joy, hospitality, abundance, celebration, vulnerability and table fellowship when we are together than if we were apart.
The words did not compel us to live this way. We already were living in this way but we both wanted to deepen our experience through a shared life. In the presence of the Living Bread we exchanged our wedding rings to remind us of our primary covenant with God who forever calls us into an ongoing process of transformation.
I acknowledge to you that there’s an innocent quality to the story I just told you. However, have no fear, I am not innocent to the pain and suffering associated with a betrayal of power. Over the years of my life I have witnessed and experienced such betrayals where I have worked as well as where I have worshipped.
As a young man I aspired to be a “wounded healer” to use Henri Nouwen’s term. At the same time I was fortunate enough to realize that I was then too wounded to be a priest. Then I yearned to receive healing more than I wished to be a sign of it. I left seminary and only returned twenty years later.
In the interim years with the blessing of wise mentors I sorted out my own issues of faith identity, family history and my issues with authority. During these years a new vision of ministry was unfolding within me.
Some ministers seem to think that they can minister and heal out of their open and unhealed wounds. These ministers have not done their own inner work and can be dangerous to the People of God. The ministers who are even more dangerous don’t even know they are wounded and undiscerning churches ordain them.
I am not telling you anything that you don’t already know very well. I am confident that you like me know that it is the Living Bread who heals not even the most non-anxious priest or lay minister. It is when we believe that either priest or layperson heals our yearnings that we betray the power of the Living Bread as the only wounded healer.
In today’s second reading we are being called to deepen our relationship with each other by becoming imitators of the Living Bread. Caution is necessary here, for we must never come to believe that we can become God for then we betray Living Bread as our healing power. The emphasis must always be on our being imitators.
All of us are always in process of becoming more loving to be in communion with Living Bread but not to replace the centrality of Living Bread. It means that we bear with one another’s stories, questions and unfolding hopes. Yet this kind of transformation is challenging if we have ever been betrayed for we fear the unknown cost of our being vulnerable.
I know as a chaplain and as a spiritual director that the stories we tell our selves and each other reflect where we are in this healing process by what we say as much as by what is left unsaid. Michael Lapsey is an Anglican priest in South Africa. In April 1990 he lost both of his hands and one eye opening a letter bomb targeted for him due to his anti-apartheid activism.
He has spent his whole life since teaching people about reconciliation and communion. In a sermon he gave at All Saints Church Pasadena he talked about his travels around the world. As a means to come to know his hosts when he visited people’s homes he would ask them if he could see their family photo albums.
Lapsey noted that as people showed him their albums they seem to skip over selected stories. Sometimes albums had an empty space where a picture had been torn out. Lapsey would inquire what about the picture passed over or the empty spaces. He said sometimes people refused to talk about it and at other times people would briefly say something clearly wanting to move on with little notice. However the pain Lapsey saw in their eyes told another story.
As it turned out in almost all cases the empty space was covering up some form of deep hurt or betrayal. The picture seemed to be pulled out as an attempt to extinguish their memory, their pain and mostly represented their blunt refusal to ever be vulnerable again. Who among us cannot identify with their conviction not to be hurt?
Like couples we who are drawn to live in a parish community imperfectly enter into each other’s lives and if we are humble enough we even know that we will inevitably fail one another. Just as in other healthy relationships we are not paralyzed by this fear for we acknowledge Living Bread is our only source of communion and healing. Through the Living Bread we relearn a holy vulnerability that those in Lapsey’s story must have thought was not possible.
It has been my experience that when we forget the centrality of the Living Bread it is then that we risk betraying each other by imposing our false idols on one another. Vulnerability is not the source of our betrayal rather it is our unhealed wounds coupled with false power that imitates the power of God when we most risk betraying each other.
The Living Bread discerns and cherishes our holy vulnerability. “To you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.” The Living Bread knows each one of us in our blessed vulnerability that cannot be surpassed even by the most affirming intimacy of two lovers. Would being known in this way embarrass or shame us? For the most part I suspect not.
My sense is that the Living Bread would tenderly tell our stories. As Living Bread speaks all our pictures are cherished. Then even the pictures as in Lapsey’s story that still provoke pain would have a sense of deep healing. To be known by each other in the way that God has come to know us is our lifelong work.
As we learn to find our satisfaction only in the Living Bread then we will become vulnerable to each other letting our stories gracefully unfold. At its best this way of being is a contagious process where story begets story and questions begets new stories.
Be cautious though of people who promise you a way to fast forward yours or your congregation’s story without struggle for these are false idols of Living Bread. Our covenant call is to live into an unfolding story entrusted to communion with the Living Bread. A sign of our holy vulnerability and patience with this unfolding story is when we can acknowledge to each other that we are each only imitators of Living Bread and celebrate this without shame.
Bread is central to your identity as a congregation not the least through your bread program and love of hospitality. Bread is central to the larger church too. Stories about bread are stories about people in relationship with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Bread is the conduit of all of these relationships – but not just any bread -- the Living Bread.
One of my favorite bread stories is the one at Emmaus after Jesus’ resurrection when the disciples did not recognize Jesus until they saw him in the breaking of the bread. These were his closest friends, but they did not recognize Jesus until they shared a meal with him. The Emmaus story reminds us of the centrality of the Living Bread.
Bread was central to the Emmaus story, as Jesus had become the Living Bread. Bread was also essential to the disciples’ story in the way it helped them to recognize Jesus. At Emmaus, Jesus’ story and the disciples’ story became one in their shared communion. Living Bread was a sign of the diversity of their transformation. Their stories depended on one another through their relationship with each other. As Jesus was changed into the Living Bread the disciples began their transformation through the Living Bread.
I am reminded of the OT text – Jer 31:31 – the prophet said of the Lord, “I will make a new covenant with them….”I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” The new covenant in the New Testament is Jesus. Through Jesus’ passion and resurrection we have been gifted with the Living Bread as our means to deeper communion through an ongoing process of transformation.
One way of seeing the Living Bread is as our covenant with one another in and through Jesus. Often there has been some confusion that a covenant is the same as a binding contract. That is you do this and I will do that and if one of us fails we will take disciplinary action against the other. Covenants are not hierarchical pacts that coerce the other to stay in relationship, but rather an expression of our desire to be together. Christian covenants are based on the virtue of unconditional love. A covenant is less about finding the right words to exactly describe the relationship. Contracts can never be covenants as they attempt to freeze relationships into place so they will never change.
Covenants anticipate that people will change and thus leaves space for change to gracefully emerge and tenderly engaged. Covenant provides a structure so that our best intentions are given the space to breathe and unfold bringing us into unexpected places of grace. Structure should not be confused with authoritative top-down hierarchy. Living Bread transforms structure through covenant. Living Bread as covenantal structure reminds us what we want to be mutually intentional about with each other.
A covenant that has shaped my life is made up of only eight words. In 2005 when Stefani and I were preparing to be married we went on an eight days retreat in the Tetons between Idaho and Wyoming. It was an Episcopal parish whose primary ministry was to offer centering prayer retreats. The church was across the street from a small rustic hotel where retreatants stayed. Our time together initiated a process of an unfolding covenant.
During our one-week of being together on retreat we decided to keep a journal as a means of communicating through the silence. Stefani had the journal from the morning to the evening and I had it from evening to morning. We wrote our reflections on our prayer as well as expressions of our appreciation and affection for each other. We also wrote down the ways we were beginning to envision our life together. In addition to our individual reflections, we would also write responses in the margins on the other’s comments.
Out of this retreat/journaling experience emerged an expression of our love and commitment. Specifically eight words emerged telling our unfolding story. These words are: truth, intimacy, hospitality, table fellowship, celebration, abundance, vulnerability and joy.
With further reflection we saw natural pairs: truth/abundance, hospitality/table fellowship, celebration/joy and intimacy/vulnerability. As we designed our wedding rings it seem as natural to decouple the paired words. In each of our wedding rings we have four words from each of the four pairs of words. Stefani’s ring has truth, hospitality, intimacy and celebration. My ring has joy, vulnerability, abundance and table fellowship.
Together through these two rings is the expression of our shared vision for a full life. Through these rings we are saying to one another and publicly to others that we are more likely to live a life of truth, intimacy, joy, hospitality, abundance, celebration, vulnerability and table fellowship when we are together than if we were apart.
The words did not compel us to live this way. We already were living in this way but we both wanted to deepen our experience through a shared life. In the presence of the Living Bread we exchanged our wedding rings to remind us of our primary covenant with God who forever calls us into an ongoing process of transformation.
I acknowledge to you that there’s an innocent quality to the story I just told you. However, have no fear, I am not innocent to the pain and suffering associated with a betrayal of power. Over the years of my life I have witnessed and experienced such betrayals where I have worked as well as where I have worshipped.
As a young man I aspired to be a “wounded healer” to use Henri Nouwen’s term. At the same time I was fortunate enough to realize that I was then too wounded to be a priest. Then I yearned to receive healing more than I wished to be a sign of it. I left seminary and only returned twenty years later.
In the interim years with the blessing of wise mentors I sorted out my own issues of faith identity, family history and my issues with authority. During these years a new vision of ministry was unfolding within me.
Some ministers seem to think that they can minister and heal out of their open and unhealed wounds. These ministers have not done their own inner work and can be dangerous to the People of God. The ministers who are even more dangerous don’t even know they are wounded and undiscerning churches ordain them.
I am not telling you anything that you don’t already know very well. I am confident that you like me know that it is the Living Bread who heals not even the most non-anxious priest or lay minister. It is when we believe that either priest or layperson heals our yearnings that we betray the power of the Living Bread as the only wounded healer.
In today’s second reading we are being called to deepen our relationship with each other by becoming imitators of the Living Bread. Caution is necessary here, for we must never come to believe that we can become God for then we betray Living Bread as our healing power. The emphasis must always be on our being imitators.
All of us are always in process of becoming more loving to be in communion with Living Bread but not to replace the centrality of Living Bread. It means that we bear with one another’s stories, questions and unfolding hopes. Yet this kind of transformation is challenging if we have ever been betrayed for we fear the unknown cost of our being vulnerable.
I know as a chaplain and as a spiritual director that the stories we tell our selves and each other reflect where we are in this healing process by what we say as much as by what is left unsaid. Michael Lapsey is an Anglican priest in South Africa. In April 1990 he lost both of his hands and one eye opening a letter bomb targeted for him due to his anti-apartheid activism.
He has spent his whole life since teaching people about reconciliation and communion. In a sermon he gave at All Saints Church Pasadena he talked about his travels around the world. As a means to come to know his hosts when he visited people’s homes he would ask them if he could see their family photo albums.
Lapsey noted that as people showed him their albums they seem to skip over selected stories. Sometimes albums had an empty space where a picture had been torn out. Lapsey would inquire what about the picture passed over or the empty spaces. He said sometimes people refused to talk about it and at other times people would briefly say something clearly wanting to move on with little notice. However the pain Lapsey saw in their eyes told another story.
As it turned out in almost all cases the empty space was covering up some form of deep hurt or betrayal. The picture seemed to be pulled out as an attempt to extinguish their memory, their pain and mostly represented their blunt refusal to ever be vulnerable again. Who among us cannot identify with their conviction not to be hurt?
Like couples we who are drawn to live in a parish community imperfectly enter into each other’s lives and if we are humble enough we even know that we will inevitably fail one another. Just as in other healthy relationships we are not paralyzed by this fear for we acknowledge Living Bread is our only source of communion and healing. Through the Living Bread we relearn a holy vulnerability that those in Lapsey’s story must have thought was not possible.
It has been my experience that when we forget the centrality of the Living Bread it is then that we risk betraying each other by imposing our false idols on one another. Vulnerability is not the source of our betrayal rather it is our unhealed wounds coupled with false power that imitates the power of God when we most risk betraying each other.
The Living Bread discerns and cherishes our holy vulnerability. “To you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.” The Living Bread knows each one of us in our blessed vulnerability that cannot be surpassed even by the most affirming intimacy of two lovers. Would being known in this way embarrass or shame us? For the most part I suspect not.
My sense is that the Living Bread would tenderly tell our stories. As Living Bread speaks all our pictures are cherished. Then even the pictures as in Lapsey’s story that still provoke pain would have a sense of deep healing. To be known by each other in the way that God has come to know us is our lifelong work.
As we learn to find our satisfaction only in the Living Bread then we will become vulnerable to each other letting our stories gracefully unfold. At its best this way of being is a contagious process where story begets story and questions begets new stories.
Be cautious though of people who promise you a way to fast forward yours or your congregation’s story without struggle for these are false idols of Living Bread. Our covenant call is to live into an unfolding story entrusted to communion with the Living Bread. A sign of our holy vulnerability and patience with this unfolding story is when we can acknowledge to each other that we are each only imitators of Living Bread and celebrate this without shame.
My Power is Made Perfect in Weakness - July 4, 2009 at Trinity Church, Reno
2 Cor 12: 2-10 and Mark 6:1-13
Today’s readings are timely for us as we celebrate our nation’s independence. As a former colony of the British Empire we were once weak and with our postcolonial independence we became strong and powerful as a nation. It is right that we celebrate our independence.
We just heard, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” These words are not likely mottos of colonizers or even proud independent nations like America.
The question then that we must address this morning is what is the difference between human power and divine power?
If as former colonies we rightfully and proudly have rejected our colonized form of weakness, then what do we make of these words – Power is made perfect in weakness?
Frankly, these words are very easy to gloss over as ancient and irrelevant to us today. However, if do gloss over these words we do so at our peril. To find the gem hidden for us in these texts we have to work through our instinctive biases against weakness.
In both the Corinthians reading and the Gospel of Mark we see that our personal power can be haughty and boastful pointing to the strength of our own resources. The texts are challenging us to turn towards the power we receive through our complete dependence on God.
The thorn in the Corinthians reading can be interpreted as divine punishment for being too boastful. We can also take the text literally and God gave the thorn to make the man humble. The second interpretation if we are not careful quickly leads to divine punishment or a form of sacrificial love that at least for me makes God’s motives with us questionable.
I think it is an unhelpful image to see God as zapping us when we are too elated -- to use the words of this morning’s text. Let’s not get stuck there though. Our texts today help us interpret Jesus’ power in a different way than the power exercised by leaders of contemporary empires. Some speak of the power of the cross, but we must be careful how we approach the cross or we quickly fall back into an interpretation of divine punishment and that suffering will make us perfect.
Indeed, many empires have used similar texts to justify slavery and other forms of oppression in the name of God. It is so easy to blur these lines between God’s power and human weakness when we read these texts.
Let’s face it -- the words – “Power is made perfect in weakness” is a prophetic statement and as the Gospel instructs us, if we live in this way we are not likely to be recognized by friends and family in our hometowns.
In many corporate settings it is common to find high energy messages posted on the walls of the company to encourage people to perform at increasing levels of excellence. Business scholars have reported that these high-energy statements encourage employees to make money for the organization by increasing their sense of pride for their efficiency and profitability. That said, in my 15 years of working as a businessman I never saw signs that said, “Power is made perfect in weakness”. To the contrary weakness is associated with mediocrity and typically weak employees are quickly terminated.
The weakness of the second reading and Gospel is not about mediocrity or unjust colonization as we once suffered as a nation or that others face today.
As I hear today’s text and attempt a fresh interpretation I recall the Philippians passage “He emptied himself and became human.” In emptying I don’t hear sacrifice but rather opening ourselves up to love and to be loved.
The weakness is a place of opening such that our focus is not on our own strength but on recognizing and receiving God’s grace. When we recognize that our power is based on God’s grace and not on our inner strength we are less likely to boast of the possessions and power we may have accumulated, but rather point to God.
And people who are truly weak in a Godly manner know this and they point to the goodness of God’s grace when they feel this kind of power within themselves.
The biographer of Jean Vanier, Michael Downey called the thorn in today’s second reading, “A blessed weakness”. Jean Vanier is the founder of the worldwide movement of L’Arche, meaning the ark. L’Arche is a very special home for people who are developmentally disabled.
Downey wrote, “It is in our own weakness and limitation that God comes to us, not in our strength, security, and certitude. God is powerful compassion and mercy who meets us in our weakness, our blessed weakness.” As compassion, God offers us an example through Jesus of how we are to serve each other.
Vanier found L’Arche at a time in his life when he was searching for God. Vanier had spent three years in an extended retreat working with his spiritual director hoping to find God’s purpose for his life. Finally, his spiritual director exasperated by Jean Vanier’s lengthy process encouraged him to go home and pay attention to the weak and the poor in his town.
Each morning in his little countryside town outside of Paris Jean Vanier would walk to the bakery for some fresh bread. One morning he saw two homeless men who were clearly disabled. Jean Vanier invited these men into his home and soon others sought him out to care for their loved ones. Vanier says of his work that he does it out of his own struggles, confusion, uncertainty and rejection giving him that privileged space to be in solidarity with the most vulnerable.
This sounds counter-cultural to what most of us have been taught. Twenty-five years ago, upon announcing to my parents of my interest in living and working in a L’Arche community they frowned upon his work as misguided and said to me, “Joe, you can do so much better”. Vanier’s work was unknown and did not carry with it the same cache as being a member of the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit I later became or as an ordained priest. It was risky and it was scary.
My parents are not alone in mistaking blessed weakness for mediocrity. Yet Jean Vanier’s blessed weakness is not the mediocrity or weakness that corporations eradicate by terminating their incompetent employees or even the same as the over scrupulous religious who seeks to be perfect by eliminating their very humanity.
Blessed weakness is a way of loving ourselves so that we may love the incorrigible other within us and in others. Vanier did this by loving the developmentally disabled who were disposed of in the streets of France and or forgotten in state asylums around the world. His first act of love has inspired over two hundred small communities around the world.
Not all of us are called to become members of L’Arche, but we are called to cherish the paradoxical blessed weakness of God’s power made perfect in weakness.
Vanier has taught that every person, no matter how small or even incorrigible has a gift to give that we are invited to cherish. However, his emphasis is not just that we cherish weakness out of mere charity, but that we recognize that our communities are incomplete when we purify them of the weakness that offends us. Purification is the purpose of empires. Genocide is about purifying weakness from nations. Yet it is not just nations who do this.
Vanier and today’s texts calls us to gather up what we may once have disposed of in ourselves or in others and cherish ours and their blessed weaknesses. And if we love in this way then we will quickly see the prophetic cost of being different.
With now some sense of irony due to my parents’ rejection of Vanier’s way of living, when my mother was sick with end stage Alzheimer’s I turned to Jean Vanier’s books to find strength to learn how to be a compassionate son. It was not easy. I had had a turbulent relationship with my mom and much needed to be healed in both of us. In her end stage Alzheimer’s my mom was no longer available for the necessary healing conversation that often makes a difference for families at the end of life.
Inspired by Jean Vanier’s witness, I developed a prayer mantra to say when I visited my mom at the nursing home. I love you as you are this day, not as I remember you or as I wish you to be, but as you are this day.
By saying this mantra aloud for a year, several times a week during my visits at the nursing home in time what emerged for me was a tiny glimpse of God’s unconditional love. The mantra was an occasion of healing – God’s power made perfect in weakness. This is my story. I am confident you have your own stories of God’s power made perfect in weakness. So let us gather our stories together and if we must boast, let us boast to all that Trinity Church’s power, as a community of faith, is made perfect in blessed weakness.
Today’s readings are timely for us as we celebrate our nation’s independence. As a former colony of the British Empire we were once weak and with our postcolonial independence we became strong and powerful as a nation. It is right that we celebrate our independence.
We just heard, “My power is made perfect in weakness.” These words are not likely mottos of colonizers or even proud independent nations like America.
The question then that we must address this morning is what is the difference between human power and divine power?
If as former colonies we rightfully and proudly have rejected our colonized form of weakness, then what do we make of these words – Power is made perfect in weakness?
Frankly, these words are very easy to gloss over as ancient and irrelevant to us today. However, if do gloss over these words we do so at our peril. To find the gem hidden for us in these texts we have to work through our instinctive biases against weakness.
In both the Corinthians reading and the Gospel of Mark we see that our personal power can be haughty and boastful pointing to the strength of our own resources. The texts are challenging us to turn towards the power we receive through our complete dependence on God.
The thorn in the Corinthians reading can be interpreted as divine punishment for being too boastful. We can also take the text literally and God gave the thorn to make the man humble. The second interpretation if we are not careful quickly leads to divine punishment or a form of sacrificial love that at least for me makes God’s motives with us questionable.
I think it is an unhelpful image to see God as zapping us when we are too elated -- to use the words of this morning’s text. Let’s not get stuck there though. Our texts today help us interpret Jesus’ power in a different way than the power exercised by leaders of contemporary empires. Some speak of the power of the cross, but we must be careful how we approach the cross or we quickly fall back into an interpretation of divine punishment and that suffering will make us perfect.
Indeed, many empires have used similar texts to justify slavery and other forms of oppression in the name of God. It is so easy to blur these lines between God’s power and human weakness when we read these texts.
Let’s face it -- the words – “Power is made perfect in weakness” is a prophetic statement and as the Gospel instructs us, if we live in this way we are not likely to be recognized by friends and family in our hometowns.
In many corporate settings it is common to find high energy messages posted on the walls of the company to encourage people to perform at increasing levels of excellence. Business scholars have reported that these high-energy statements encourage employees to make money for the organization by increasing their sense of pride for their efficiency and profitability. That said, in my 15 years of working as a businessman I never saw signs that said, “Power is made perfect in weakness”. To the contrary weakness is associated with mediocrity and typically weak employees are quickly terminated.
The weakness of the second reading and Gospel is not about mediocrity or unjust colonization as we once suffered as a nation or that others face today.
As I hear today’s text and attempt a fresh interpretation I recall the Philippians passage “He emptied himself and became human.” In emptying I don’t hear sacrifice but rather opening ourselves up to love and to be loved.
The weakness is a place of opening such that our focus is not on our own strength but on recognizing and receiving God’s grace. When we recognize that our power is based on God’s grace and not on our inner strength we are less likely to boast of the possessions and power we may have accumulated, but rather point to God.
And people who are truly weak in a Godly manner know this and they point to the goodness of God’s grace when they feel this kind of power within themselves.
The biographer of Jean Vanier, Michael Downey called the thorn in today’s second reading, “A blessed weakness”. Jean Vanier is the founder of the worldwide movement of L’Arche, meaning the ark. L’Arche is a very special home for people who are developmentally disabled.
Downey wrote, “It is in our own weakness and limitation that God comes to us, not in our strength, security, and certitude. God is powerful compassion and mercy who meets us in our weakness, our blessed weakness.” As compassion, God offers us an example through Jesus of how we are to serve each other.
Vanier found L’Arche at a time in his life when he was searching for God. Vanier had spent three years in an extended retreat working with his spiritual director hoping to find God’s purpose for his life. Finally, his spiritual director exasperated by Jean Vanier’s lengthy process encouraged him to go home and pay attention to the weak and the poor in his town.
Each morning in his little countryside town outside of Paris Jean Vanier would walk to the bakery for some fresh bread. One morning he saw two homeless men who were clearly disabled. Jean Vanier invited these men into his home and soon others sought him out to care for their loved ones. Vanier says of his work that he does it out of his own struggles, confusion, uncertainty and rejection giving him that privileged space to be in solidarity with the most vulnerable.
This sounds counter-cultural to what most of us have been taught. Twenty-five years ago, upon announcing to my parents of my interest in living and working in a L’Arche community they frowned upon his work as misguided and said to me, “Joe, you can do so much better”. Vanier’s work was unknown and did not carry with it the same cache as being a member of the Society of Jesus, as the Jesuit I later became or as an ordained priest. It was risky and it was scary.
My parents are not alone in mistaking blessed weakness for mediocrity. Yet Jean Vanier’s blessed weakness is not the mediocrity or weakness that corporations eradicate by terminating their incompetent employees or even the same as the over scrupulous religious who seeks to be perfect by eliminating their very humanity.
Blessed weakness is a way of loving ourselves so that we may love the incorrigible other within us and in others. Vanier did this by loving the developmentally disabled who were disposed of in the streets of France and or forgotten in state asylums around the world. His first act of love has inspired over two hundred small communities around the world.
Not all of us are called to become members of L’Arche, but we are called to cherish the paradoxical blessed weakness of God’s power made perfect in weakness.
Vanier has taught that every person, no matter how small or even incorrigible has a gift to give that we are invited to cherish. However, his emphasis is not just that we cherish weakness out of mere charity, but that we recognize that our communities are incomplete when we purify them of the weakness that offends us. Purification is the purpose of empires. Genocide is about purifying weakness from nations. Yet it is not just nations who do this.
Vanier and today’s texts calls us to gather up what we may once have disposed of in ourselves or in others and cherish ours and their blessed weaknesses. And if we love in this way then we will quickly see the prophetic cost of being different.
With now some sense of irony due to my parents’ rejection of Vanier’s way of living, when my mother was sick with end stage Alzheimer’s I turned to Jean Vanier’s books to find strength to learn how to be a compassionate son. It was not easy. I had had a turbulent relationship with my mom and much needed to be healed in both of us. In her end stage Alzheimer’s my mom was no longer available for the necessary healing conversation that often makes a difference for families at the end of life.
Inspired by Jean Vanier’s witness, I developed a prayer mantra to say when I visited my mom at the nursing home. I love you as you are this day, not as I remember you or as I wish you to be, but as you are this day.
By saying this mantra aloud for a year, several times a week during my visits at the nursing home in time what emerged for me was a tiny glimpse of God’s unconditional love. The mantra was an occasion of healing – God’s power made perfect in weakness. This is my story. I am confident you have your own stories of God’s power made perfect in weakness. So let us gather our stories together and if we must boast, let us boast to all that Trinity Church’s power, as a community of faith, is made perfect in blessed weakness.
A Sideless God - June 21, 2009 at St. Stephen's Church, Reno
Mark 4:35-41
My wife, Stefani and I have a cat named Baba that we found at the Reno shelter in September. We were told that he had a very difficult life. He was abused, adopted then rejected by his adoptive parents after only three weeks. Honestly, if Stefani and I were not sharing the cat, then Baba would have likely ended up back in the shelter. Several times I was tempted to return Baba. Yet in the last few months he has considerably calmed down. He spends his whole day on a soft blue blanket on our bed. He can go anywhere if he has his blanket.
It is common knowledge at Trinity Episcopal Church that I want to get a dog. So two parishioners were going away for a few days and thought it would be a good idea for me to care for their dog as way to have a better sense of what it is like to have a dog. So a few weeks ago we dog sat for a lovely poodle. The poodle’s name does not matter to the story. This poodle sits in his household on his blanket too for most of the day.
When Baba and the poodle met even though they shared similar blanket rituals, they hissed and barked at one another. We needed to keep them separate from one another. We imagined the two blankets side by side, but it was our vision not theirs. The cost of this separation was that Stefani slept with Baba and I slept with the poodle in two separate rooms. Needless to say we will not be getting a dog anytime soon!
Territory is important – for people and as you can see for cats and dogs.
Where are we when we hear Jesus’s invitation to go to the other side?
Often I suspect we metaphorically bark and hiss at God. Just as the cat insists on his own blanket without interruption from the strange dog, we find ways to relocate our metaphorical blankets – our customs and patterns in to new places.
The words “the other side” carries with them powerful cultural and political resonances. Other side can be as mundane as going to the other side of the street or as mysterious as to an unknown place.
We talk commonly about the other side of our families – the maternal and paternal sides.
The other side of a church aisle is merely descriptive. Often when we say other side in this way it is merely a way of differentiating between where we are and where others are. There is no judgment in saying that people sit on the other side of the church. You may have a pew you commonly go to, but there is no culture for that side of the church.
Little is at risk when we say let us go to the other side of the street for we can see what is ahead of us and behind us. We are still in control. We can see the other side as we leave from the one side of the street to the other. What we see from the other side of the street is different than what we see on this side, but it is the same street. The distance is short between two sides of the street. We see the same people as there is an easy passage from one side of the street to the other.
It is common even expected in scholarly arguments to present both sides of a question, weigh the sides and then make a judgment based on analysis for one more than the other or to reframe and create a third side.
We speak of the other side of a political issue and this often in our culture can lead to suspicion of and at its worst demonization of the other side. The Religious Right condemns pluralism and the progressive liberal condemns the narrow gate. Blue states versus red states, gay versus straight and black versus white.
The other side of the ocean does not bring with it much fear if you are going to London, but if you are going to Iraq, Africa or India to be among people who speak a different language or in a turbulent context this can provoke anxiety, fear or even our refusal to go.
When we talk about death there is an unknown quality to the other side of life.
So the other side can be as mundane as the other side of the street or the other side of death into the complete unknown. There is a spectrum or range of feelings that come with going to the other side.
In this morning’s Gospel going to the other side is not quite as simple as going to the other side of the street as the disciples take a boat to get there so it must be reasonably far away. Given the examples of the other side I have shared we can empathize with the disciples.
When you have traveled I am sure you have experienced the way ordinary events like finding your way around the city can be anxiety producing as you are in a different place. Likely the disciples at home would have experienced other storms without the same fear they have in this story.
When we travel over time in one place we realize our way and settle into what is initially different and develop a comfortable pattern and confidence. We make the space our own but the space does not change. We either change by being open to new customs or we insist on our own customs in this new place. The disciples in their fear of the storm express their anxiety about a new place.
A few months ago the Lutherans from Faith Lutheran Church crossed the street after your church’s fire to join worship with the Episcopalians here at St. Stephen’s. Crossing the street I said was pretty mundane but was it mundane for you? Was it mundane for you to cross the street? You encountered a different worship style, different space, different people, different leadership, different ministry priorities and different resources. You were not alone as although the people of St. Stephen’s did not physically go to the other side of the street, you welcomed new people into your worship space and community. Perhaps at times you even were aware that people from the other side of the street came over to this side of the street. How did that make you feel?
As you both prepare to return to your ordinary way of life without the proximity of the other, what have you learned from this pilgrimage of crossing to the other side of the street or welcoming a different people to a different tradition? How will your time give you empathy for times in the future when you will be called to go to the other side?
I grew up in a very home-bound family. My parents were proud that they never left NYC. As a result later in life leaving to go anywhere produced great anxiety in me. In the nineties I took a job where I had to do 90% travel. A priest friend said to me that I should find a restaurant in each city where I was known and go there to feel a sense of safety and companionship. In a way I relocated my familiarity to a different place. Like the cat I kept my blanket with me.
Then in 2000 I was offered a job to leave NYC for LA. Shortly after getting to LA I was homesick. I considered returning home to NYC. It was hard to put down my blanket in LA, as it was dramatically different from any city I had ever been. My urban patterns did not fit comfortably in to LA. For example LA is not walking city, as had been my custom, but a driving city. I had to learn how to drive on really fast freeways.
Then one day I thought back to all my travels and I realized how I had always been safe even in the midst of my anxieties. I sensed God calling me to trust at an even deeper level when I moved to LA. The words that came to me one morning in prayer were to accept LA on its own terms and not to compare it to NYC where I grew up or other cities I worked or lived. I lived into this mantra in a way that changed my life and opened up opportunities for me that I never had before. Since LA I have lived in affluent Cambridge, just outside of Boston, then in working class Manchester, England and now in Reno – three very different places with very different people and customs.
After living in LA though I began to see people in their contexts in a different way. I judged their way against the measure and standard of my way less frequently. In January I will travel to India to give a scholarly paper. It will be the most dramatically different place I have ever been to in my life. I am excited and also a little anxious. Yet I am going to India with a deep sense of trust that I never had before in any of my previous travels. The trust I have is that God goes before me. God is within me. And now I am confident that God is on the other side in people who look different than me. In a way it has been like learning to float. If you think about it too much you sink. If you relax then your entire body, mind, heart and soul can enjoy the calm of otherwise turbulent waters.
I have a confession. I don’t know how to swim but on occasion my wife lets me lay my body against her body in the water and for a moment I feel the extraordinary calm in my body as I rest in God’s waters. I intend conflation here – as I rest against my lover I discover I am also in the hands of God. The disciples thought about it too much and they thought they were going to sink. I often think about it too much and feel like I am sinking too, but than Stefani and or God is there to keep me afloat.
Jesus is calm on both sides of the boat and also in different places. His center is not Bethlehem or Nazareth or even Jerusalem, but life with his Father and through the Holy Spirit preaching and living the Gospel.
What have you learned from your pilgrimage to the other side or with the other side? Are you impatiently waiting to get back to your comfortable routines without the other or do you have a deeper awareness that God abides with you on both sides of the street?
I hope you have had at least a glimpse that God dwells deeply on both sides of the street. I hope you have partially witnessed God in different customs and rituals. The Good News of today’s Gospel is that when we can trust God on God’s terms than we are freer to go beyond just the other side of the street. Then our cherished church rituals become a means and much less our ends. The triumph of going to the other side is having the privilege to encounter God in a new and different place. The other side may be mysterious to you and I but God dwells on all sides.
When we live with the conviction that God dwells on both sides then we can hear and embody Jesus’ words -- Peace, be still. In the years ahead wherever you are on whatever side of the street or on the other side of the world, remember that God is with you. But God is not just with you. God is on all sides, in all places and conditions of life. If you trust and accept God on God’s terms you will never sink, but rather you will live a glorious life of unexpected and abundant grace and blessing. This is God’s gift to us today, next Sunday and throughout our lives. God everywhere is our grace and blessing, so let us live into God on all sides.
My wife, Stefani and I have a cat named Baba that we found at the Reno shelter in September. We were told that he had a very difficult life. He was abused, adopted then rejected by his adoptive parents after only three weeks. Honestly, if Stefani and I were not sharing the cat, then Baba would have likely ended up back in the shelter. Several times I was tempted to return Baba. Yet in the last few months he has considerably calmed down. He spends his whole day on a soft blue blanket on our bed. He can go anywhere if he has his blanket.
It is common knowledge at Trinity Episcopal Church that I want to get a dog. So two parishioners were going away for a few days and thought it would be a good idea for me to care for their dog as way to have a better sense of what it is like to have a dog. So a few weeks ago we dog sat for a lovely poodle. The poodle’s name does not matter to the story. This poodle sits in his household on his blanket too for most of the day.
When Baba and the poodle met even though they shared similar blanket rituals, they hissed and barked at one another. We needed to keep them separate from one another. We imagined the two blankets side by side, but it was our vision not theirs. The cost of this separation was that Stefani slept with Baba and I slept with the poodle in two separate rooms. Needless to say we will not be getting a dog anytime soon!
Territory is important – for people and as you can see for cats and dogs.
Where are we when we hear Jesus’s invitation to go to the other side?
Often I suspect we metaphorically bark and hiss at God. Just as the cat insists on his own blanket without interruption from the strange dog, we find ways to relocate our metaphorical blankets – our customs and patterns in to new places.
The words “the other side” carries with them powerful cultural and political resonances. Other side can be as mundane as going to the other side of the street or as mysterious as to an unknown place.
We talk commonly about the other side of our families – the maternal and paternal sides.
The other side of a church aisle is merely descriptive. Often when we say other side in this way it is merely a way of differentiating between where we are and where others are. There is no judgment in saying that people sit on the other side of the church. You may have a pew you commonly go to, but there is no culture for that side of the church.
Little is at risk when we say let us go to the other side of the street for we can see what is ahead of us and behind us. We are still in control. We can see the other side as we leave from the one side of the street to the other. What we see from the other side of the street is different than what we see on this side, but it is the same street. The distance is short between two sides of the street. We see the same people as there is an easy passage from one side of the street to the other.
It is common even expected in scholarly arguments to present both sides of a question, weigh the sides and then make a judgment based on analysis for one more than the other or to reframe and create a third side.
We speak of the other side of a political issue and this often in our culture can lead to suspicion of and at its worst demonization of the other side. The Religious Right condemns pluralism and the progressive liberal condemns the narrow gate. Blue states versus red states, gay versus straight and black versus white.
The other side of the ocean does not bring with it much fear if you are going to London, but if you are going to Iraq, Africa or India to be among people who speak a different language or in a turbulent context this can provoke anxiety, fear or even our refusal to go.
When we talk about death there is an unknown quality to the other side of life.
So the other side can be as mundane as the other side of the street or the other side of death into the complete unknown. There is a spectrum or range of feelings that come with going to the other side.
In this morning’s Gospel going to the other side is not quite as simple as going to the other side of the street as the disciples take a boat to get there so it must be reasonably far away. Given the examples of the other side I have shared we can empathize with the disciples.
When you have traveled I am sure you have experienced the way ordinary events like finding your way around the city can be anxiety producing as you are in a different place. Likely the disciples at home would have experienced other storms without the same fear they have in this story.
When we travel over time in one place we realize our way and settle into what is initially different and develop a comfortable pattern and confidence. We make the space our own but the space does not change. We either change by being open to new customs or we insist on our own customs in this new place. The disciples in their fear of the storm express their anxiety about a new place.
A few months ago the Lutherans from Faith Lutheran Church crossed the street after your church’s fire to join worship with the Episcopalians here at St. Stephen’s. Crossing the street I said was pretty mundane but was it mundane for you? Was it mundane for you to cross the street? You encountered a different worship style, different space, different people, different leadership, different ministry priorities and different resources. You were not alone as although the people of St. Stephen’s did not physically go to the other side of the street, you welcomed new people into your worship space and community. Perhaps at times you even were aware that people from the other side of the street came over to this side of the street. How did that make you feel?
As you both prepare to return to your ordinary way of life without the proximity of the other, what have you learned from this pilgrimage of crossing to the other side of the street or welcoming a different people to a different tradition? How will your time give you empathy for times in the future when you will be called to go to the other side?
I grew up in a very home-bound family. My parents were proud that they never left NYC. As a result later in life leaving to go anywhere produced great anxiety in me. In the nineties I took a job where I had to do 90% travel. A priest friend said to me that I should find a restaurant in each city where I was known and go there to feel a sense of safety and companionship. In a way I relocated my familiarity to a different place. Like the cat I kept my blanket with me.
Then in 2000 I was offered a job to leave NYC for LA. Shortly after getting to LA I was homesick. I considered returning home to NYC. It was hard to put down my blanket in LA, as it was dramatically different from any city I had ever been. My urban patterns did not fit comfortably in to LA. For example LA is not walking city, as had been my custom, but a driving city. I had to learn how to drive on really fast freeways.
Then one day I thought back to all my travels and I realized how I had always been safe even in the midst of my anxieties. I sensed God calling me to trust at an even deeper level when I moved to LA. The words that came to me one morning in prayer were to accept LA on its own terms and not to compare it to NYC where I grew up or other cities I worked or lived. I lived into this mantra in a way that changed my life and opened up opportunities for me that I never had before. Since LA I have lived in affluent Cambridge, just outside of Boston, then in working class Manchester, England and now in Reno – three very different places with very different people and customs.
After living in LA though I began to see people in their contexts in a different way. I judged their way against the measure and standard of my way less frequently. In January I will travel to India to give a scholarly paper. It will be the most dramatically different place I have ever been to in my life. I am excited and also a little anxious. Yet I am going to India with a deep sense of trust that I never had before in any of my previous travels. The trust I have is that God goes before me. God is within me. And now I am confident that God is on the other side in people who look different than me. In a way it has been like learning to float. If you think about it too much you sink. If you relax then your entire body, mind, heart and soul can enjoy the calm of otherwise turbulent waters.
I have a confession. I don’t know how to swim but on occasion my wife lets me lay my body against her body in the water and for a moment I feel the extraordinary calm in my body as I rest in God’s waters. I intend conflation here – as I rest against my lover I discover I am also in the hands of God. The disciples thought about it too much and they thought they were going to sink. I often think about it too much and feel like I am sinking too, but than Stefani and or God is there to keep me afloat.
Jesus is calm on both sides of the boat and also in different places. His center is not Bethlehem or Nazareth or even Jerusalem, but life with his Father and through the Holy Spirit preaching and living the Gospel.
What have you learned from your pilgrimage to the other side or with the other side? Are you impatiently waiting to get back to your comfortable routines without the other or do you have a deeper awareness that God abides with you on both sides of the street?
I hope you have had at least a glimpse that God dwells deeply on both sides of the street. I hope you have partially witnessed God in different customs and rituals. The Good News of today’s Gospel is that when we can trust God on God’s terms than we are freer to go beyond just the other side of the street. Then our cherished church rituals become a means and much less our ends. The triumph of going to the other side is having the privilege to encounter God in a new and different place. The other side may be mysterious to you and I but God dwells on all sides.
When we live with the conviction that God dwells on both sides then we can hear and embody Jesus’ words -- Peace, be still. In the years ahead wherever you are on whatever side of the street or on the other side of the world, remember that God is with you. But God is not just with you. God is on all sides, in all places and conditions of life. If you trust and accept God on God’s terms you will never sink, but rather you will live a glorious life of unexpected and abundant grace and blessing. This is God’s gift to us today, next Sunday and throughout our lives. God everywhere is our grace and blessing, so let us live into God on all sides.
F. D. Maurice Feast Day - April 1
F. D. Maurice was born into a family of a Unitarian minister whose life was marked by intense religious controversy due to the non-reformer tradition versus the Church of England, the Anglican tradition. Maurice’s theology was shaped in large measure by the way he had to come to terms with both the Anglican tradition of the English nation and the non-reformer, Unitarian tradition of his family.
F.D. Maurice was contemporaries with the poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson. Tennyson wrote a poem to F.D. Maurice to honor his friendship. Maurice was also friend to another poet, Samuel Coleridge. Coleridge and Maurice both often wrote about the notion of polarity. Polarity is another name for the Anglican concept of the Via Media.
The English Reformation, specifically the Church of England has often been described as the Via Media – or the middle way between Roman Catholic and the Puritans extremes. Maurice and Coleridge attempt to redefine Via Media for as time passed the Via Media became more associated with a compromise position.
Coleridge argued that polarity is holding the tension between opposites. Paul Avis, a contemporary Anglican theologian writes about this notion of polarity as “a quality of thinking, an approach in which elements usually regarded as mutually exclusive were seen to be in fact complementary. These things were held in a living tension, not in order to walk the tight-rope of compromise, but because they were seen to be mutually illuminating and thereby to fertilize each other.”
F.D. Maurice referred to polarity as a union of opposites. Maurice rejected the idea that the English Settlement of the Reformation was either a cowardly or cunning compromise that lacked the courage to side either with the Council of Trent and Rome or the most radical Puritan reformers. Rather Maurice believed that Elizabeth I united within herself the extreme elements of the catholic and reformed elements of the nation.
This notion of polarity in Coleridge or union of opposites in Maurice is an important one as both attempt to capture what is distinctive about Anglicanism, that is, what it means to be an Anglican. As Episcopalians we have a share in this Anglican heritage and legacy, as The Episcopal Church is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
This union of opposites is a difficult concept for us to live in our lives and in the life of the Church. In the larger Church we do not often see Maurice’s union of opposites or Coleridge’s polarity at work but more often polarization between two sides. It is good for the church to recall this dimension of Maurice’s in the midst of its various global controversies.
Even without trying to understand all the nuances of these controversies today, we can all understand what Maurice was talking about by considering the various elements of our workplaces. I am sure in your workplaces you meet many very different people. I am confident that you need to find ways of working together that honor one another and acknowledge your differences without achieving what Coleridge and F. D. Maurice called a false unity. In work situations there can often be a dominant desire to go one way and not another. Yet I am sure you would agree that good team leaders know how to bring everybody along to get the project done.
It is in this way that the most authentic sense of being an Anglican also attempts to hold together very different people. Anglicanism is not about simple unities but rather about acknowledging the complex richness of God’s world.
So F. D. Maurice may have written in the mid 1800’s but his theology is as relevant today as it was in his time. If anything we would do well to cherish his union of opposites as a fresh alternative approach to our life in community in the church, our families and workplaces.
F.D. Maurice was contemporaries with the poet, Alfred Lord Tennyson. Tennyson wrote a poem to F.D. Maurice to honor his friendship. Maurice was also friend to another poet, Samuel Coleridge. Coleridge and Maurice both often wrote about the notion of polarity. Polarity is another name for the Anglican concept of the Via Media.
The English Reformation, specifically the Church of England has often been described as the Via Media – or the middle way between Roman Catholic and the Puritans extremes. Maurice and Coleridge attempt to redefine Via Media for as time passed the Via Media became more associated with a compromise position.
Coleridge argued that polarity is holding the tension between opposites. Paul Avis, a contemporary Anglican theologian writes about this notion of polarity as “a quality of thinking, an approach in which elements usually regarded as mutually exclusive were seen to be in fact complementary. These things were held in a living tension, not in order to walk the tight-rope of compromise, but because they were seen to be mutually illuminating and thereby to fertilize each other.”
F.D. Maurice referred to polarity as a union of opposites. Maurice rejected the idea that the English Settlement of the Reformation was either a cowardly or cunning compromise that lacked the courage to side either with the Council of Trent and Rome or the most radical Puritan reformers. Rather Maurice believed that Elizabeth I united within herself the extreme elements of the catholic and reformed elements of the nation.
This notion of polarity in Coleridge or union of opposites in Maurice is an important one as both attempt to capture what is distinctive about Anglicanism, that is, what it means to be an Anglican. As Episcopalians we have a share in this Anglican heritage and legacy, as The Episcopal Church is a member church of the worldwide Anglican Communion.
This union of opposites is a difficult concept for us to live in our lives and in the life of the Church. In the larger Church we do not often see Maurice’s union of opposites or Coleridge’s polarity at work but more often polarization between two sides. It is good for the church to recall this dimension of Maurice’s in the midst of its various global controversies.
Even without trying to understand all the nuances of these controversies today, we can all understand what Maurice was talking about by considering the various elements of our workplaces. I am sure in your workplaces you meet many very different people. I am confident that you need to find ways of working together that honor one another and acknowledge your differences without achieving what Coleridge and F. D. Maurice called a false unity. In work situations there can often be a dominant desire to go one way and not another. Yet I am sure you would agree that good team leaders know how to bring everybody along to get the project done.
It is in this way that the most authentic sense of being an Anglican also attempts to hold together very different people. Anglicanism is not about simple unities but rather about acknowledging the complex richness of God’s world.
So F. D. Maurice may have written in the mid 1800’s but his theology is as relevant today as it was in his time. If anything we would do well to cherish his union of opposites as a fresh alternative approach to our life in community in the church, our families and workplaces.
Catherine of Siena Feast Day - April 29
Since I was a little boy I have always wanted to know more about Catherine of Siena. Catherine was my mother’s patron saint whom she often prayed. It was a delight for me to learn more about her.
Catherine of Siena is listed among Lesser Feasts and Fasts as well as being a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. The difference for Episcopalians as stated in the Preface of Lesser Feasts and Fasts is one of tone: “In the saints we are not dealing primarily with absolutes of perfection but human lives in all their diversity, open to the motions of the Holy Spirit”. Before we continue with an Anglican reflection on Catherine’s life, it is worth our time to consider the Roman Catholic recognition of Catherine as a saint as it reveals to us the remarkable woman she was and the model she can serve to both Roman Catholics and Anglicans in different ways.
Catherine lived in the fourteenth century. She was canonized in 1461, but did not become part of the Roman Catholic calendar of saints until 1597. In 1940 she was made patron saint of Italy sharing this privilege with St. Francis of Assisi. In 1970 Pope Paul VI gave her the recognition of the Doctor of the Church. The Roman Catholic Church has been making doctors of the church since 1298. There are only 33 doctors of the church and Catherine of Siena is one of them. Pope Paul VI in 1970 made the first two women ever doctors -- Catherine of Siena and Theresa of Avila. Then in 1997 Therese of Lisieux was made a doctor of the church. There are only three women doctors of the church.
But Catherine was not always so popular. In her time many people thought she was crazy. One Dominican priest trusted her spirit and it was due in part to his affirmation of her that she was able to trust her call from God.
Catherine is recognized for being a confessor and advisor to popes and a mystic of the church. Her major piece of writing is called the Dialogues and includes 381 letters and 26 prayers. The Dialogues is Catherine’s journal documenting her relationship with God. From a very young age she had an extraordinary friendship with God. In the course of the 33 years of her life she had three visions – one at age 6, another at age 12 and the last just before she died. In each vision she saw Mary and Jesus. In one vision she was given an invisible ring by Mary that Catherine describes as her betrothal to god as God’s special servant.
In one of the letters that Catherine wrote to God, she says to God when she experienced God’s distance, “Now is no time to sleep”. Isn’t that such a great line? The next time we feel God’s distance in our prayer, we might think of Catherine’s words. Her words suggest to me a profound intimacy that she had with God as a friend.
Catherine’s vision of the church was very Anglican. She believed that the church was a commonwealth where there is room for all in humanity and none are excluded. In one of her most powerful journal entries she gave an account of being present to a man about to be executed. Catherine often visited prisons. She met this one man in prison who did not believe. He was so ashamed of his life and his criminal acts that he doubted that he would ever receive God’s forgiveness. Catherine reassured him that before he died he would experience God’s love and forgiveness.
On the day of his execution Catherine went to the prison. Before he came in to the room where the execution was to be carried out, she prayed for him. In a most loving way she even laid her face on the table where the man was to meet his death as if to share her spirit with him. When the man laid down on the table he smiled, then laughed and confidently said to Catherine God is with me. Let us hold the image of Catherine laying her face upon the harsh reality of the table that would bring death to this man. What tables are we called to bear our bodies transforming fearful people into those who spontaneously laugh? May we be inspired by the way this man who suffered so much, in the lasts seconds of his life profoundly felt God’s love, dying in peace. Finally let us pray in thanksgiving for Catherine of Siena’s courageous love that transformed the hearts of all she encountered that we may do so in the ways to which we are each uniquely called.
Catherine of Siena is listed among Lesser Feasts and Fasts as well as being a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. The difference for Episcopalians as stated in the Preface of Lesser Feasts and Fasts is one of tone: “In the saints we are not dealing primarily with absolutes of perfection but human lives in all their diversity, open to the motions of the Holy Spirit”. Before we continue with an Anglican reflection on Catherine’s life, it is worth our time to consider the Roman Catholic recognition of Catherine as a saint as it reveals to us the remarkable woman she was and the model she can serve to both Roman Catholics and Anglicans in different ways.
Catherine lived in the fourteenth century. She was canonized in 1461, but did not become part of the Roman Catholic calendar of saints until 1597. In 1940 she was made patron saint of Italy sharing this privilege with St. Francis of Assisi. In 1970 Pope Paul VI gave her the recognition of the Doctor of the Church. The Roman Catholic Church has been making doctors of the church since 1298. There are only 33 doctors of the church and Catherine of Siena is one of them. Pope Paul VI in 1970 made the first two women ever doctors -- Catherine of Siena and Theresa of Avila. Then in 1997 Therese of Lisieux was made a doctor of the church. There are only three women doctors of the church.
But Catherine was not always so popular. In her time many people thought she was crazy. One Dominican priest trusted her spirit and it was due in part to his affirmation of her that she was able to trust her call from God.
Catherine is recognized for being a confessor and advisor to popes and a mystic of the church. Her major piece of writing is called the Dialogues and includes 381 letters and 26 prayers. The Dialogues is Catherine’s journal documenting her relationship with God. From a very young age she had an extraordinary friendship with God. In the course of the 33 years of her life she had three visions – one at age 6, another at age 12 and the last just before she died. In each vision she saw Mary and Jesus. In one vision she was given an invisible ring by Mary that Catherine describes as her betrothal to god as God’s special servant.
In one of the letters that Catherine wrote to God, she says to God when she experienced God’s distance, “Now is no time to sleep”. Isn’t that such a great line? The next time we feel God’s distance in our prayer, we might think of Catherine’s words. Her words suggest to me a profound intimacy that she had with God as a friend.
Catherine’s vision of the church was very Anglican. She believed that the church was a commonwealth where there is room for all in humanity and none are excluded. In one of her most powerful journal entries she gave an account of being present to a man about to be executed. Catherine often visited prisons. She met this one man in prison who did not believe. He was so ashamed of his life and his criminal acts that he doubted that he would ever receive God’s forgiveness. Catherine reassured him that before he died he would experience God’s love and forgiveness.
On the day of his execution Catherine went to the prison. Before he came in to the room where the execution was to be carried out, she prayed for him. In a most loving way she even laid her face on the table where the man was to meet his death as if to share her spirit with him. When the man laid down on the table he smiled, then laughed and confidently said to Catherine God is with me. Let us hold the image of Catherine laying her face upon the harsh reality of the table that would bring death to this man. What tables are we called to bear our bodies transforming fearful people into those who spontaneously laugh? May we be inspired by the way this man who suffered so much, in the lasts seconds of his life profoundly felt God’s love, dying in peace. Finally let us pray in thanksgiving for Catherine of Siena’s courageous love that transformed the hearts of all she encountered that we may do so in the ways to which we are each uniquely called.
Paradoxical Love - April 19, 2009 at St. Catherine of Siena, Reno
Holy Week and Easter are very bodily feasts of our faith. On Maundy Thursday we are invited to wash each other’s feet. On Good Friday we had an opportunity to venerate, that is, kiss the cross, as a means of honoring the body of the crucified Jesus. On Easter we must contend with Jesus’ bodily resurrection. From Maundy Thursday to Easter morning our faith is being tested and each of us are challenged at different times and in different ways. Yet for all of us it is a faith that cannot be fully experienced without a deep and intimate connection with our own bodies. Yes, it is a paradox of faith.
To believe in Jesus’ resurrection, we must first walk in our own bodies and believe we are made in the image and likeness of God. The journey of our faith draws us from initial contempt for our bodies to being transformed by washing another’s feet, kissing the crucified body and ultimately believing in the resurrected body and life everlasting.
Thomas the apostle was a believer before Jesus’ death, but with Jesus’ resurrection he and we are being called into a deeper level of faith. Thomas was unprepared for Jesus’ resurrection. Apart from the beautiful pageantry of the Easter celebrations are we any better than Thomas? Do we really believe in the words of the Nicene Creed? “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting”?
We know from the Emmaus Gospel story that some of the disciples did not recognize Jesus until he made breakfast for them. The story goes that they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. Our story this morning tells us that Thomas did not believe until he could place his finger in Jesus’ wound. Where are you in your journey of faith? Do you empathize with Thomas’ story?
There is a wonderful painting done by the Italian painter, Caravaggio called “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas”. As I read today’s Gospel several times I also looked at this painting to see what more I could learn about this text. Initially, the painting struck me as odd with these men all staring at Jesus’ open side. I wondered how Thomas’ examination of Jesus’ wound was going to help him believe.
When I placed myself in this painting I was profoundly moved by the privilege of touching Jesus’ body. As I touched his body I thought about the healing touch of doctors. I thought of the many times I have visited the dying at their bedside and prayed with their families when I was a Chaplain. I also thought of the time I worked as a nurse’s aide at a hospice in NYC as part of my formation to be a priest.
As a nurse’s aide at the hospice I bathed, dressed, fed and diapered the dying. When people died I dressed their bodies for the morgue. Dressing the body really means undressing the body, washing it down, rubbing it with oil and covering with a sheet for the undertaker. Initially I was horrified by the expectation that I would dress the body. One nurse’s aide told me to care for the dead like I care for myself. She asked me, how do you wash your own body? She said you must care for their bodies as you care for your own. If you are afraid of your living body you will be afraid of their dead bodies. If you love your body, you will cherish the body of the man you bathed yesterday who today is dead.
In time I moved beyond my horror of touching a dead body. I began to recall the person’s family and their last words to each other. As this happened I moved from my own bodily fears of touching a dead body to cherishing the person whom I had bathed just a few days before. Each time I went through this process of transformation moving from my fear of a dead body to recalling the person to sensing the privilege of this intimate and holy moment. Of all the jobs I have had in my life this was without doubt the most meaningful one for me on the deepest level. This experience of caring for the body is one that I am confident that doctors and nurses in this congregation are quite familiar with too. As adult caregivers some of you may have had the experience of caring for your parents’ frail bodies with Alzheimer’s or cancer.
Thomas is looking at Jesus’ wound but he is not looking at Jesus. We might have greater empathy for Thomas if we enter this scene also. So this morning I invite you to meet Jesus in this scene and if you wish to touch his wound. How does such an invitation strike you? Do you feel timid, cautious, fearful or at all hesitant? Do you sense yourself moving towards Jesus? Do you directly look at him or do you stare at his wound? How long will it be before you place your finger into Jesus’ wound? Are your hands trembling as you touch him? Is the wound clean or messy? Do you even think about the condition of the wound? Do you readily place your finger in Jesus’ side or are you squeamish about touching possibly some dried blood?
What are you doing with you other hand? I was struck by the way Thomas has placed his finger in Jesus’ wound. But do you also see in the painting how Thomas has his other hand on almost exactly the same side of his own body as he does on Jesus’ body? As I looked at the painting I found myself looking at Thomas’ left hand placed firmly on his own side as much as I was drawn into the extension of his right hand to Jesus’ body.
Do you see that Jesus’ body is fully engaged in Thomas’ examination? Jesus pulls his cloak back with his right hand revealing his wound. And it appears his other hand is placed on Thomas. Perhaps Thomas is trembling and Jesus is helping him hold his hand still enough to touch the wound. As you know my hands tremble and people often have to help me steady my hand at certain times.
Look closer now and you will see that all eyes are on Jesus’ wound, but Thomas’ eye seems to look beyond Jesus. My sense is that there is far more to the story of Thomas than just his doubt and inability to believe in Jesus. Perhaps like the disciples at Emmaus who did not believe until they saw Jesus in the breaking of the bread, Thomas must first do something in order to recognize Jesus. Thomas says all he must do is touch Jesus to believe, but this painting does not convey a story of a believing Thomas.
Yet Thomas at least in Caravaggio’s painting averts his eyes from Jesus’ wounded body. I wonder what is going on in Thomas’ life. Clearly Thomas appears distracted. He is in front of Jesus and he is distracted looking away. I turn back to Thomas’ left hand and wonder if his hand and eyes might serve as clues leading us to a deeper meaning behind his story. I wonder if Thomas is distracted by his own concerns. Is it possible that Thomas’ own body hurts? All look at Jesus’ wound, even Jesus looks at Jesus’ wound, but Thomas, he looks away. Of all the men in the scene, Thomas looks the most frail. Is it possible that Thomas is ill?
A friend of mine at seminary, who for this sermon I will call Bill, was HIV positive. He was an African-American who was very articulate about the times he was the recipient of racism on various occasions throughout his life. This fellow was a great preacher and loved the ministry. He started his own church before he was 20 years old. Then in his late forties after his church flourished he went to seminary to get a Masters of Divinity.
He was famous for telling fellow classmates that Jesus is dead. He would say the stories of Jesus are great, but he is dead, oh so very dead. Jesus did not rise from the dead. He would laugh, and just keep saying, no Jesus is dead. All his closest friends were shocked when he would say this too. When I read this morning’s text and saw Caravaggio’s painting, I thought about Bill and remembered his story.
Bill’s story and Caravaggio’s painting help me hear the story of Thomas differently. I wonder if like the disciples at Emmaus who believed when they saw Jesus in the breaking of the bread, if Bill will see and believe only when his own body ceases to serve as a distraction. To what extent has Bill’s HIV or even racism served to condemn his body? Can the condemned body really believe in Jesus? Can Bill believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection?
I wonder if a little bit of Bill’s story might be also be a part of Thomas’ story and our own stories too. Can Thomas really see, touch and believe Jesus while his own body causes him shame or even hurts? What about us? Do the wounds of our own bodies impede us from looking directly at Jesus’ wound? Do we touch Jesus’ wound like a healing doctor or as a lover does or are we distracted by our own wounds, turning away in shame, anger or self-condemnation?
Some will recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread like the disciples at Emmaus did. Some of us will only recognize Jesus when we have recognized our embodied selves as Jesus own beloved. I think when we see ourselves as very members incorporate of the Body of Christ, sharing in the story of our salvation, specifically in Jesus’ resurrection that we will be able to say, Jesus, you are Lord.
Until then Jesus abides with us as we move from a place of distraction to when we are ready to encounter Jesus face to face. Until then Jesus pulls back his cloak to reveal his most intimate self and he steadies our trembling hands so that even when we are too fearful to look we may still touch his wound.
Do we see our wounds as means that bring us into greater communion with God or are our wounds distractions from the deepest expression of our Easter faith? Like the nurse aide who instructed me some twenty years ago, my advice to you today is to love your body as God’s own. As we paradoxically love our human bodies and those of our neighbors we then may be able to look directly at Jesus, touch his wound and believe in his divinity manifested through the resurrection.
To believe in Jesus’ resurrection, we must first walk in our own bodies and believe we are made in the image and likeness of God. The journey of our faith draws us from initial contempt for our bodies to being transformed by washing another’s feet, kissing the crucified body and ultimately believing in the resurrected body and life everlasting.
Thomas the apostle was a believer before Jesus’ death, but with Jesus’ resurrection he and we are being called into a deeper level of faith. Thomas was unprepared for Jesus’ resurrection. Apart from the beautiful pageantry of the Easter celebrations are we any better than Thomas? Do we really believe in the words of the Nicene Creed? “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting”?
We know from the Emmaus Gospel story that some of the disciples did not recognize Jesus until he made breakfast for them. The story goes that they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. Our story this morning tells us that Thomas did not believe until he could place his finger in Jesus’ wound. Where are you in your journey of faith? Do you empathize with Thomas’ story?
There is a wonderful painting done by the Italian painter, Caravaggio called “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas”. As I read today’s Gospel several times I also looked at this painting to see what more I could learn about this text. Initially, the painting struck me as odd with these men all staring at Jesus’ open side. I wondered how Thomas’ examination of Jesus’ wound was going to help him believe.
When I placed myself in this painting I was profoundly moved by the privilege of touching Jesus’ body. As I touched his body I thought about the healing touch of doctors. I thought of the many times I have visited the dying at their bedside and prayed with their families when I was a Chaplain. I also thought of the time I worked as a nurse’s aide at a hospice in NYC as part of my formation to be a priest.
As a nurse’s aide at the hospice I bathed, dressed, fed and diapered the dying. When people died I dressed their bodies for the morgue. Dressing the body really means undressing the body, washing it down, rubbing it with oil and covering with a sheet for the undertaker. Initially I was horrified by the expectation that I would dress the body. One nurse’s aide told me to care for the dead like I care for myself. She asked me, how do you wash your own body? She said you must care for their bodies as you care for your own. If you are afraid of your living body you will be afraid of their dead bodies. If you love your body, you will cherish the body of the man you bathed yesterday who today is dead.
In time I moved beyond my horror of touching a dead body. I began to recall the person’s family and their last words to each other. As this happened I moved from my own bodily fears of touching a dead body to cherishing the person whom I had bathed just a few days before. Each time I went through this process of transformation moving from my fear of a dead body to recalling the person to sensing the privilege of this intimate and holy moment. Of all the jobs I have had in my life this was without doubt the most meaningful one for me on the deepest level. This experience of caring for the body is one that I am confident that doctors and nurses in this congregation are quite familiar with too. As adult caregivers some of you may have had the experience of caring for your parents’ frail bodies with Alzheimer’s or cancer.
Thomas is looking at Jesus’ wound but he is not looking at Jesus. We might have greater empathy for Thomas if we enter this scene also. So this morning I invite you to meet Jesus in this scene and if you wish to touch his wound. How does such an invitation strike you? Do you feel timid, cautious, fearful or at all hesitant? Do you sense yourself moving towards Jesus? Do you directly look at him or do you stare at his wound? How long will it be before you place your finger into Jesus’ wound? Are your hands trembling as you touch him? Is the wound clean or messy? Do you even think about the condition of the wound? Do you readily place your finger in Jesus’ side or are you squeamish about touching possibly some dried blood?
What are you doing with you other hand? I was struck by the way Thomas has placed his finger in Jesus’ wound. But do you also see in the painting how Thomas has his other hand on almost exactly the same side of his own body as he does on Jesus’ body? As I looked at the painting I found myself looking at Thomas’ left hand placed firmly on his own side as much as I was drawn into the extension of his right hand to Jesus’ body.
Do you see that Jesus’ body is fully engaged in Thomas’ examination? Jesus pulls his cloak back with his right hand revealing his wound. And it appears his other hand is placed on Thomas. Perhaps Thomas is trembling and Jesus is helping him hold his hand still enough to touch the wound. As you know my hands tremble and people often have to help me steady my hand at certain times.
Look closer now and you will see that all eyes are on Jesus’ wound, but Thomas’ eye seems to look beyond Jesus. My sense is that there is far more to the story of Thomas than just his doubt and inability to believe in Jesus. Perhaps like the disciples at Emmaus who did not believe until they saw Jesus in the breaking of the bread, Thomas must first do something in order to recognize Jesus. Thomas says all he must do is touch Jesus to believe, but this painting does not convey a story of a believing Thomas.
Yet Thomas at least in Caravaggio’s painting averts his eyes from Jesus’ wounded body. I wonder what is going on in Thomas’ life. Clearly Thomas appears distracted. He is in front of Jesus and he is distracted looking away. I turn back to Thomas’ left hand and wonder if his hand and eyes might serve as clues leading us to a deeper meaning behind his story. I wonder if Thomas is distracted by his own concerns. Is it possible that Thomas’ own body hurts? All look at Jesus’ wound, even Jesus looks at Jesus’ wound, but Thomas, he looks away. Of all the men in the scene, Thomas looks the most frail. Is it possible that Thomas is ill?
A friend of mine at seminary, who for this sermon I will call Bill, was HIV positive. He was an African-American who was very articulate about the times he was the recipient of racism on various occasions throughout his life. This fellow was a great preacher and loved the ministry. He started his own church before he was 20 years old. Then in his late forties after his church flourished he went to seminary to get a Masters of Divinity.
He was famous for telling fellow classmates that Jesus is dead. He would say the stories of Jesus are great, but he is dead, oh so very dead. Jesus did not rise from the dead. He would laugh, and just keep saying, no Jesus is dead. All his closest friends were shocked when he would say this too. When I read this morning’s text and saw Caravaggio’s painting, I thought about Bill and remembered his story.
Bill’s story and Caravaggio’s painting help me hear the story of Thomas differently. I wonder if like the disciples at Emmaus who believed when they saw Jesus in the breaking of the bread, if Bill will see and believe only when his own body ceases to serve as a distraction. To what extent has Bill’s HIV or even racism served to condemn his body? Can the condemned body really believe in Jesus? Can Bill believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection?
I wonder if a little bit of Bill’s story might be also be a part of Thomas’ story and our own stories too. Can Thomas really see, touch and believe Jesus while his own body causes him shame or even hurts? What about us? Do the wounds of our own bodies impede us from looking directly at Jesus’ wound? Do we touch Jesus’ wound like a healing doctor or as a lover does or are we distracted by our own wounds, turning away in shame, anger or self-condemnation?
Some will recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread like the disciples at Emmaus did. Some of us will only recognize Jesus when we have recognized our embodied selves as Jesus own beloved. I think when we see ourselves as very members incorporate of the Body of Christ, sharing in the story of our salvation, specifically in Jesus’ resurrection that we will be able to say, Jesus, you are Lord.
Until then Jesus abides with us as we move from a place of distraction to when we are ready to encounter Jesus face to face. Until then Jesus pulls back his cloak to reveal his most intimate self and he steadies our trembling hands so that even when we are too fearful to look we may still touch his wound.
Do we see our wounds as means that bring us into greater communion with God or are our wounds distractions from the deepest expression of our Easter faith? Like the nurse aide who instructed me some twenty years ago, my advice to you today is to love your body as God’s own. As we paradoxically love our human bodies and those of our neighbors we then may be able to look directly at Jesus, touch his wound and believe in his divinity manifested through the resurrection.
God's Indiscriminate Love for All - March 27, 2009
How is your Lent going? When it comes to Lent it is so easy to get caught up with what we are doing, giving up something or as today’s Gospel suggests that we “hate our life”. Lent for many can become a time of sacrifice. Another way of thinking about Lent is as a time for us to align ourselves with God. What does this alignment look like?
Is Lent about convincing God of our worthiness for God’s love? Or is Lent a time to acknowledge that God abides with us, so that when the Word becomes flesh in our lives we will abide with others as God abides with us?
Abiding with others as God abides with us is the challenge of Lent and indeed of our whole life. No matter where we are on our journey of faith – God abides with us.
For example, for quite a number of years I abstained from “the imposition of the ashes” part of the Ash Wednesday service. I had been hearing, “Joe, remember you are dirt NOT “Joe, remember you are dust”. Growing up as a Roman Catholic at home and at our church I was taught that as dust the purpose of my life was to purify my mind and body so that I might be pure enough to receive salvation in the next world. God abides with us.
Roman Catholic Archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero’s life was shaped by his interpretation of certain words. Before he became a bishop, Fr. Romero’s focus was on the power of his priestly office. He served the sacramental needs of his people but paid little attention to their justice needs. The hierarchical church had taught him that the justice needs of the Salvadorian people were the concerns and responsibilities of the state and the political system not that of the church or its priests.
Therefore Romero never questioned the oppressive actions of the country’s power elite. Given his own fascination with power Romero was trusted by the nation’s political leaders as their ally and confidante. During these times in contrast Roman Catholic theologians like Leonardo Boff and Jon Sobrino were asking justice questions that were disturbing the peace of the country and of the Vatican. Romero and these other theologians interpreted the words of the scriptures differently. The Vatican made Romero the Bishop of El Salvador because they were confident that he would not disturb the fragile peace of the country.
In a way that could not have been anticipated by either Romero or the Vatican Romero fell in love with his people. His diaries do not tell us when he precisely changed but over time the people’s story became Romero’s story. As Romero’s interpretation of the words of the Gospel changed the way he practiced his priestly vocation changed too. All of a sudden Romero felt the oppression of his people as if it were his own. As Romero served the bread and wine to his people they like the elements he consecrated on the altar became for him as precious as the Body and Blood of Christ. As a result he cared for them differently and he cherished them with his life.
Eventually Romero was placed on a political subversive watch list. Why? Bishop Romero’ s love for his people led him to seek justice for them. These actions made Bishop Romero a very dangerous man for the status quo leaders of El Salvador. This past Tuesday was the 29th anniversary of Bishop Romero’s bloody execution.
Due to the way Bishop Romero stirred up the people he had been warned to stop celebrating the Eucharist at the Cathedral. Yet on March 24, 1980 Bishop Romero was killed while celebrating the Holy Eucharist. In his last sacramental act the Word became flesh through Romero’s proclamation of justice and the celebration of the Eucharist with the people he loved.
Young Fr. Romero and older Bishop Romero lived out very different interpretations of the Gospel. Yet I suspect that God abided with Fr. Romero as God abided with Bishop Romero. God did not change. Romero changed the way he practiced his priesthood, but God’s presence remained constant. Still we can get caught up in the way Romero changed. The change in Romero was important, but what is underrated is the way God abided with Romero before and after the changes he made in his life.
I resonate with Romero’s journey in the way my interpretation of words have changed the way I live my life. Yet I tell the story I am about to tell you to underscore the way God has abided with me before and after these changes.
I recall going to Washington DC in the late 70’s as a young man with a friend. On our first evening in DC we had pre-ordered tickets for a concert at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. When we got to the concert we quickly realized that it was a Gay Men’s Benefit Chorus. As Roman Catholics growing up in the sixties we had been raised to believe that homosexuality was wrong. So at the intermission confident that we were living out our family values we demanded our money back from the sponsors.
The sponsors said no and a battle of words ensued between us. We were finally asked to leave without our money. A week later I received a call at my office from the sponsor’s lawyers with a threat of a slander lawsuit. The threat of a lawsuit has an interesting way of helping one to change their conduct, but we did not change our minds. If anything we were more self-justified in our beliefs.
God abides with us.
In the early nineties I made friends, and met men and women who transformed my heart. Yes, with the gay men and lesbian women friends I made I could no longer continue to live following my parents’ interpretation of homosexuality as my heart had been broken open. As time passed I found that my dinner table was more diverse than the church where I worshipped. For a period of time I stopped going to church for the gulf between my changed values and my church had become so deep.
God abides with us.
Then in 2000 some twenty years after the DC incident I was drawn to All Saints Church in Pasadena where for the first time I heard the words “whoever you are, wherever you are on your journey of faith, you are welcomed at this table.” At last I had found a church home where I would not be ashamed to bring my friends and where my friends would be welcomed.
God abides with us.
There is a way this refrain can sound self-centered not caring about justice, but quite to the contrary. In the past I have preached in a way that condemns the younger Romero in order to celebrate the older Romero. Yet I don’t think the first priority of our faith lives is the interpretation of the words. When God’s word is made flesh in our lives our hearts are broken open.
Still more hopeful than an open table is the knowledge that God abides with us where we are. To pick up on Jane’s sermon last week we cannot do anything to deserve or lose God’s love. When we can say no matter what is going on in our life that God abides with us, then it is possible for the Word to become flesh in our lives. When the Word does become flesh in our lives the way we live and the way we love begins to change. I don’t think that Lent is about getting the words right or about our sacrifices.
Many people now want to canonize Bishop Romero. Some of these people are ashamed of Romero the priest who enjoyed power without justice. I believe though that God made space in God’s heart for both the younger and the older Romero. God abided with the younger and older Romero. God has certainly abided with the younger Joe Duggan and the older Joe Duggan. I wonder are we jealous of a God who loves our neighbor as much as God loves us.
In The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion different interpretations of the words of the scriptures have divided good people. In the course of these debates too many of us have lost sight of God’s divine inclusion. God abides with all.
The Good News is that Christ’s love is unconditional. God indiscriminately abides with us. Christ abides with us no matter where we are on our journeys of faith. St. Paul says as Christ increases in me, I decrease. It is pretty clear that in the end that Christ had overtaken the life of Romero. He had ultimately forgotten himself in his selfless act of love transforming his selfish concerns into God’s cares and Jesus’ ministry. As Romero forgot his desire for power he entered the transformative power of the Gospel. The Word had become flesh in Bishop Romero’s life.
When we hear the words today, “hate your life” let this not mean that we are inconsequential as dust or just mere grains. Rather we are Christ’s beloved. As Christ’s beloved we are called to abide with one another as Christ abides with us.
We are called to abide with one another as Christ abides with us.
The journey of Lent and of our lives is letting our hearts be broken open that we may abide with one another. When the Word becomes flesh in our life it is possible for us to abide with even those who may initially offend us. Then like Romero we will love unconditionally as God loves us. Until then let us be patient with one another as our faith life journeys intersect with our different interpretations of the words and the unfinished ways we live out our love of God and neighbor.
As Easter draws near may God abide with us so that the Word will become flesh in our lives and like Bishop Romero open our hearts to indiscriminately love one another.
Is Lent about convincing God of our worthiness for God’s love? Or is Lent a time to acknowledge that God abides with us, so that when the Word becomes flesh in our lives we will abide with others as God abides with us?
Abiding with others as God abides with us is the challenge of Lent and indeed of our whole life. No matter where we are on our journey of faith – God abides with us.
For example, for quite a number of years I abstained from “the imposition of the ashes” part of the Ash Wednesday service. I had been hearing, “Joe, remember you are dirt NOT “Joe, remember you are dust”. Growing up as a Roman Catholic at home and at our church I was taught that as dust the purpose of my life was to purify my mind and body so that I might be pure enough to receive salvation in the next world. God abides with us.
Roman Catholic Archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero’s life was shaped by his interpretation of certain words. Before he became a bishop, Fr. Romero’s focus was on the power of his priestly office. He served the sacramental needs of his people but paid little attention to their justice needs. The hierarchical church had taught him that the justice needs of the Salvadorian people were the concerns and responsibilities of the state and the political system not that of the church or its priests.
Therefore Romero never questioned the oppressive actions of the country’s power elite. Given his own fascination with power Romero was trusted by the nation’s political leaders as their ally and confidante. During these times in contrast Roman Catholic theologians like Leonardo Boff and Jon Sobrino were asking justice questions that were disturbing the peace of the country and of the Vatican. Romero and these other theologians interpreted the words of the scriptures differently. The Vatican made Romero the Bishop of El Salvador because they were confident that he would not disturb the fragile peace of the country.
In a way that could not have been anticipated by either Romero or the Vatican Romero fell in love with his people. His diaries do not tell us when he precisely changed but over time the people’s story became Romero’s story. As Romero’s interpretation of the words of the Gospel changed the way he practiced his priestly vocation changed too. All of a sudden Romero felt the oppression of his people as if it were his own. As Romero served the bread and wine to his people they like the elements he consecrated on the altar became for him as precious as the Body and Blood of Christ. As a result he cared for them differently and he cherished them with his life.
Eventually Romero was placed on a political subversive watch list. Why? Bishop Romero’ s love for his people led him to seek justice for them. These actions made Bishop Romero a very dangerous man for the status quo leaders of El Salvador. This past Tuesday was the 29th anniversary of Bishop Romero’s bloody execution.
Due to the way Bishop Romero stirred up the people he had been warned to stop celebrating the Eucharist at the Cathedral. Yet on March 24, 1980 Bishop Romero was killed while celebrating the Holy Eucharist. In his last sacramental act the Word became flesh through Romero’s proclamation of justice and the celebration of the Eucharist with the people he loved.
Young Fr. Romero and older Bishop Romero lived out very different interpretations of the Gospel. Yet I suspect that God abided with Fr. Romero as God abided with Bishop Romero. God did not change. Romero changed the way he practiced his priesthood, but God’s presence remained constant. Still we can get caught up in the way Romero changed. The change in Romero was important, but what is underrated is the way God abided with Romero before and after the changes he made in his life.
I resonate with Romero’s journey in the way my interpretation of words have changed the way I live my life. Yet I tell the story I am about to tell you to underscore the way God has abided with me before and after these changes.
I recall going to Washington DC in the late 70’s as a young man with a friend. On our first evening in DC we had pre-ordered tickets for a concert at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. When we got to the concert we quickly realized that it was a Gay Men’s Benefit Chorus. As Roman Catholics growing up in the sixties we had been raised to believe that homosexuality was wrong. So at the intermission confident that we were living out our family values we demanded our money back from the sponsors.
The sponsors said no and a battle of words ensued between us. We were finally asked to leave without our money. A week later I received a call at my office from the sponsor’s lawyers with a threat of a slander lawsuit. The threat of a lawsuit has an interesting way of helping one to change their conduct, but we did not change our minds. If anything we were more self-justified in our beliefs.
God abides with us.
In the early nineties I made friends, and met men and women who transformed my heart. Yes, with the gay men and lesbian women friends I made I could no longer continue to live following my parents’ interpretation of homosexuality as my heart had been broken open. As time passed I found that my dinner table was more diverse than the church where I worshipped. For a period of time I stopped going to church for the gulf between my changed values and my church had become so deep.
God abides with us.
Then in 2000 some twenty years after the DC incident I was drawn to All Saints Church in Pasadena where for the first time I heard the words “whoever you are, wherever you are on your journey of faith, you are welcomed at this table.” At last I had found a church home where I would not be ashamed to bring my friends and where my friends would be welcomed.
God abides with us.
There is a way this refrain can sound self-centered not caring about justice, but quite to the contrary. In the past I have preached in a way that condemns the younger Romero in order to celebrate the older Romero. Yet I don’t think the first priority of our faith lives is the interpretation of the words. When God’s word is made flesh in our lives our hearts are broken open.
Still more hopeful than an open table is the knowledge that God abides with us where we are. To pick up on Jane’s sermon last week we cannot do anything to deserve or lose God’s love. When we can say no matter what is going on in our life that God abides with us, then it is possible for the Word to become flesh in our lives. When the Word does become flesh in our lives the way we live and the way we love begins to change. I don’t think that Lent is about getting the words right or about our sacrifices.
Many people now want to canonize Bishop Romero. Some of these people are ashamed of Romero the priest who enjoyed power without justice. I believe though that God made space in God’s heart for both the younger and the older Romero. God abided with the younger and older Romero. God has certainly abided with the younger Joe Duggan and the older Joe Duggan. I wonder are we jealous of a God who loves our neighbor as much as God loves us.
In The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion different interpretations of the words of the scriptures have divided good people. In the course of these debates too many of us have lost sight of God’s divine inclusion. God abides with all.
The Good News is that Christ’s love is unconditional. God indiscriminately abides with us. Christ abides with us no matter where we are on our journeys of faith. St. Paul says as Christ increases in me, I decrease. It is pretty clear that in the end that Christ had overtaken the life of Romero. He had ultimately forgotten himself in his selfless act of love transforming his selfish concerns into God’s cares and Jesus’ ministry. As Romero forgot his desire for power he entered the transformative power of the Gospel. The Word had become flesh in Bishop Romero’s life.
When we hear the words today, “hate your life” let this not mean that we are inconsequential as dust or just mere grains. Rather we are Christ’s beloved. As Christ’s beloved we are called to abide with one another as Christ abides with us.
We are called to abide with one another as Christ abides with us.
The journey of Lent and of our lives is letting our hearts be broken open that we may abide with one another. When the Word becomes flesh in our life it is possible for us to abide with even those who may initially offend us. Then like Romero we will love unconditionally as God loves us. Until then let us be patient with one another as our faith life journeys intersect with our different interpretations of the words and the unfinished ways we live out our love of God and neighbor.
As Easter draws near may God abide with us so that the Word will become flesh in our lives and like Bishop Romero open our hearts to indiscriminately love one another.
Knowing When to Tell - February 15, 2009 at St. Catherine of Siena, Reno
Mark I: 40-45
Knowing When to Tell…
What do you make of that last line – don’t tell? Honestly I have shrugged off these words over and over as just an arcane add-on. I have also thought that this is an odd statement for Jesus to make and out of sync with the abundance that I have come to recognize through the Gospel stories.
More recently I have acknowledged that I did not understand the final line and I chose to just sit with it. To abbreviate the text and to cut out the last line changes the entire message. It certainly makes the text much easier to understand. Ah a healing story – great! Isn’t Jesus great? Yes and this morning I want us to take time to ask if there is also another message we need to hear.
Mark’s Gospel is filled with don’t tell instructions from Jesus to his disciples and then the Gospel ends with a disappointment that the women don’t go and tell the apostles that Jesus has risen. No doubt the women like you and I are confused with how to read this text and more importantly when to tell and when not to tell the Good News. The people of Mark’s Gospel always seem to get it wrong – telling when they have been told not to tell and not telling when it would have been the right thing to tell.
What is going on here? Is Jesus being humble here? So he heals but then does not want credit for it? That does not make sense given all his other healings before and after this story. Scholars refer to this not telling in the Gospel of Mark as the Messianic Secret. Of course scholars cannot agree on what the Messianic Secret means nor do we need to agree today, but it is still good to ponder this conflict between telling and not telling.
The Messianic Secret has to do with the timing of revealing Jesus’ mission as the messiah. Historians say that there were many self-proclaimed Messiahs at the time and Jesus did not want to be confused with these.
Scholars have also argued over the extent to which Jesus knew his mission from his Father and that he anticipated going before Pilate, being crucified, dying, buried and rising. In such a reading Jesus’ primary work is not all the miracles he performs during his public life. In such a reading Jesus primary purpose for becoming human was to share in our humanity, a part of which is participating in our fleshy struggles and rising from the dead. Then Jesus’ kingdom is not just a new and better Roman Empire that is more friendly and gentle or even inclusive. Jesus kingdom is that we are blessed, anointed and loved into new life through his death and resurrection. This is the Good News!
As some readers have wished to erase the last lines from the Gospel text all of us may at one time or another many have also wanted to erase the mysterious resurrection. Yet we have been taught to accept the resurrection on faith based on the tradition that has been given to us. Even before Lent begins in two weeks time we know how the story is going to go. One more time we will hear the story of the passion on Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the early services of even Easter. We do know the story, but do we really know the story? Do we really know how to discern the Good News from the great news and when to tell the Good News and to whom?
Isn’t the story different every year? Don’t we hear the story differently every year depending on where we are in our life? In one of the darkest moments of my life I just could not do the passion and so I skipped Palm Sunday through Lent and went straight to Easter. Although I skipped it I realize now that more than any other year perhaps in my life God was with me in an even more profound way that Lent in my lonely isolation from the light. In my darkness Jesus was at my side.
In other years the passion story was less painful for me to enter and also less real and I could participate in Lent. Isn’t that ironic? Collectively through all my times of absence and presence God continues to weave through my story as he does yours too. I have learned so many times that we can try to leave God, but God never leaves us. His Holy Spirit lives within you and me. Yes the Spirit dwells within us, but do we recognize the Spirit working within us?
How do we know when to tell? We discern. Discernment is a process of listening to the Spirit working within our lives. We discern by paying attention to our hearts, minds and bodies – are we drawn closer to Jesus’ story or caught in our own stories?
Our Anglican theology says that the three sources of authority - reason, tradition and scripture. Contrary to popular belief, reason does not mean that Episcopalians get to do anything we desire and the Roman Catholics have to obey the Pope. No, our reason is to be informed by the Gospel, nurtured by the sacraments and strengthened by our experience of community with one another. Through a combined listening and nurtured reason we know when to share our faith with others and when to receive care from others.
We are human and sometimes we are not attentive to the Spirit working within us. Sometimes our selfish needs get in the way of our listening. Returning to today’s Gospel the leper wants to tell the Good News of his healing, but Jesus asks him not to do so. If the leper does not listen to Jesus and he hears his voice then what can we expect of ourselves who must discern the Spirit working within us. Clearly we have the more challenging task.
Fredrick Beuchner wrote a book called Telling Secrets. Well obviously you don’t tell a secret – right? The book is a true story about Buechner when his daughters were diagnosed with anorexia when they were teen-agers. Buechner told absolutely nobody his secret even though he was burdened by the isolation he felt by his daughters’ illnesses. He did not know how to tell others of his need. He was ashamed and resisted asking for help from others.
I mentioned Buechner’s story to a man in exactly the same situation, a man who was struggling with his own daughters who were diagnosed of anorexia to read the book. The man wrote to me and said, “Joe, I don’t understand this book. I have no secrets.” Buechner did not want to tell his secret, but this man did not even know that he was keeping a secret. Both men were so isolated that they could no longer hear the Spirit working within them, losing sight of the Good News.
It seems to me that these men in their pre-occupation with themselves did not recognize their needs for care. Was either man listening to the Spirit? Was the healed leper listening to the Spirit? Are we listening to the Spirit? One way of knowing if we are listening to the Spirit is asking if we are growing in the gifts of the Spirit – are we more loving, more patient, more gentle?
So as we anticipate Lent how do we use today’s lessons as our spiritual food? I think the Messianic Secret challenges us to listen to God working in our life so we will know when to tell others. But not just listening for ourselves but listening in a way that opens us up to be attentive to the needs of another, their comfort and their care.
The way I read the Gospel story this morning is that Jesus is inviting the leper, you and me into something greater than our own story. The Gospel calls us not just into one healing but the healing of all humanity. Perhaps the leper missed the wider significance of his healing. The leper celebrated his own healing wanting to tell his friends the Good News. But perhaps his healing was not the Good News. Don’t get me wrong – it was great news, but was it the Good News still to come?
Would you have heard Jesus’ instruction in the same way as the leper and emailed your friends or would you wait to share the Good News of Easter? Is there news in our life that we tell when we should not or we should speak when otherwise we choose to be silent?
We have received the Good News already and yet we are not free from the task of discerning when to tell and when to be silent. Our telling is not just about us as the healed leper or the men with anorexic daughters appeared to think. If this were so then we would become spectators to the Gospel story rather than people who are called to be in dynamic relationship with God.
Telling follows our listening and discerning thus knowing when to invite others to bless us. Then the one who receives the blessing and the one who blesses are both healed by the Good News of Jesus words. When the time is right to tell, then Jesus’ story and our story become intertwined as one.
Even in our darkest struggles when we are deaf and blind to God’s healing hand working in our lives, even then we are called to listen, to discern and to tell the Good News.
Listen – Have you recognized the Good news in your life?
Listen – Is Jesus calling you to tell the Good News today?
Let us listen to Jesus and then, let us all go out and tell the Good News.
Knowing When to Tell…
What do you make of that last line – don’t tell? Honestly I have shrugged off these words over and over as just an arcane add-on. I have also thought that this is an odd statement for Jesus to make and out of sync with the abundance that I have come to recognize through the Gospel stories.
More recently I have acknowledged that I did not understand the final line and I chose to just sit with it. To abbreviate the text and to cut out the last line changes the entire message. It certainly makes the text much easier to understand. Ah a healing story – great! Isn’t Jesus great? Yes and this morning I want us to take time to ask if there is also another message we need to hear.
Mark’s Gospel is filled with don’t tell instructions from Jesus to his disciples and then the Gospel ends with a disappointment that the women don’t go and tell the apostles that Jesus has risen. No doubt the women like you and I are confused with how to read this text and more importantly when to tell and when not to tell the Good News. The people of Mark’s Gospel always seem to get it wrong – telling when they have been told not to tell and not telling when it would have been the right thing to tell.
What is going on here? Is Jesus being humble here? So he heals but then does not want credit for it? That does not make sense given all his other healings before and after this story. Scholars refer to this not telling in the Gospel of Mark as the Messianic Secret. Of course scholars cannot agree on what the Messianic Secret means nor do we need to agree today, but it is still good to ponder this conflict between telling and not telling.
The Messianic Secret has to do with the timing of revealing Jesus’ mission as the messiah. Historians say that there were many self-proclaimed Messiahs at the time and Jesus did not want to be confused with these.
Scholars have also argued over the extent to which Jesus knew his mission from his Father and that he anticipated going before Pilate, being crucified, dying, buried and rising. In such a reading Jesus’ primary work is not all the miracles he performs during his public life. In such a reading Jesus primary purpose for becoming human was to share in our humanity, a part of which is participating in our fleshy struggles and rising from the dead. Then Jesus’ kingdom is not just a new and better Roman Empire that is more friendly and gentle or even inclusive. Jesus kingdom is that we are blessed, anointed and loved into new life through his death and resurrection. This is the Good News!
As some readers have wished to erase the last lines from the Gospel text all of us may at one time or another many have also wanted to erase the mysterious resurrection. Yet we have been taught to accept the resurrection on faith based on the tradition that has been given to us. Even before Lent begins in two weeks time we know how the story is going to go. One more time we will hear the story of the passion on Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the early services of even Easter. We do know the story, but do we really know the story? Do we really know how to discern the Good News from the great news and when to tell the Good News and to whom?
Isn’t the story different every year? Don’t we hear the story differently every year depending on where we are in our life? In one of the darkest moments of my life I just could not do the passion and so I skipped Palm Sunday through Lent and went straight to Easter. Although I skipped it I realize now that more than any other year perhaps in my life God was with me in an even more profound way that Lent in my lonely isolation from the light. In my darkness Jesus was at my side.
In other years the passion story was less painful for me to enter and also less real and I could participate in Lent. Isn’t that ironic? Collectively through all my times of absence and presence God continues to weave through my story as he does yours too. I have learned so many times that we can try to leave God, but God never leaves us. His Holy Spirit lives within you and me. Yes the Spirit dwells within us, but do we recognize the Spirit working within us?
How do we know when to tell? We discern. Discernment is a process of listening to the Spirit working within our lives. We discern by paying attention to our hearts, minds and bodies – are we drawn closer to Jesus’ story or caught in our own stories?
Our Anglican theology says that the three sources of authority - reason, tradition and scripture. Contrary to popular belief, reason does not mean that Episcopalians get to do anything we desire and the Roman Catholics have to obey the Pope. No, our reason is to be informed by the Gospel, nurtured by the sacraments and strengthened by our experience of community with one another. Through a combined listening and nurtured reason we know when to share our faith with others and when to receive care from others.
We are human and sometimes we are not attentive to the Spirit working within us. Sometimes our selfish needs get in the way of our listening. Returning to today’s Gospel the leper wants to tell the Good News of his healing, but Jesus asks him not to do so. If the leper does not listen to Jesus and he hears his voice then what can we expect of ourselves who must discern the Spirit working within us. Clearly we have the more challenging task.
Fredrick Beuchner wrote a book called Telling Secrets. Well obviously you don’t tell a secret – right? The book is a true story about Buechner when his daughters were diagnosed with anorexia when they were teen-agers. Buechner told absolutely nobody his secret even though he was burdened by the isolation he felt by his daughters’ illnesses. He did not know how to tell others of his need. He was ashamed and resisted asking for help from others.
I mentioned Buechner’s story to a man in exactly the same situation, a man who was struggling with his own daughters who were diagnosed of anorexia to read the book. The man wrote to me and said, “Joe, I don’t understand this book. I have no secrets.” Buechner did not want to tell his secret, but this man did not even know that he was keeping a secret. Both men were so isolated that they could no longer hear the Spirit working within them, losing sight of the Good News.
It seems to me that these men in their pre-occupation with themselves did not recognize their needs for care. Was either man listening to the Spirit? Was the healed leper listening to the Spirit? Are we listening to the Spirit? One way of knowing if we are listening to the Spirit is asking if we are growing in the gifts of the Spirit – are we more loving, more patient, more gentle?
So as we anticipate Lent how do we use today’s lessons as our spiritual food? I think the Messianic Secret challenges us to listen to God working in our life so we will know when to tell others. But not just listening for ourselves but listening in a way that opens us up to be attentive to the needs of another, their comfort and their care.
The way I read the Gospel story this morning is that Jesus is inviting the leper, you and me into something greater than our own story. The Gospel calls us not just into one healing but the healing of all humanity. Perhaps the leper missed the wider significance of his healing. The leper celebrated his own healing wanting to tell his friends the Good News. But perhaps his healing was not the Good News. Don’t get me wrong – it was great news, but was it the Good News still to come?
Would you have heard Jesus’ instruction in the same way as the leper and emailed your friends or would you wait to share the Good News of Easter? Is there news in our life that we tell when we should not or we should speak when otherwise we choose to be silent?
We have received the Good News already and yet we are not free from the task of discerning when to tell and when to be silent. Our telling is not just about us as the healed leper or the men with anorexic daughters appeared to think. If this were so then we would become spectators to the Gospel story rather than people who are called to be in dynamic relationship with God.
Telling follows our listening and discerning thus knowing when to invite others to bless us. Then the one who receives the blessing and the one who blesses are both healed by the Good News of Jesus words. When the time is right to tell, then Jesus’ story and our story become intertwined as one.
Even in our darkest struggles when we are deaf and blind to God’s healing hand working in our lives, even then we are called to listen, to discern and to tell the Good News.
Listen – Have you recognized the Good news in your life?
Listen – Is Jesus calling you to tell the Good News today?
Let us listen to Jesus and then, let us all go out and tell the Good News.
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