CeltPub Conversation fuel—October 20 2009 Lucky Lab 4:30-6:00 P
In the Intro (p. X) Newell writes, “’The whole universe takes part in the dance’” (Jesus) says. Jesus is speaking of a harmony at the heart of life. And he is pointing to a way of moving in relation to all things, even though he knows also the price of living in relation to such a unity.” When and where have you felt the dance? “Moved in relation”? And what is “the price to pay”? Have you ever paid some of that price?
Newell refers to John Scotus Eriugena: “…Christ is our memory. We suffer from the ‘soul’s forgetfulness’, he says. Christ comes to reawaken us to our true nature. He is our epiphany. He comes to show us the face of God. He comes to show us also our face, the true face of the human soul.” He goes on to say the relationship of “nature and grace” in the Celtic tradition is not one of opposition but one of relationship and restoration. How does this live along with what you have been taught or inferred from “mainstream” Christian presentations of “nature and grace” if any? What questions, gifts, challenges does this pose from the context of your own life?
Or, talk about what you wish!
At 5:30, we’ll pass around a sheet where you may a) propose other kinds and times of gatherings which b) you are invited to sign your name to offer to host/co-ordinate.
archived musings and preachments
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Aware
Proper 24 B 2009
(Job 38: 1-7; Ps 104: 1-9, 25, 37b; Heb 5: 1-10; Mark 10: 35-45)
“Be aware of your surroundings.”
Last Thursday night I taught our martial arts class. I wanted to do something fun, so in the last ten minutes I had the group divide into four teams and play a game called Tae Kwan Do dodge-ball. At the signal each team attacks the other and spars in a free-for-all. If a point is scored for a clean hit, that person needs to go and stand against the wall. They can only re-join if an active teammate touches them. The last team with one or more active members left wins.
There’s a lot to be learned in martial arts. One intense young man charged his opponents and began to fight furiously with the most challenging person. He was so intent that he ignored a seven-year old kid who slipped around him and delivered a perfect front kick to his spine. “Out!”
The lesson: Be aware of your surroundings. Lift up your eyes. As in martial arts, so in life. We are surrounded by beauty and glory. The seasons change, the year ages in the graceful journey that is autumn. We savor the days, and welcome the promise of new life as an old life passes away and we smile or weep in memory. Be aware.
But are we? Are our days a joy and a revelation, or a burden? Is our life more curse than blessing? Is joy and delight hard to come by?
If we are not watchful, if we do not take care, it is easy to live in the place of scarcity and lack and even resentment that is the temptation of all of us. It is my temptation. At my stage in life my demons have names like “discouragement”, “cynicism”, and “resentment” when life does not turn out the way I thought it should. “My life should be secure and stable now.” “The other people in my life should have gotten a clue by now.” Even “the parish should be all straightened out by now.”
“”Who is this who darkens counsel without understanding?” God’s dialogue with Job is ours as well. “Dark counsel” comes to all of us, when we are sure that the weary resentful voices inside us speak truth.
But if our days are more burden than joy, it may do no good to be harangued by some preacher to “snap out of it.” That just adds to the burden, gives us more things to do.
We need someone to carry burdens that are too heavy for us. Jesus, says Hebrews, is “able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness.”
There is no burden we carry that has not already been carried by Jesus. There is no cry in the night, there is no agony of soul, there is no silent pain, there is no heaviness of heart that is not also being carried alongside us and within us. The Christ of hope and glory is the Christ who still suffers with his beloved people. As we struggle, as we journey, there is one who is with us and is healing us and is setting us free. Each step we take is not the same as the last. Each step takes us closer to knowing the heart of God.
A professor wrote recently that the letter to the Hebrews was written to a good community who were tired of doing the right thing—tired of being faithful in worship, tired of caring for the poor and needy, tired of keeping the community going one more year, one more month, one more day. Sound familiar? There’s no all-healing special program to address that. But there is Jesus Christ, his overwhelming love, his endless mystery and fascination, his amazing ability to heal and understand and renew and bring what was dead back to life.
Jesus has been to that moment of despair. From it he returns with grace and power to give abundantly to us.
(Job 38: 1-7; Ps 104: 1-9, 25, 37b; Heb 5: 1-10; Mark 10: 35-45)
“Be aware of your surroundings.”
Last Thursday night I taught our martial arts class. I wanted to do something fun, so in the last ten minutes I had the group divide into four teams and play a game called Tae Kwan Do dodge-ball. At the signal each team attacks the other and spars in a free-for-all. If a point is scored for a clean hit, that person needs to go and stand against the wall. They can only re-join if an active teammate touches them. The last team with one or more active members left wins.
There’s a lot to be learned in martial arts. One intense young man charged his opponents and began to fight furiously with the most challenging person. He was so intent that he ignored a seven-year old kid who slipped around him and delivered a perfect front kick to his spine. “Out!”
The lesson: Be aware of your surroundings. Lift up your eyes. As in martial arts, so in life. We are surrounded by beauty and glory. The seasons change, the year ages in the graceful journey that is autumn. We savor the days, and welcome the promise of new life as an old life passes away and we smile or weep in memory. Be aware.
But are we? Are our days a joy and a revelation, or a burden? Is our life more curse than blessing? Is joy and delight hard to come by?
If we are not watchful, if we do not take care, it is easy to live in the place of scarcity and lack and even resentment that is the temptation of all of us. It is my temptation. At my stage in life my demons have names like “discouragement”, “cynicism”, and “resentment” when life does not turn out the way I thought it should. “My life should be secure and stable now.” “The other people in my life should have gotten a clue by now.” Even “the parish should be all straightened out by now.”
“”Who is this who darkens counsel without understanding?” God’s dialogue with Job is ours as well. “Dark counsel” comes to all of us, when we are sure that the weary resentful voices inside us speak truth.
But if our days are more burden than joy, it may do no good to be harangued by some preacher to “snap out of it.” That just adds to the burden, gives us more things to do.
We need someone to carry burdens that are too heavy for us. Jesus, says Hebrews, is “able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness.”
There is no burden we carry that has not already been carried by Jesus. There is no cry in the night, there is no agony of soul, there is no silent pain, there is no heaviness of heart that is not also being carried alongside us and within us. The Christ of hope and glory is the Christ who still suffers with his beloved people. As we struggle, as we journey, there is one who is with us and is healing us and is setting us free. Each step we take is not the same as the last. Each step takes us closer to knowing the heart of God.
A professor wrote recently that the letter to the Hebrews was written to a good community who were tired of doing the right thing—tired of being faithful in worship, tired of caring for the poor and needy, tired of keeping the community going one more year, one more month, one more day. Sound familiar? There’s no all-healing special program to address that. But there is Jesus Christ, his overwhelming love, his endless mystery and fascination, his amazing ability to heal and understand and renew and bring what was dead back to life.
Jesus has been to that moment of despair. From it he returns with grace and power to give abundantly to us.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Impossible
Proper 23 B 2009
(Job 23: 1-9, 16-17; Ps 8; Heb 4: 12-16; Mark 10: 17-31)
After a flood, a young man walked along the swollen riverbank to see the rushing water and the wreckage.
Around a bend in the river, he found an old man standing up to his chest in the dangerous current. The old man was reaching out his hand to a tangle of branches in the midst of the waters. Looking closer, the young man saw a large scorpion clinging to the end of one branch. The young man watched in wonder and horror as the scorpion stung the old man on the hand. After shaking his swollen, bleeding hand, the old man reached out to the scorpion again. And again, and again.
After watching this repetitive drama for some moments, the young man finally burst out, “Leave it alone, you old fool! Let that ungrateful bug drown! He’s not going to appreciate what you’re trying to do, and he will sting you every time!”
The old man turned and looked at the young man with serene eyes in spite of the pain. “It’s in the nature of the scorpion to sting. And it is in my nature to try and save it. Why should I change my own nature?”
Well, this story raises a lot of questions for me. The first is, who is that old man living with living with and why hasn’t he been taking his medication? To rescue an unlovable poisonous insect even though it thanks you with a sting is insane as far as the world is concerned. Lots of words come to mind to dismiss the old man’s behavior—self-destructive, masochistic, even the milder “co-dependent.” I know that as I tell this story faces and situations from my own life and my own ministry come to mind—people who rewarded loving attention with demands for even more attention, or new arrays of problems when the old ones had been resolved, or walking away after absorbing tons of time and attention, sometimes waving one or more fingers behind them as they did. We all can relate, we all have been there. Perhaps we have been on the other side of the fence also, at least once or twice.
We speak about “boundaries” and “tough love” and “taking care of ourselves so we have something left to give to others.” Those are all wise words. Job’s words in the first reading become all of our words as we try to live and love, when all good works seem to taste and feel like dust and God’s face is hidden.
And yet, I want what that old man had—the peace, and the freedom to live in that embracing, giving, loving place. I find myself thinking that it is not just natural to live like that. It is supernatural, it is transformed nature, it is nature that is healed and set free by God.
Getting there is not an easy journey. Beware of easy religion with clear maps and all the answers! The man who ran up to Jesus today and asked him what to do had done everything right. He had kept the commandments, he’d read and listened to his Bible and took it all to heart. And I don’t think he was a hypocrite, because the text says that Jesus looked at him “and loved him.” But loving this man meant asking him to go to a place that his conscience and his religion had never asked him to go to before. Leave, leave what he thought he had a right to own even if he was doing good things with it. Leave it even though wealth was thought by some to be a sign of God’s blessing. Leave, give, follow, be nothing in the world’s eyes so you can have everything in God’s eyes. “How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.”
It’s impossible, humanly speaking. It is totally possible, with the help of God.
A man named Mark Scandrette recently gave a speech on “The Five Myths of Community.” He shocks his listeners, good church people, by reminding them that the first Christians were “miserable”—they lost a great deal for following Jesus, even their lives some of them. But church, says Mark, is not the place where we get all our needs met, where we find our favorite opinions affirmed, where we are totally comfortable all of the time. Even wanting community, says Mark, is not a good goal in itself; he said that “community is a beautiful by-product of seeking God’s kingdom together.” The key is to know and live that we come together to seek the kingdom of God. That is what a church is; that is all a church is.
This, by the way, is a stewardship sermon. Notice I have never used the word “money.” Stewardship begins with remembering who we most deeply are, and why we gather at all. When we hear that story of the old man reaching out to the scorpion, do we simply shudder in revulsion and disgust, or dismiss it as an improbable fable? Or does something in us come alight and say softly, “Yes, yes. I don’t like stings, but that is the kind of freedom and generous nature that I hunger for. I want to believe that life is possible. But I do not know how to get there.” And in the Gospel, the same thing—sell it all? In this housing market? Give it away? Where would I raise my kids? But isn’t there something deep inside, something that maybe was more active and visible when we were young and we hadn’t let life teach us oh so many limits, be oh so practical, that comes alive and says, “Yes, yes. I remember that! I remember hungering for that kind of freedom, I remember wanting to know what it would be like to live for God in that way. I remember traveling light, walking on a holy road.”
For us it is impossible. But not for God—even our tired and cynical hearts and our minds bombarded with a culture that tells us to get and get and no you do not yet have enough—it is not impossible for God.
And to share that journey, to ask what all that means, and to try it out—that is why a church exists. And that is the only Gospel reason for a church to exist.
(Job 23: 1-9, 16-17; Ps 8; Heb 4: 12-16; Mark 10: 17-31)
After a flood, a young man walked along the swollen riverbank to see the rushing water and the wreckage.
Around a bend in the river, he found an old man standing up to his chest in the dangerous current. The old man was reaching out his hand to a tangle of branches in the midst of the waters. Looking closer, the young man saw a large scorpion clinging to the end of one branch. The young man watched in wonder and horror as the scorpion stung the old man on the hand. After shaking his swollen, bleeding hand, the old man reached out to the scorpion again. And again, and again.
After watching this repetitive drama for some moments, the young man finally burst out, “Leave it alone, you old fool! Let that ungrateful bug drown! He’s not going to appreciate what you’re trying to do, and he will sting you every time!”
The old man turned and looked at the young man with serene eyes in spite of the pain. “It’s in the nature of the scorpion to sting. And it is in my nature to try and save it. Why should I change my own nature?”
Well, this story raises a lot of questions for me. The first is, who is that old man living with living with and why hasn’t he been taking his medication? To rescue an unlovable poisonous insect even though it thanks you with a sting is insane as far as the world is concerned. Lots of words come to mind to dismiss the old man’s behavior—self-destructive, masochistic, even the milder “co-dependent.” I know that as I tell this story faces and situations from my own life and my own ministry come to mind—people who rewarded loving attention with demands for even more attention, or new arrays of problems when the old ones had been resolved, or walking away after absorbing tons of time and attention, sometimes waving one or more fingers behind them as they did. We all can relate, we all have been there. Perhaps we have been on the other side of the fence also, at least once or twice.
We speak about “boundaries” and “tough love” and “taking care of ourselves so we have something left to give to others.” Those are all wise words. Job’s words in the first reading become all of our words as we try to live and love, when all good works seem to taste and feel like dust and God’s face is hidden.
And yet, I want what that old man had—the peace, and the freedom to live in that embracing, giving, loving place. I find myself thinking that it is not just natural to live like that. It is supernatural, it is transformed nature, it is nature that is healed and set free by God.
Getting there is not an easy journey. Beware of easy religion with clear maps and all the answers! The man who ran up to Jesus today and asked him what to do had done everything right. He had kept the commandments, he’d read and listened to his Bible and took it all to heart. And I don’t think he was a hypocrite, because the text says that Jesus looked at him “and loved him.” But loving this man meant asking him to go to a place that his conscience and his religion had never asked him to go to before. Leave, leave what he thought he had a right to own even if he was doing good things with it. Leave it even though wealth was thought by some to be a sign of God’s blessing. Leave, give, follow, be nothing in the world’s eyes so you can have everything in God’s eyes. “How hard it is to enter the kingdom of God.”
It’s impossible, humanly speaking. It is totally possible, with the help of God.
A man named Mark Scandrette recently gave a speech on “The Five Myths of Community.” He shocks his listeners, good church people, by reminding them that the first Christians were “miserable”—they lost a great deal for following Jesus, even their lives some of them. But church, says Mark, is not the place where we get all our needs met, where we find our favorite opinions affirmed, where we are totally comfortable all of the time. Even wanting community, says Mark, is not a good goal in itself; he said that “community is a beautiful by-product of seeking God’s kingdom together.” The key is to know and live that we come together to seek the kingdom of God. That is what a church is; that is all a church is.
This, by the way, is a stewardship sermon. Notice I have never used the word “money.” Stewardship begins with remembering who we most deeply are, and why we gather at all. When we hear that story of the old man reaching out to the scorpion, do we simply shudder in revulsion and disgust, or dismiss it as an improbable fable? Or does something in us come alight and say softly, “Yes, yes. I don’t like stings, but that is the kind of freedom and generous nature that I hunger for. I want to believe that life is possible. But I do not know how to get there.” And in the Gospel, the same thing—sell it all? In this housing market? Give it away? Where would I raise my kids? But isn’t there something deep inside, something that maybe was more active and visible when we were young and we hadn’t let life teach us oh so many limits, be oh so practical, that comes alive and says, “Yes, yes. I remember that! I remember hungering for that kind of freedom, I remember wanting to know what it would be like to live for God in that way. I remember traveling light, walking on a holy road.”
For us it is impossible. But not for God—even our tired and cynical hearts and our minds bombarded with a culture that tells us to get and get and no you do not yet have enough—it is not impossible for God.
And to share that journey, to ask what all that means, and to try it out—that is why a church exists. And that is the only Gospel reason for a church to exist.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Show up
Proper 20 B 2009
(Prov 31: 10-31; Ps 1; James 3: 13-4: 3, 7-8a)
God spoke to me when I walked the Chihuahua.
The Chihuahua is a constant in our household life—he upholds the truth that in our lives there is someone or something who needs constant care, daily attention, and the results are often not pretty. And there’s no medal given for a good job.
So I was walking the Chihuahua, no longer caring that it is impossible to keep one’s dignity while walking a Chihuahua. The Chihuahua stopped for a particularly productive moment. I stooped with one of the numerous plastic bags we keep for just such occasions. As I rose, I heard in my mind’s eye a voice that said, “This is your life.”
Now, that may sound like one of the darker moments, but it wasn’t. I stood still and felt the breeze. The sun was bathing Mt. Tabor in soft light, making the green of the trees glow. Even the Chihuahua seemed to sense something in his almond-sized brain as he stood still for a change. I held in my hand the only tangible thing a Chihuahua produces and thought, “This is my life. I’d better start showing up for it.”
Our God is a God of the present moment, of the actual. God does not wait for pious moments or for times when we feel neat and clean and properly prepared for the presence of the Divine. God is in the actual, in the day to day. We are to “love things heavenly”, but “heavenly” is not the same as “not yet.” “Heavenly” begins now.
If we wish to encounter this God and drink deeply of God’s presence, then we need to show up at our own lives. We need to be present and greet the moment. We need to acknowledge with awe and gratitude the God whose presence is felt in the actual, whose love is conveyed through the love of others.
And it matters what we do, how we show up.
When I read today’s Old Testament text, I figured I was dead in the water. I thought about how my life expectancy would be measured in minutes if not in seconds if I presumed to tell any woman here all about a “good wife.” Besides, as the text presents it she’s kind of a Type A personality, sleep deprivation and all. Personally I prefer to keep my role models a low bar—Homer Simpson is my model for fatherhood, or on really bad days Peter Griffin.
But the woman whom I have the honor of living with is usually up before light, often walking the same Chihuahua through whom God spoke to me. Most of us are up before first light. All those details—making a living, engaging with the family, multitasking—our lives may not have much to do with weaving and distaffs and linen cloth any more, but the sweat of keeping it all together, dropping as few juggling balls as possible, feels very familiar. And in the midst of that, we struggle to be decent human beings, to give something to those in need, to show up at church sometimes. That’s where we all live. This text loves the actual, and says that God not only sees our lives but is there in the sweat and the juggling. So it matters that we show up to our own lives, it matter who we are. And it matters what we ask for from God in order to live our lives, says James. So ask often and well. We’ll get what we need to live a life in Christ.
In fact, we’ll get what we need in order to have our lives transformed.
The Gospel today is all about reversing expectations. Mine are being reversed all the time. There’s a character in a Tolstoy short story who wanted nothing more than that his life proceed “easily, pleasantly, and decorously.” At age 51 I am coming to terms with the fact that my life will never be all worked out—job secure, income not obscenely large but enough to eliminate worry, health of course fine, and everything smooth for the spouse and kids. Well, real life does not proceed “easily, pleasantly, and decorously.” Goodness and gift alternates with curve balls and, often enough, burdens that we end up carrying for the long haul.
But we’re not called to ease and predictability. We’re called to wonder and to transformation. In the Gospel-world, the most despised and powerless are great. Everything we thought about power, prominence, and meaning is flipped upside-down by Jesus taking that child in his arms. In Jesus’ times children really did not exist as people until they reached a certain age and it looked as if they would survive childhood. They had few if any rights, and were here today, gone tomorrow.
But God loves and raises up the forgotten and the vulnerable.
God raises up the forgotten and vulnerable in the world. We the Church do well to remember that when we lament our lack of access to financial and political power, and when we ask what is our mission and reason for being.
And God raises up the forgotten, vulnerable portions of our own lives. Nothing we live, nothing we endure, nothing we wonder is beyond the loving gaze and transforming power of God. Often enough, it is the most neglected, ordinary, and vulnerable part of ourselves that is the most crucial. It is there that we meet the loving God.
Just ask any Chihuahua.
(Prov 31: 10-31; Ps 1; James 3: 13-4: 3, 7-8a)
God spoke to me when I walked the Chihuahua.
The Chihuahua is a constant in our household life—he upholds the truth that in our lives there is someone or something who needs constant care, daily attention, and the results are often not pretty. And there’s no medal given for a good job.
So I was walking the Chihuahua, no longer caring that it is impossible to keep one’s dignity while walking a Chihuahua. The Chihuahua stopped for a particularly productive moment. I stooped with one of the numerous plastic bags we keep for just such occasions. As I rose, I heard in my mind’s eye a voice that said, “This is your life.”
Now, that may sound like one of the darker moments, but it wasn’t. I stood still and felt the breeze. The sun was bathing Mt. Tabor in soft light, making the green of the trees glow. Even the Chihuahua seemed to sense something in his almond-sized brain as he stood still for a change. I held in my hand the only tangible thing a Chihuahua produces and thought, “This is my life. I’d better start showing up for it.”
Our God is a God of the present moment, of the actual. God does not wait for pious moments or for times when we feel neat and clean and properly prepared for the presence of the Divine. God is in the actual, in the day to day. We are to “love things heavenly”, but “heavenly” is not the same as “not yet.” “Heavenly” begins now.
If we wish to encounter this God and drink deeply of God’s presence, then we need to show up at our own lives. We need to be present and greet the moment. We need to acknowledge with awe and gratitude the God whose presence is felt in the actual, whose love is conveyed through the love of others.
And it matters what we do, how we show up.
When I read today’s Old Testament text, I figured I was dead in the water. I thought about how my life expectancy would be measured in minutes if not in seconds if I presumed to tell any woman here all about a “good wife.” Besides, as the text presents it she’s kind of a Type A personality, sleep deprivation and all. Personally I prefer to keep my role models a low bar—Homer Simpson is my model for fatherhood, or on really bad days Peter Griffin.
But the woman whom I have the honor of living with is usually up before light, often walking the same Chihuahua through whom God spoke to me. Most of us are up before first light. All those details—making a living, engaging with the family, multitasking—our lives may not have much to do with weaving and distaffs and linen cloth any more, but the sweat of keeping it all together, dropping as few juggling balls as possible, feels very familiar. And in the midst of that, we struggle to be decent human beings, to give something to those in need, to show up at church sometimes. That’s where we all live. This text loves the actual, and says that God not only sees our lives but is there in the sweat and the juggling. So it matters that we show up to our own lives, it matter who we are. And it matters what we ask for from God in order to live our lives, says James. So ask often and well. We’ll get what we need to live a life in Christ.
In fact, we’ll get what we need in order to have our lives transformed.
The Gospel today is all about reversing expectations. Mine are being reversed all the time. There’s a character in a Tolstoy short story who wanted nothing more than that his life proceed “easily, pleasantly, and decorously.” At age 51 I am coming to terms with the fact that my life will never be all worked out—job secure, income not obscenely large but enough to eliminate worry, health of course fine, and everything smooth for the spouse and kids. Well, real life does not proceed “easily, pleasantly, and decorously.” Goodness and gift alternates with curve balls and, often enough, burdens that we end up carrying for the long haul.
But we’re not called to ease and predictability. We’re called to wonder and to transformation. In the Gospel-world, the most despised and powerless are great. Everything we thought about power, prominence, and meaning is flipped upside-down by Jesus taking that child in his arms. In Jesus’ times children really did not exist as people until they reached a certain age and it looked as if they would survive childhood. They had few if any rights, and were here today, gone tomorrow.
But God loves and raises up the forgotten and the vulnerable.
God raises up the forgotten and vulnerable in the world. We the Church do well to remember that when we lament our lack of access to financial and political power, and when we ask what is our mission and reason for being.
And God raises up the forgotten, vulnerable portions of our own lives. Nothing we live, nothing we endure, nothing we wonder is beyond the loving gaze and transforming power of God. Often enough, it is the most neglected, ordinary, and vulnerable part of ourselves that is the most crucial. It is there that we meet the loving God.
Just ask any Chihuahua.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
For a little longer...
Holy Cross address 2009
“Sing to the Lord a new song…” we said (sang) today.
I hope that today we will sing a new song. I don’t mean that we need to sing a song written last night, although I’d like to try that sometime. Old songs can become new songs. Old churches can become new churches.
Today’s feast shows us how. In the Holy Cross lessons and Collect we hear how God is among us and how we are empowered to live with each other. Humility is power. Service is authority. Be human if you would be divine. Follow in order to lead. What does that have to do with our life here at Saints Peter and Paul?
As the Psalm implies, we can choose to stick with old songs. We can lose hope or faith in our future or our capacity to show forth Christ to this new, post-modern age. We can stay small and hold on tight, worry and wait for “something to happen” or “somebody to do something.” But if we do that, we forget how God can renew and bring forth new life, and we forget our own history.
We are a charming aging Episcopal church first planted in Montavilla at the turn of the 20th century. We have changed, died and risen many times. Each time, people of faith and vision and courageous leadership has created new life to serve a changing world. I think the best era was the original founding of the old St. Peter’s. I am not sure how they worshipped, or dressed, what hymns they sung, or how their life looked. But I know that they planted a church at the inspiration of a priest who said, “Montavilla is a place which needs the church much.”
Montavilla still needs the church much. We are here for a reason. We are not just here for ourselves. We are here to serve. We are here to learn about the people who surround us. We are not here to ensure our own survival just as we are now. We are not here to make other people look like us and act like us. We are here to seek them, love them, invite them, and go together with them to a place that is new to both them and us. That is the Kingdom of God. That is the “new song.”
I stand before you with the authority of 14 years of service and of leadership as Rector. That has been a great privilege for which I give humble thanks. I believe that I am called to be here still. I also believe that I am called to exercise a special gift, which is to put into practice what I have learned about the church that God is everywhere calling into being. I spent six of my younger years as a Catholic missionary helping to bring forth new forms of church in the developing world. I believe I have come full circle. I do not believe that I am called to maintain business-as-usual at Saints Peter and Paul. I am of course called to love and to serve, and to uphold worship, teaching, and pastoral care of the sick and suffering. That does not change. But I believe we have a year of grace in front of us, what one leader called the “Episcopal moment”, and like all moments this one can come and then pass us by if we do not grasp it. In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks urgently, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light…”
The urgency is made plain by our energy and finances.
I have felt an atmosphere of weariness in many aspects of our life. The former women’s group no longer functions, we have not been able to attract any volunteers to sustain classical Sunday morning church school, and we are not maintaining our outside grounds and physical appearance among many other former ministries. It just feels like there is no energy there.
The parish’s finances have been getting worse in the past several years. We have carried on even though we’re living beyond our means. This year our reserves were used up. And I sense that we are tired of the whole money question. We organized an ambitious fund-raiser at PGE Park and this ended by wearing out a very small group of hard-working people.
We received an estate this past year from a generous parishioner named Cynthia Brown. Cynthia had several concerns that she expressed with her bequest—she was concerned about the long-term viability of the parish, she was concerned that our deacon was receiving no compensation for her generous ministry, she was always concerned about our physical grounds, and she of course was a musician and lover of church music.
The estate totaled $209,000.00. We have already used $50,000.00 of this money to patch the big hole in our operating budget and to repay the capital funds account donated for long-term improvement. So we will have decisions to make about that money in this coming year.
As I see it, we can make a frugal decision, which is to bank the money long-term and reduce all expenses to within our means. This would probably mean dropping the rector’s compensation to less than full-time and making other staff cuts. This is the “turn out the lights and wait for something to happen” choice. In my view this violates the intention of the donor, because doing nothing new does not build a future. Mere survival is not a Gospel value, and churches either grow or slowly die. I was sponsored for ordination by a lovely old church that chose to slowly die. It died.
Or we can use up that money to patch our budget at present levels. That means we will be back having this same conversation in a year or two, with fewer choices available.
Or we can take this moment as God’s invitation and empowerment to grow. And growth does not mean to keep doing what we have been doing, only do it harder and expect different results. To grow means to welcome creativity and to try new things. To grow means to reach out beyond ourselves and to love and invite those who are really around us and among us.
The same speaker I have been quoting asked his gathering, “If you had a choice between staying the same size and getting more money, or growing so that your new size and your new identity put you in a different place, which would you choose?” He went on to say that if a church does not intend to grow, then every time it asks for money it is stealing.
I do not want to steal Cynthia’s money by using it and not intending to grow. As we begin the Fall canvass, I do not want us to steal each other’s money if we do not intend to grow.
So I choose to be a missionary again. I will be looking at my own gifts and talents in order to not just maintain our life, but to grow our life in Christ. Did you know that at present I am the priest in the Diocese that people come to talk to about new models of church and ministry? I intend to put this into practice right here. You can expect the same basic kindness and care and listening ear as before. But I think it’s time to re-start my ministry as Rector, and to be much more forthright about my own sense of vision and of mission.
We have so many advantages. We have a building and property free and clear, we have a rich inherited tradition of liturgy and sacrament. We have the Episcopal inheritance of the “middle way” avoiding the ideological pitfalls of liberal and conservative which suck up so much energy. We have a faithful continuing membership who have sustained our life with time, talent, and treasure, and I hope will continue to do so. Thank you all for making this moment possible.
And we have newer gifts. We have highly committed members among us who have been here five years or less, who have grown up in the emerging post-modern culture and know it well. Thank you for coming to make up a new church, thank you for exercising your gifts among us.
We have the richness of the Celtic vision, which I think we have barely begun to explore and which I will make more visible. I chose the re-imagined Celtic heritage not simply because it speaks to me but because the Celtic Christian vision has unique power to speak to post-modern people and experience.
And we have many new ideas and new ministries that have already begun.
Here is our new song. Here is how we would not steal Cynthia’s money or anyone else’s. It is time for an extreme makeover.
I want to seek a consultant, who will help me as rector and help us all in choosing new life.
We shall expand our Hispanic community and ministry. I am glad that we have invited and welcomed people who would never have come to or probably would not have been welcome here 50 years ago. It is a good start.
I believe we need a fourth service, not as a simple alternative for our present membership who might want their Sunday mornings to themselves, but as an active way to invite and make welcome people whom we will otherwise never see on Sunday morning. Our Sunday morning schedule alone does not speak to many of the de-churched and un-churched and alone will not grow us in the way that we need. A group of leaders here have already experimented with such a service. I think we need to back this with talent and energy and with any financing necessary for it to succeed.
We need to re-imagine and re-design our fellowship space so that it is welcoming and inviting and “safe” for non-members to come to. Did you know that lots of folks find churches scary? What would make our space as easy and inviting to come to as, say, the Bi-Partisan Café on Stark, or even the Lucky Lab Brewpub?
We need to love our grounds and exterior better, and if we are too few and too busy to do so ourselves than we should pay to have that done if only for awhile.
Another group of us met last week to start a financial self-sustaining project—brewing beer to support our ministries. It’s an ancient custom for monks and other religious communities to make beer, wine, and other such products for their own support, and today the best beer in the world is made by Belgian Trappist monks. I think we need to back this with whatever work, support, and financing is necessary to help it be a well-planned success.
I think we need to write a new letter of agreement with Deacon Tracy and honor Cynthia’s desire to better support Tracy in her ministry.
And as for me, in order to support my family my full-time compensation needs to be at least maintained. But I would be stealing that money if I were not working specifically for the growth of Saints Peter and Paul as I believe we need. So I wish to re-allocate my time and energy for growth and re-development. I will call on the office of the new bishop to help me do this. And I will rely upon the support of Fr. John Nesbitt and Fr. Phil to help me devote time and energy to growth. Fr. Lindsay has chosen to attend St. David’s for six months in order to support Mother Sara in her efforts to re-invent that congregation. Fr. Lindsay is a missionary soul.
We need to seek ways that work for us to better know one another and to form some authentic community among all our present membership. For that I welcome anyone’s ideas and energy. I’m not a very good social director.
I think a portion of the bequest should be put away in a long-term fund. But the majority should be invested in making a viable future. And I will ask the Vestry to choose to do so. All these choices will be put before the Vestry for their decision. Speak to any member of the Vestry with your thoughts.
We will lay our whole life before us for discernment, reflection, and choice. We will do so in a spirit of listening and of respect. We will hold periodic Town Hall meetings, the next one just next week, to help us do this. We wish to leave no one behind. But we wish to move forward. And we shall, with the Spirit’s help. That’s our new song.
We are not here primarily for ourselves. We are surrounded by beautiful gifted hurting people who may not be dying to be Episcopalian, may have no idea what the term “Anglo-Catholic” means and may never care, but who are longing for God and for healing and for community and for meaning. Can we help them find that? Do we still believe that of ourselves? As we become more fully that kind of community, we shall be richly fed as well. In a year’s time we may find that we still have hard choices to make. But at least we will have dreamed and lived and become more bonded to one another and to the One who came to serve. And we will have helped this community that we love so much live into a vibrant future, for people whom we do not yet know. But I hope we will get to know some of them very soon!
“Sing to the Lord a new song…” we said (sang) today.
I hope that today we will sing a new song. I don’t mean that we need to sing a song written last night, although I’d like to try that sometime. Old songs can become new songs. Old churches can become new churches.
Today’s feast shows us how. In the Holy Cross lessons and Collect we hear how God is among us and how we are empowered to live with each other. Humility is power. Service is authority. Be human if you would be divine. Follow in order to lead. What does that have to do with our life here at Saints Peter and Paul?
As the Psalm implies, we can choose to stick with old songs. We can lose hope or faith in our future or our capacity to show forth Christ to this new, post-modern age. We can stay small and hold on tight, worry and wait for “something to happen” or “somebody to do something.” But if we do that, we forget how God can renew and bring forth new life, and we forget our own history.
We are a charming aging Episcopal church first planted in Montavilla at the turn of the 20th century. We have changed, died and risen many times. Each time, people of faith and vision and courageous leadership has created new life to serve a changing world. I think the best era was the original founding of the old St. Peter’s. I am not sure how they worshipped, or dressed, what hymns they sung, or how their life looked. But I know that they planted a church at the inspiration of a priest who said, “Montavilla is a place which needs the church much.”
Montavilla still needs the church much. We are here for a reason. We are not just here for ourselves. We are here to serve. We are here to learn about the people who surround us. We are not here to ensure our own survival just as we are now. We are not here to make other people look like us and act like us. We are here to seek them, love them, invite them, and go together with them to a place that is new to both them and us. That is the Kingdom of God. That is the “new song.”
I stand before you with the authority of 14 years of service and of leadership as Rector. That has been a great privilege for which I give humble thanks. I believe that I am called to be here still. I also believe that I am called to exercise a special gift, which is to put into practice what I have learned about the church that God is everywhere calling into being. I spent six of my younger years as a Catholic missionary helping to bring forth new forms of church in the developing world. I believe I have come full circle. I do not believe that I am called to maintain business-as-usual at Saints Peter and Paul. I am of course called to love and to serve, and to uphold worship, teaching, and pastoral care of the sick and suffering. That does not change. But I believe we have a year of grace in front of us, what one leader called the “Episcopal moment”, and like all moments this one can come and then pass us by if we do not grasp it. In today’s Gospel Jesus speaks urgently, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light…”
The urgency is made plain by our energy and finances.
I have felt an atmosphere of weariness in many aspects of our life. The former women’s group no longer functions, we have not been able to attract any volunteers to sustain classical Sunday morning church school, and we are not maintaining our outside grounds and physical appearance among many other former ministries. It just feels like there is no energy there.
The parish’s finances have been getting worse in the past several years. We have carried on even though we’re living beyond our means. This year our reserves were used up. And I sense that we are tired of the whole money question. We organized an ambitious fund-raiser at PGE Park and this ended by wearing out a very small group of hard-working people.
We received an estate this past year from a generous parishioner named Cynthia Brown. Cynthia had several concerns that she expressed with her bequest—she was concerned about the long-term viability of the parish, she was concerned that our deacon was receiving no compensation for her generous ministry, she was always concerned about our physical grounds, and she of course was a musician and lover of church music.
The estate totaled $209,000.00. We have already used $50,000.00 of this money to patch the big hole in our operating budget and to repay the capital funds account donated for long-term improvement. So we will have decisions to make about that money in this coming year.
As I see it, we can make a frugal decision, which is to bank the money long-term and reduce all expenses to within our means. This would probably mean dropping the rector’s compensation to less than full-time and making other staff cuts. This is the “turn out the lights and wait for something to happen” choice. In my view this violates the intention of the donor, because doing nothing new does not build a future. Mere survival is not a Gospel value, and churches either grow or slowly die. I was sponsored for ordination by a lovely old church that chose to slowly die. It died.
Or we can use up that money to patch our budget at present levels. That means we will be back having this same conversation in a year or two, with fewer choices available.
Or we can take this moment as God’s invitation and empowerment to grow. And growth does not mean to keep doing what we have been doing, only do it harder and expect different results. To grow means to welcome creativity and to try new things. To grow means to reach out beyond ourselves and to love and invite those who are really around us and among us.
The same speaker I have been quoting asked his gathering, “If you had a choice between staying the same size and getting more money, or growing so that your new size and your new identity put you in a different place, which would you choose?” He went on to say that if a church does not intend to grow, then every time it asks for money it is stealing.
I do not want to steal Cynthia’s money by using it and not intending to grow. As we begin the Fall canvass, I do not want us to steal each other’s money if we do not intend to grow.
So I choose to be a missionary again. I will be looking at my own gifts and talents in order to not just maintain our life, but to grow our life in Christ. Did you know that at present I am the priest in the Diocese that people come to talk to about new models of church and ministry? I intend to put this into practice right here. You can expect the same basic kindness and care and listening ear as before. But I think it’s time to re-start my ministry as Rector, and to be much more forthright about my own sense of vision and of mission.
We have so many advantages. We have a building and property free and clear, we have a rich inherited tradition of liturgy and sacrament. We have the Episcopal inheritance of the “middle way” avoiding the ideological pitfalls of liberal and conservative which suck up so much energy. We have a faithful continuing membership who have sustained our life with time, talent, and treasure, and I hope will continue to do so. Thank you all for making this moment possible.
And we have newer gifts. We have highly committed members among us who have been here five years or less, who have grown up in the emerging post-modern culture and know it well. Thank you for coming to make up a new church, thank you for exercising your gifts among us.
We have the richness of the Celtic vision, which I think we have barely begun to explore and which I will make more visible. I chose the re-imagined Celtic heritage not simply because it speaks to me but because the Celtic Christian vision has unique power to speak to post-modern people and experience.
And we have many new ideas and new ministries that have already begun.
Here is our new song. Here is how we would not steal Cynthia’s money or anyone else’s. It is time for an extreme makeover.
I want to seek a consultant, who will help me as rector and help us all in choosing new life.
We shall expand our Hispanic community and ministry. I am glad that we have invited and welcomed people who would never have come to or probably would not have been welcome here 50 years ago. It is a good start.
I believe we need a fourth service, not as a simple alternative for our present membership who might want their Sunday mornings to themselves, but as an active way to invite and make welcome people whom we will otherwise never see on Sunday morning. Our Sunday morning schedule alone does not speak to many of the de-churched and un-churched and alone will not grow us in the way that we need. A group of leaders here have already experimented with such a service. I think we need to back this with talent and energy and with any financing necessary for it to succeed.
We need to re-imagine and re-design our fellowship space so that it is welcoming and inviting and “safe” for non-members to come to. Did you know that lots of folks find churches scary? What would make our space as easy and inviting to come to as, say, the Bi-Partisan Café on Stark, or even the Lucky Lab Brewpub?
We need to love our grounds and exterior better, and if we are too few and too busy to do so ourselves than we should pay to have that done if only for awhile.
Another group of us met last week to start a financial self-sustaining project—brewing beer to support our ministries. It’s an ancient custom for monks and other religious communities to make beer, wine, and other such products for their own support, and today the best beer in the world is made by Belgian Trappist monks. I think we need to back this with whatever work, support, and financing is necessary to help it be a well-planned success.
I think we need to write a new letter of agreement with Deacon Tracy and honor Cynthia’s desire to better support Tracy in her ministry.
And as for me, in order to support my family my full-time compensation needs to be at least maintained. But I would be stealing that money if I were not working specifically for the growth of Saints Peter and Paul as I believe we need. So I wish to re-allocate my time and energy for growth and re-development. I will call on the office of the new bishop to help me do this. And I will rely upon the support of Fr. John Nesbitt and Fr. Phil to help me devote time and energy to growth. Fr. Lindsay has chosen to attend St. David’s for six months in order to support Mother Sara in her efforts to re-invent that congregation. Fr. Lindsay is a missionary soul.
We need to seek ways that work for us to better know one another and to form some authentic community among all our present membership. For that I welcome anyone’s ideas and energy. I’m not a very good social director.
I think a portion of the bequest should be put away in a long-term fund. But the majority should be invested in making a viable future. And I will ask the Vestry to choose to do so. All these choices will be put before the Vestry for their decision. Speak to any member of the Vestry with your thoughts.
We will lay our whole life before us for discernment, reflection, and choice. We will do so in a spirit of listening and of respect. We will hold periodic Town Hall meetings, the next one just next week, to help us do this. We wish to leave no one behind. But we wish to move forward. And we shall, with the Spirit’s help. That’s our new song.
We are not here primarily for ourselves. We are surrounded by beautiful gifted hurting people who may not be dying to be Episcopalian, may have no idea what the term “Anglo-Catholic” means and may never care, but who are longing for God and for healing and for community and for meaning. Can we help them find that? Do we still believe that of ourselves? As we become more fully that kind of community, we shall be richly fed as well. In a year’s time we may find that we still have hard choices to make. But at least we will have dreamed and lived and become more bonded to one another and to the One who came to serve. And we will have helped this community that we love so much live into a vibrant future, for people whom we do not yet know. But I hope we will get to know some of them very soon!
Saturday, September 12, 2009
"What if..." on "participatory formation"
(note--a work in progress, inspired by "Seizing The Episcopal Moment")
Beginning a conversation…”what if?”
What if—we took seriously God’s invitation to live a different way of “being church” in the Episcopal tribe of Oregon?
What if we truly began to act and not simply reacted to factors like waning energy in present models of church, plummeting revenues, and abundant signs that the style of church that worked in the mid-20th century is no longer adequate?
What if we took seriously Brian McLaren’s invitation and charge to “create a zone of innovation and empowerment, a zone in which creative young/emerging leaders…can be supported to plant new faith communities relevant to the needs of young adults while being exempted from conventional internal politics and institutional constraints”?
What if we largely ceased “protecting the church” from pioneers, visionaries, and dreamers, and began actively seeking, welcoming, and supporting such people in an intentional companionship relationship?
What if we shifted the locus for such a relationship BACK to the local church, the local congregations, the local context for actual ministry as opposed to a distant graduate school setting?
What if such a setting emphasize group discernment and group participation in building a theological project together, rather than a curriculum pre-set and handed down in order to “form”?
What if we gathered the rich resources of teaching and preaching and pastoral ministry we already possess in our midst in order to enrich such a setting?
What if St. David’s were preserved all this time because it is meant to be the locus for such a community?
What if this “community of ministry” were taken seriously by the diocesan COM, and not seen as a secondary substitute for “real formation” in a Div school?
What if the new bishop enthusiastically supported such a project?
What if this new community were genuinely bi-cultural such that people tropic towards OR raised up by Hispanic community settings would feel wholly welcome?
What if, within this community, those participating would find ample support and resources to discern their call to committed baptismal ministry, to diaconate, to priesthood, or to any number of emerging forms of ministerial leadership?
What if those who would welcome such a community would be actively engaged in its ongoing formation and not have something “planned for them”?
What if this community, although enriched and shaped in large part by its Anglican “tribal roots”, were significantly post-denominational?
What if this new community of mission and ministry actively equipped folks to plant and nurture new forms of community and church?
What if the community itself were a “living laboratory” of such new forms of church?
What if we actively invited and recruited people into this community?
What if this community did theology and pastoral preparation BETTER than existing Div schools?
What if people immersed in such a community could be told that the Episcopal Diocese will take their sense of call seriously and will ordain them and support them in “doing new things”?
What if this process were not seen as strictly a “youth experiment” but would be open and inviting to all ages?
What if this process were explicitly hospitable to people with families, such that participating did not mean being torn from one’s family and that creative ways to welcome kids and spouses/companions were built in?
The one non “What-if?” in this sequence is myself—I care a lot about this, and it may be that I am still here around the premises because I am called to make this an other projects take flesh. We will see. But this is much bigger than me or any one person, and I feel called to help this new community take shape.
Kurt Neilson+
August 15, 2009
Beginning a conversation…”what if?”
What if—we took seriously God’s invitation to live a different way of “being church” in the Episcopal tribe of Oregon?
What if we truly began to act and not simply reacted to factors like waning energy in present models of church, plummeting revenues, and abundant signs that the style of church that worked in the mid-20th century is no longer adequate?
What if we took seriously Brian McLaren’s invitation and charge to “create a zone of innovation and empowerment, a zone in which creative young/emerging leaders…can be supported to plant new faith communities relevant to the needs of young adults while being exempted from conventional internal politics and institutional constraints”?
What if we largely ceased “protecting the church” from pioneers, visionaries, and dreamers, and began actively seeking, welcoming, and supporting such people in an intentional companionship relationship?
What if we shifted the locus for such a relationship BACK to the local church, the local congregations, the local context for actual ministry as opposed to a distant graduate school setting?
What if such a setting emphasize group discernment and group participation in building a theological project together, rather than a curriculum pre-set and handed down in order to “form”?
What if we gathered the rich resources of teaching and preaching and pastoral ministry we already possess in our midst in order to enrich such a setting?
What if St. David’s were preserved all this time because it is meant to be the locus for such a community?
What if this “community of ministry” were taken seriously by the diocesan COM, and not seen as a secondary substitute for “real formation” in a Div school?
What if the new bishop enthusiastically supported such a project?
What if this new community were genuinely bi-cultural such that people tropic towards OR raised up by Hispanic community settings would feel wholly welcome?
What if, within this community, those participating would find ample support and resources to discern their call to committed baptismal ministry, to diaconate, to priesthood, or to any number of emerging forms of ministerial leadership?
What if those who would welcome such a community would be actively engaged in its ongoing formation and not have something “planned for them”?
What if this community, although enriched and shaped in large part by its Anglican “tribal roots”, were significantly post-denominational?
What if this new community of mission and ministry actively equipped folks to plant and nurture new forms of community and church?
What if the community itself were a “living laboratory” of such new forms of church?
What if we actively invited and recruited people into this community?
What if this community did theology and pastoral preparation BETTER than existing Div schools?
What if people immersed in such a community could be told that the Episcopal Diocese will take their sense of call seriously and will ordain them and support them in “doing new things”?
What if this process were not seen as strictly a “youth experiment” but would be open and inviting to all ages?
What if this process were explicitly hospitable to people with families, such that participating did not mean being torn from one’s family and that creative ways to welcome kids and spouses/companions were built in?
The one non “What-if?” in this sequence is myself—I care a lot about this, and it may be that I am still here around the premises because I am called to make this an other projects take flesh. We will see. But this is much bigger than me or any one person, and I feel called to help this new community take shape.
Kurt Neilson+
August 15, 2009
Friday, September 11, 2009
Preference human and divine
Proper 18 B 2009
(Prov 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Ps 125; James 2: 1-10, 14-17; Mark 7: 24-37)
Preference can create the world we live in.
While we lived in Saint Louis, a prime-time news show filmed an episode there called “True Colors.” Their cameras followed two young men who were also friends from college. The only obvious difference between them was that one was white and the other was black.
The men interviewed for jobs, shopped in a jewelry store, and searched for apartments. The filmed results were stunning. The young white man was treated with warmth and was offered a second interview, while the black man was treated coolly and sent away with no such promise. The white man was shown great courtesy by the staff in the jewelry store, while the black man was ignored except by the security guard who shadowed him the whole time he was there. The white man was offered an apartment immediately, while the black man was told there were no vacancies. And there were.
We’ve heard such stories before. We hear them over and over because preference, favoring the wealthy, the fashionable, the sophisticated over the rest of humanity is an old, old tale.
It’s a problem of wisdom and knowledge, says Proverbs. Choose a good name over great riches, for God made us all. We have the same source, the same family root, the same parent. No one is better because of their blood or their nation or their wealth. If you would be blessed, be a blessing. Share what you have with the poor.
This is easier when we feel we have some extra to share. These days things feel more thin. When things seem thin, our compassion can grow thin as well. Yesterday a small generous group met to continue Brigid’s Table on Saturday mornings. We have $1000.00 to make weekly meals for 40 for four months. A church is many things, and we do need to care for ourselves—many have said that lately. But if we cease to care for the poor, we cease to be a church.
That’s what James says. Be careful of the ways in which we give preference to the rich. We may not rise to our feet to seat the wealthy at banquets. But don’t we admire those who heap up wealth, who some think are smarter than the average because of how much money they can make? The media is full of this daily. God sees differently, and God says a real faith is a faith put on the line. Some call this “walking the talk.” Live God’s life and have God’s heart, God who seeks out those in need. Do something with the faith you profess.
But what happens when we feel like we have nothing more to give? Lately many of us, myself included, have felt like this. How do you get enthused about reaching out when you want someone to just reach in, pour water on the dryness inside?
In the Gospel Jesus pours out God’s love on all who are poor. He pours it out on a Gentile woman, descendant of the ancient Philistines, ancestral enemies of the people of God. She doesn’t accept Jesus’ remark about favoring only the people of Israel. She believes in the outrageous love of God for the poor and she is filled. All we need do is ask, and Jesus is eager to pour out God’s own love into our hearts and souls. Sometimes I think our asking is stingy, and so we feel like we receive little. Perhaps a starting point to ask ourselves how abundant do we believe our God is, and then ask ourselves why we don’t ask for all of God, all of God’s love.
For in the end it is we who are poor, it is we who are empty, it is we who are as much in need as any ragged wanderer on 82nd Avenue.
We are preferred by God when we feel our hearts are empty. We are preferred by God when our souls are parched and dry. We can ask with confidence and be filled by God. In word and sacrament, liturgy and life itself—we can be filled with God.
(Prov 22: 1-2, 8-9, 22-23; Ps 125; James 2: 1-10, 14-17; Mark 7: 24-37)
Preference can create the world we live in.
While we lived in Saint Louis, a prime-time news show filmed an episode there called “True Colors.” Their cameras followed two young men who were also friends from college. The only obvious difference between them was that one was white and the other was black.
The men interviewed for jobs, shopped in a jewelry store, and searched for apartments. The filmed results were stunning. The young white man was treated with warmth and was offered a second interview, while the black man was treated coolly and sent away with no such promise. The white man was shown great courtesy by the staff in the jewelry store, while the black man was ignored except by the security guard who shadowed him the whole time he was there. The white man was offered an apartment immediately, while the black man was told there were no vacancies. And there were.
We’ve heard such stories before. We hear them over and over because preference, favoring the wealthy, the fashionable, the sophisticated over the rest of humanity is an old, old tale.
It’s a problem of wisdom and knowledge, says Proverbs. Choose a good name over great riches, for God made us all. We have the same source, the same family root, the same parent. No one is better because of their blood or their nation or their wealth. If you would be blessed, be a blessing. Share what you have with the poor.
This is easier when we feel we have some extra to share. These days things feel more thin. When things seem thin, our compassion can grow thin as well. Yesterday a small generous group met to continue Brigid’s Table on Saturday mornings. We have $1000.00 to make weekly meals for 40 for four months. A church is many things, and we do need to care for ourselves—many have said that lately. But if we cease to care for the poor, we cease to be a church.
That’s what James says. Be careful of the ways in which we give preference to the rich. We may not rise to our feet to seat the wealthy at banquets. But don’t we admire those who heap up wealth, who some think are smarter than the average because of how much money they can make? The media is full of this daily. God sees differently, and God says a real faith is a faith put on the line. Some call this “walking the talk.” Live God’s life and have God’s heart, God who seeks out those in need. Do something with the faith you profess.
But what happens when we feel like we have nothing more to give? Lately many of us, myself included, have felt like this. How do you get enthused about reaching out when you want someone to just reach in, pour water on the dryness inside?
In the Gospel Jesus pours out God’s love on all who are poor. He pours it out on a Gentile woman, descendant of the ancient Philistines, ancestral enemies of the people of God. She doesn’t accept Jesus’ remark about favoring only the people of Israel. She believes in the outrageous love of God for the poor and she is filled. All we need do is ask, and Jesus is eager to pour out God’s own love into our hearts and souls. Sometimes I think our asking is stingy, and so we feel like we receive little. Perhaps a starting point to ask ourselves how abundant do we believe our God is, and then ask ourselves why we don’t ask for all of God, all of God’s love.
For in the end it is we who are poor, it is we who are empty, it is we who are as much in need as any ragged wanderer on 82nd Avenue.
We are preferred by God when we feel our hearts are empty. We are preferred by God when our souls are parched and dry. We can ask with confidence and be filled by God. In word and sacrament, liturgy and life itself—we can be filled with God.
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