Holy Cross/”Capacity Crowd” Sunday 2011
Isaiah 45:21-25;
Psalm 98:1-4;
Gal 6: 14-18; John 12:31-36a
Years ago in Chicago, Diane and I hung out with a large network of renegade Mennonites and recovering evangelicals. Since I was somewhere in the process of becoming an ex-Roman Catholic, we fit in well. We’d meet in bars and other places and talk faith and God and doubt and life. Once one of our friends named Liz asked me, “Why do you stick with the Christian thing, anyway? What’s so compelling about Christianity?”
I thought hard and, after a long silence, replied “Because I think that the crucified Christ is at the heart of the world and at the heart of all reality.”
“What does that mean?” Liz persisted.
I think I stammered, and I must not have said anything memorable since I cannot remember what I said.
I do not think I can explain myself any better today. But I would still answer Liz’s question the same way. I believe that at the heart of the world, at the heart of all reality, is the crucified Christ.
Today’s feast is a six-month warm-up for Holy Week. But it is not like Good Friday with darkness and grief. Holy Cross Day is a shout of joy born from the heart of God. Today we remember our spiritual hungers and our questions of mind and soul. Today we re-kindle our wonder as we gaze upon the One whose arms are flung wide on the hard wood of the cross. There may not be many answers available today. But there is a re-kindling of passion in the soul, and there is aching, aching gratitude. Today we know that we are known, we are loved, that God has reached across the divide of sin and sorrow and pain and emptiness with one extravagant, passionate gesture. Jesus Christ is with us and for us, now and completely and always. All our seeking, all our searching, all our longing, all our sorrows and emptiness as well as our joy and our peace are found in this one figure, the one who, “when lifted up, draws all people to himself.” We look up from our modern desert to the One on the Cross for healing, for meaning, for hope, for peace, for new life.
And we do not just look up. We pray that “we, who glory in the mystery of our redemption, may have grace to take up our cross and follow him.”
That’s what catches me. I am not interested in proving a doctrine or an idea about God or Jesus. I am not interested in putting my questions or even my doubts to sleep with easy answers. I am interested in exploring how God’s astounding action in Jesus points out a way of life and meaning and transformation. I am interested in living this astounding, ancient, but always brand-new vision with others who have also been drawn and fascinated and set on fire.
If we wish to embrace Jesus, then we need to follow Jesus. If we wish to know Jesus, then we must discover and live what Jesus taught and loved. If we wish to be transformed, then we must travel with the ragged band of pilgrims who have been called and fascinated and healed and set on fire. That’s what a church is—those who have been marked and claimed by the Crucified One who lives.
The Holy Cross and the Crucified One sets their seal on us as we start another season of serving and seeking.
Just as I did not have any explanations beyond the crucified Christ years ago, I do not have many explanations or many detailed plans for us today. I used to approach this time of year with an invisible clipboard in hand, ready to map out the year’s cruise activities. Instead, I have Jesus Christ and him crucified. I trust him to open our ears and our hearts and to kindle hope.
We have every reason to be confident and hopeful. Look around and see the fellow-pilgrims that Jesus has called together. We are God’s gifts to one another, to comfort and to challenge one another.
We are a community which has been blessed with rich traditions of faith, be they Anglo-Catholic or Celtic or Hispanic or just plain ol’ Episcopal with our different backgrounds added. There is richness and gift in all of these traditions. What matters is to be together in faith before the Crucified Jesus and to listen for his voice. He is enough, and he will tell us what we need to do and to be.
Here are my hopes for this year…
First, I hope that we join in prayer that God in Jesus will speak to us and to renew us in the way that he wills. I hope that we gather in prayer, whether privately or in community, and ask God to work the divine will and joy in us.
I hope that we seek ways to grow in the practices that help us follow Jesus. I hope we find ways that make sense for us in our changing world and our demanding, time-challenged lives to do that. The conversation this Tuesday evening at Tamara’s is part of exploring that. I hope that we can be a congregation that teaches and supports people in the practices that make following Jesus real.
I hope that we gather more. I understand that we all consider ourselves time-poor, that work and family make fierce demands on us. I understand that we face many challenges, be they health or finance or other concerns. I also understand that our surrounding culture is not sympathetic with Sunday as a day to practice regular worship. Life in “Portlandia” tells us that our individual lives are private projects and that weekends are precious personal time. It is counter-cultural to regularly gather with others for weekly worship—your friends may describe you as “really into church.” But it is needful to simply gather in order to live a strong and supple Christian life. After ten years of martial arts, I understand Sunday gathering as spiritual exercise class. When one goes to exercise class rarely or not at all, one’s practice gets awkward and one is always starting from the beginning. And like a martial arts class, the class is better if there are more students gathered for mutual support and to challenge us to be the best we can be. We are stronger when we are together.
I hope we learn again how blessed our lives are and how everything we are and have are pure gift and how, if we give gladly and joyously, we are set free and come that much closer to the One who gave us his very self. “All things come of Thee, O Lord, and of Thine own have we given Thee.” We shall sing and say this all through this Fall, ancient words, words first spoken by King David when faced with building a temple and a kingdom. We are building a life, a rich life in Christ.
In an age when everything is changing for organized church, when we are faced with so many challenges, when the struggles of the church are matched by the struggles of our own lives and those of our neighbors, I have few answers. I only offer what the feast and the Scripture give us today. We have the Crucified One who lives with us and for us, and who is at the heart of all that is.
archived musings and preachments
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Forgive
September 11, 2011
Gen 50: 15-21; Ps 114; Rom 14: 1-12; Mt 18: 21-35
The energy behind the 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks took me by surprise.
Like most churches, we responded to the attacks with special services, welcoming those who sought a church for comfort in those days. We even held a one-year anniversary concert, and if memory serves we did something on the second anniversary. It was pretty plain by then that people were done, that attention had been fixed with a sense of dread and great controversy on the war that seemed to march on us whether we raised our voices in protest or not. In the years since 9/11 so much has happened that has felt out of our control—war and occupation in two nations, increasingly bitter partisan politics with little co-operation between the sides, deepening economic fear and suffering for more and more people.
Remembrance is important, the stories of the famous and the ordinary who lived, and those who died, need to be told. They need to be given their names. But in addition to sorrow and grief and remembrance are deeper, darker truths. I find people speaking with a sense of loss about the “innocence” of life before 9/11. For some, the ‘90’s are remembered as a sort of innocent golden age, when money flowed freely and we were unafraid and the most interesting thing happening was the clumsy sexual escapade of a president and an intern. We do love tales of a lost paradise—those with longer memories, or whose lives here or overseas did not reflect this nostalgic vision, do not think there was much innocence or safety to be lost.
Now we speak of fear. “Terrorism’s next move” announces today’s headlines. And we live with unease about what happened next, what we thought and what we did. An upsurge of racism and prejudice against anyone Middle Eastern or Islamic in our midst, rage and the deep need to see someone else suffer because we had suffered, we had lost, we were now afraid. Somewhere in our home we have a photo magazine feature published shortly after the attacks. The pictures are beautiful, terrifying or horrifying or heart-breaking or inspiring images of the dead or the heroic living or the impossible images of jet liners flying into the buildings that were colossal symbols of power and invulnerability. But after all the moving, powerful photos, the last page is for me the most memorable. It depicts two jet fighters flying in close formation, silvery and deadly. The caption below says simply, “Vengeance.”
The composers of the book were more right than they knew. I think a great deal of what we struggle to come to terms with is what happened in the days and weeks and months and years after that iconic day in September. Lands were bombed and invaded, blood was spilled on both sides. Much of that blood was innocent, families and children like our own who were trying to live until the flash of the missile or the gun. I do not stand here ready to open arguments about whether Afghanistan should have been invaded, whether Iraq should have been invaded and occupied, let alone the morality of the “robust interrogation tactics” practiced on those captured.
What matters today is all of that happened. The post-9/11 world in which we live is one of greater unease and fear, greater uncertainty, the knowledge that in this world there are those who will strike at us and call it just. And the post-9/11 world is one in which we know ourselves to be capable of rage and vengeance and the willingness to deal out pain and death in return.
How does a church commemorate such a day?
We bring all this truth to the feet of Jesus and listen for what Jesus has to say.
Today’s Gospel is a playful but stern tale of the power of forgiveness—God’s forgiveness and humanity’s capacity to withhold forgiveness. One man owes an impossible sum—10,000 talents meant this guy was a corporate raider, a Ponzi scheme-level thief. He asks for impossible mercy, and an impossibly merciful lord gives it to him. A fellow-servant owes the equivalent of a few month’s working-class wages, nothing compared to that first staggering debt. The first servant does what the law allows—has him thrown into jail.
The law may allow this, a sense of justice may allow this, but this is not a story of law and justice. This is a story of impossible mercy and forgiveness, and how astoundingly short we fall of the lord’s kindness. “So it will happen to you, unless you forgive from the heart.” We the church gather around to listen to Jesus, and this is what Jesus says—forgive, even the colossal kind of debt. Who knows—perhaps the one you forgive feels we owe the same sort of debt ourselves.
The Gospel is stern today. It is the Old Testament that holds out hope.
Joseph could have revenged himself on his brothers who abused him and sold him as a slave. Once their father was dead, there was really nothing to stand in his way. But the greatest miracle of the book of Genesis, with its floods and creation and fires from heaven, is in this moment. Joseph, with all the power of Egypt at his command, chooses another path. “Am I in the place of God?” Forgiveness and a new future opens for everyone in that room, fear and grudges are put aside, and the chain of events that will lead one day to the birth of the Savior is set in motion.
“Am I in the place of God?” Justice and the knowledge of the right thing to do in fearful, confusing times are not in our hands. The fear and rage of this age may be around us, and it is in us. But freedom in Christ is possible and offered to us today. Each of us are debtors to God’s mercy. We are not in the place of God. But we are given the Godly power and command to put an end to the fearful, rage-filled ways of this world. “Forgive” is the one word that churches can and must bring to the table today.
A wise man said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”*
*Paul Boese, as quoted by Rob Voyle in “Appreciative Inquiry Newsletter”
Gen 50: 15-21; Ps 114; Rom 14: 1-12; Mt 18: 21-35
The energy behind the 10th anniversary of the 2001 attacks took me by surprise.
Like most churches, we responded to the attacks with special services, welcoming those who sought a church for comfort in those days. We even held a one-year anniversary concert, and if memory serves we did something on the second anniversary. It was pretty plain by then that people were done, that attention had been fixed with a sense of dread and great controversy on the war that seemed to march on us whether we raised our voices in protest or not. In the years since 9/11 so much has happened that has felt out of our control—war and occupation in two nations, increasingly bitter partisan politics with little co-operation between the sides, deepening economic fear and suffering for more and more people.
Remembrance is important, the stories of the famous and the ordinary who lived, and those who died, need to be told. They need to be given their names. But in addition to sorrow and grief and remembrance are deeper, darker truths. I find people speaking with a sense of loss about the “innocence” of life before 9/11. For some, the ‘90’s are remembered as a sort of innocent golden age, when money flowed freely and we were unafraid and the most interesting thing happening was the clumsy sexual escapade of a president and an intern. We do love tales of a lost paradise—those with longer memories, or whose lives here or overseas did not reflect this nostalgic vision, do not think there was much innocence or safety to be lost.
Now we speak of fear. “Terrorism’s next move” announces today’s headlines. And we live with unease about what happened next, what we thought and what we did. An upsurge of racism and prejudice against anyone Middle Eastern or Islamic in our midst, rage and the deep need to see someone else suffer because we had suffered, we had lost, we were now afraid. Somewhere in our home we have a photo magazine feature published shortly after the attacks. The pictures are beautiful, terrifying or horrifying or heart-breaking or inspiring images of the dead or the heroic living or the impossible images of jet liners flying into the buildings that were colossal symbols of power and invulnerability. But after all the moving, powerful photos, the last page is for me the most memorable. It depicts two jet fighters flying in close formation, silvery and deadly. The caption below says simply, “Vengeance.”
The composers of the book were more right than they knew. I think a great deal of what we struggle to come to terms with is what happened in the days and weeks and months and years after that iconic day in September. Lands were bombed and invaded, blood was spilled on both sides. Much of that blood was innocent, families and children like our own who were trying to live until the flash of the missile or the gun. I do not stand here ready to open arguments about whether Afghanistan should have been invaded, whether Iraq should have been invaded and occupied, let alone the morality of the “robust interrogation tactics” practiced on those captured.
What matters today is all of that happened. The post-9/11 world in which we live is one of greater unease and fear, greater uncertainty, the knowledge that in this world there are those who will strike at us and call it just. And the post-9/11 world is one in which we know ourselves to be capable of rage and vengeance and the willingness to deal out pain and death in return.
How does a church commemorate such a day?
We bring all this truth to the feet of Jesus and listen for what Jesus has to say.
Today’s Gospel is a playful but stern tale of the power of forgiveness—God’s forgiveness and humanity’s capacity to withhold forgiveness. One man owes an impossible sum—10,000 talents meant this guy was a corporate raider, a Ponzi scheme-level thief. He asks for impossible mercy, and an impossibly merciful lord gives it to him. A fellow-servant owes the equivalent of a few month’s working-class wages, nothing compared to that first staggering debt. The first servant does what the law allows—has him thrown into jail.
The law may allow this, a sense of justice may allow this, but this is not a story of law and justice. This is a story of impossible mercy and forgiveness, and how astoundingly short we fall of the lord’s kindness. “So it will happen to you, unless you forgive from the heart.” We the church gather around to listen to Jesus, and this is what Jesus says—forgive, even the colossal kind of debt. Who knows—perhaps the one you forgive feels we owe the same sort of debt ourselves.
The Gospel is stern today. It is the Old Testament that holds out hope.
Joseph could have revenged himself on his brothers who abused him and sold him as a slave. Once their father was dead, there was really nothing to stand in his way. But the greatest miracle of the book of Genesis, with its floods and creation and fires from heaven, is in this moment. Joseph, with all the power of Egypt at his command, chooses another path. “Am I in the place of God?” Forgiveness and a new future opens for everyone in that room, fear and grudges are put aside, and the chain of events that will lead one day to the birth of the Savior is set in motion.
“Am I in the place of God?” Justice and the knowledge of the right thing to do in fearful, confusing times are not in our hands. The fear and rage of this age may be around us, and it is in us. But freedom in Christ is possible and offered to us today. Each of us are debtors to God’s mercy. We are not in the place of God. But we are given the Godly power and command to put an end to the fearful, rage-filled ways of this world. “Forgive” is the one word that churches can and must bring to the table today.
A wise man said, “Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”*
*Paul Boese, as quoted by Rob Voyle in “Appreciative Inquiry Newsletter”
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Christ our Passover
Proper 19 A 2011
Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Sunday after Sunday, right before receiving Communion, we recite “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” We probably do not pay a lot of attention to the words, as we go into Episcopalian automatic pilot. At this deeply sacred moment in our liturgy, why do we remember the Passover?
A full answer to that would easily make up a graduate course and probably a lifetime of reflection. Rivers of ink have been spilled on this deep truth, both in the Bible itself and also in century upon century of commentary. But today we hear the story, the moment of the feast itself that we remember.
We have heard the story before. It is a tale filled with real danger. Slaves under brutal captors dream a wild and impossible dream—freedom. A people divided and broken as abused people become are told to gather as one. And they are made one—by the merciful yet dreadful judgment of a mysterious God who comes out of their deep past to make himself shockingly present and inescapably contemporary. The divine judgment is being uncorked against the complacency and prosperity and self-sufficiency of a great empire, an empire that trusts its gods to make the river rise and fall and to keep the harvest flowing and business humming and everyone in their proper place. The divine judgment will upset business as usual to its very core. The face of the divine Wisdom, says a later commentator, will smile gently upon the enslaved and the forgotten yet turn with a warrior’s snarl upon the powerful.
So do this, you who trust in the divine mercy. Gather as a people. Prepare this feast which has no fancy trimming, no elaborate appetizers or dessert. Keep your coat on and your knapsacks by your chairs. If your neighbor does not have one of these special, sacred lambs, these gentle animals which are suddenly charged with a sense of the Holy, then share. You are moving from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom. In one meal you will remember your need for the divine mercy and how deep that mercy is. In the symbols of roasted lamb eaten whole, in bitter herbs and in bread baked quickly without yeast, really tortillas cooked up on an open stove, you will remember the slavery and the yearning and the cost paid by an innocent animal and the cost paid by a God who breaks the divine heart in setting us free. You will realize how lucky, how blessed you are to eat this meal. You will realize you are a people together on a desert journey, a people traveling from darkness to light, a people whole and together wholly dependent on the mercy of God.
And so Saint Paul taught us, centuries later, to say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” Christ is the lamb. The church is the gathered people. There is slavery outside of us and slavery within us. Hear the summons, gather under the merciful eye of God, eat this simple hasty meal. And when you do, become one people and become the spotless lamb, the Lamb of God. Walk the journey from darkness to light.
The Old Testament tells us the story. The New Testament tells us how to live the story. We hear how to be this people for whom Christ is our Passover.
Jesus in the Gospel speaks very plainly and practically about how to deal with conflict in the community, conflict in the church. One commentator tells how this text might read today with responses that are all too familiar. “If your brother sins against you, then…” Smile and pretend it didn’t hurt, but never forget it and wait for a chance to get them back. Go home and complain to your family and friends and gossip about that other person for days weeks. Send them a nasty e-mail venting all your anger and cc/ the rector. De-friend them on Facebook. Or start to withdraw from the church, maybe even leave the church and look for another church where the members never sin against one another.
That’s a pretty common strategy “out there”, and all too often we act a lot more like “out there” than as citizens of the Kingdom. Through the years I have come close to despair at the difficulty we church-people have in living together and working things out in the light of the Gospel. Because the Way of Jesus, the way of the Passover, is a different way, a way from the slavery of resentment and retaliation to a new place of healing and freedom. According to Jesus, it is very practical. “Go talk to them alone”—respect their privacy and give them a chance for reconciliation. “Take one or two others”—again a chance to heal the wound in a discreet way. “Go to the church”—because the division of two members is a division for us all. We have been called to freedom by God’s mercy together; this is not a solo journey. “Treat them as a tax collector…” and the story does not end there. A wise old priest once reminded me, “Remember what we do with tax collectors and sinners? We search them out and forgive them.” For the promise of Jesus at the end of the tale is solemn and not given only for our comfort, but also for our challenge. “Where two or three are gathered, there am I in your midst.” The merciful yet awesome God of the Passover is among us—it is up to us to choose to be the gathered people of God, waiting for the divine mercy, saved by the blood of the innocent victim, or people who belong to slavery and to power. We can stay in the darkness of the weary dynamics of slavery and oppression, including slavery to our selves, or we can learn to walk free.
This is what we choose when we say, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.”
Exodus 12:1-14; Psalm 149; Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20
Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Sunday after Sunday, right before receiving Communion, we recite “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” We probably do not pay a lot of attention to the words, as we go into Episcopalian automatic pilot. At this deeply sacred moment in our liturgy, why do we remember the Passover?
A full answer to that would easily make up a graduate course and probably a lifetime of reflection. Rivers of ink have been spilled on this deep truth, both in the Bible itself and also in century upon century of commentary. But today we hear the story, the moment of the feast itself that we remember.
We have heard the story before. It is a tale filled with real danger. Slaves under brutal captors dream a wild and impossible dream—freedom. A people divided and broken as abused people become are told to gather as one. And they are made one—by the merciful yet dreadful judgment of a mysterious God who comes out of their deep past to make himself shockingly present and inescapably contemporary. The divine judgment is being uncorked against the complacency and prosperity and self-sufficiency of a great empire, an empire that trusts its gods to make the river rise and fall and to keep the harvest flowing and business humming and everyone in their proper place. The divine judgment will upset business as usual to its very core. The face of the divine Wisdom, says a later commentator, will smile gently upon the enslaved and the forgotten yet turn with a warrior’s snarl upon the powerful.
So do this, you who trust in the divine mercy. Gather as a people. Prepare this feast which has no fancy trimming, no elaborate appetizers or dessert. Keep your coat on and your knapsacks by your chairs. If your neighbor does not have one of these special, sacred lambs, these gentle animals which are suddenly charged with a sense of the Holy, then share. You are moving from darkness to light, from slavery to freedom. In one meal you will remember your need for the divine mercy and how deep that mercy is. In the symbols of roasted lamb eaten whole, in bitter herbs and in bread baked quickly without yeast, really tortillas cooked up on an open stove, you will remember the slavery and the yearning and the cost paid by an innocent animal and the cost paid by a God who breaks the divine heart in setting us free. You will realize how lucky, how blessed you are to eat this meal. You will realize you are a people together on a desert journey, a people traveling from darkness to light, a people whole and together wholly dependent on the mercy of God.
And so Saint Paul taught us, centuries later, to say “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.” Christ is the lamb. The church is the gathered people. There is slavery outside of us and slavery within us. Hear the summons, gather under the merciful eye of God, eat this simple hasty meal. And when you do, become one people and become the spotless lamb, the Lamb of God. Walk the journey from darkness to light.
The Old Testament tells us the story. The New Testament tells us how to live the story. We hear how to be this people for whom Christ is our Passover.
Jesus in the Gospel speaks very plainly and practically about how to deal with conflict in the community, conflict in the church. One commentator tells how this text might read today with responses that are all too familiar. “If your brother sins against you, then…” Smile and pretend it didn’t hurt, but never forget it and wait for a chance to get them back. Go home and complain to your family and friends and gossip about that other person for days weeks. Send them a nasty e-mail venting all your anger and cc/ the rector. De-friend them on Facebook. Or start to withdraw from the church, maybe even leave the church and look for another church where the members never sin against one another.
That’s a pretty common strategy “out there”, and all too often we act a lot more like “out there” than as citizens of the Kingdom. Through the years I have come close to despair at the difficulty we church-people have in living together and working things out in the light of the Gospel. Because the Way of Jesus, the way of the Passover, is a different way, a way from the slavery of resentment and retaliation to a new place of healing and freedom. According to Jesus, it is very practical. “Go talk to them alone”—respect their privacy and give them a chance for reconciliation. “Take one or two others”—again a chance to heal the wound in a discreet way. “Go to the church”—because the division of two members is a division for us all. We have been called to freedom by God’s mercy together; this is not a solo journey. “Treat them as a tax collector…” and the story does not end there. A wise old priest once reminded me, “Remember what we do with tax collectors and sinners? We search them out and forgive them.” For the promise of Jesus at the end of the tale is solemn and not given only for our comfort, but also for our challenge. “Where two or three are gathered, there am I in your midst.” The merciful yet awesome God of the Passover is among us—it is up to us to choose to be the gathered people of God, waiting for the divine mercy, saved by the blood of the innocent victim, or people who belong to slavery and to power. We can stay in the darkness of the weary dynamics of slavery and oppression, including slavery to our selves, or we can learn to walk free.
This is what we choose when we say, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us/Therefore let us keep the feast.”
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Shaped by the Name
Proper 17 A 2011
Exodus 3: 1-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c; Romans 12: 9-21; Matthew 16: 21-28
He was just another homeless guy, the latest to be hanging around the church.
When we rang the bell for Wednesday Noon Mass, he would show up, the only neighbor to be called in. He would sit in the nave and simply listen to the service.
This day, after Mass, he wandered into the church hall. I found him standing there. I said, “Sorry dude, the preschool is in session, you can’t be here now.”
He looked at me. “My name’s not ‘dude’.”
He was right. His name was not “dude.” He had a name. Knowing it and using it meant respect, meant seeing him as a person, meant I was invited and obligated to acknowledge his history and his life and his unique being on this planet. Telling someone your name, especially in this suspicious age where we even fear identity theft, is an act of trust. Your name and your heart are one.
In the strange world of the Bible, that’s how names work, and more.
A God who has been silent for generations suddenly breaks into the life of a fugitive. Moses has run from Egypt after committing murder. He had found a home and some security and peace, marrying a Bedouin woman and joining his wife’s family. But God busts into Moses’ little slice of heaven. In one moment, in the space of this single meeting, God reveals the divine heart and the divine Name.
The divine heart burns with determination to liberate the Hebrew people from slavery. The divine Name is the promise and the seal that God wishes nothing but liberation for the people. God trusts the divine Name to Moses, in an act of trust and vulnerability. “I AM”—the name resounds with majesty and awe down to this moment when we speak it here. When God gave the divine Name to Moses and through Moses to Israel, God was entrusting his heart to them and to us. From this moment on, to speak the divine Name meant that Moses and the people had access to the heart of God. Speaking the Name made real and active the promise of God to liberate them from bondage. Speaking the Name sealed them with the sacred Name, stamped it on their own hearts and souls. Speaking the name bonded them to God, and began the work of changing them into a people shaped by the heart of God.
The Psalm says, “Glory in his holy Name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.” Try tracking the moments when the Bible mentions the Name of God. When we do this, the power and meaning of the Bible begins to open in a new way.
We are people of the Name of God. As Christians we are the heirs of this rich tradition of Moses and of Israel. We believe that the heart of God has been revealed to us, the God of liberation has made himself known to us, in the name of Jesus Christ.
This summer I read a recently-written book on the “Jesus Prayer.”(1) The Jesus Prayer is a rich spiritual practice highly developed in the Eastern Orthodox world. In its essence the practice consists of the repetition of the phrase “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner” or some version of these words. The Prayer, centering on the sacred Name of Jesus, is meant to work itself into one’s daily life so that, with time, one repeats the Prayer in tune with one’s breath or even one’s heartbeat. It is a highly developed path of Christian prayer that I cannot do any justice to in a single mention in a sermon, but the practice of the Jesus Prayer relies on the power of the name of Jesus, the divine Name by which God has revealed and entrusted the divine Heart to us. If we truly and sincerely make “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” a prayer that we breathe in and out, that we inhabit daily, then we accept into our lives the very presence of the living God and all the promises of God.
And be warned—this presence will not only give joy and comfort and peace. The divine Presence will change us into people shaped by the very heart of God.
Saint Paul trusts says in simple words what it looks like to be people shaped by the heart of God: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers…” There is a lifestyle being named here, a transformed life shaped to the contours of the divine heart. Jesus in the Gospel is even more blunt: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
A contemporary writer said that Christianity is not a path of self-fulfillment, but rather a path of self-transcendence. (2) Many folk come seeking a church because they are wounded in some area of their souls or their history or even their bodies. It is good that we come before the healing God with our wounds and needs. When we do, we find depths of healing and compassion beyond our wildest dreams. But that is not all. We find ourselves invited, seduced really, into the very heart of God, by the free gift of the Name of God, the Name of Jesus Christ. And when we walk freely into the heart of God, we are changed, we are transformed into people shaped by the heart of God, shaped by who and what God loves and about which God is passionate.
As I speak Saints Peter and Paul is struggling to discern what God wants us to do in terms of outreach to the poor. Our weekly hospitality, Brigid’s Table, is at a crossroads—volunteers and money both have run thin. The easy thing would be to say simply that times have changed, our lives are demanding, and we simply cannot do this anymore—it’s all we can do to get ourselves to Sunday Mass a couple of times a month.
Times have changed and our lives are demanding. I am not sure what in fact we are called to do. But I do know that if we call ourselves a church that loves the name of Jesus, then we need to ask ourselves how are we called and empowered to be a people shaped by the heart of God. Since here we identify strongly with the Anglo-Catholic stream of Episcopal tradition, here’s an Anglo-Catholic voice from the early 20th Century:
“You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have…your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges…and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet" (3)
These words speak of what it means to be a people who love the holy Name of Jesus. These words speak of one essential dimension of what it means to be shaped by the very Name and heart of God.
1. Frederica Matthews-Green The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer That Tunes The Heart To God
2. cf Michael Casey OCSO in Strangers To The City
3. Concluding address by Bishop Frank Weston, Anglo-Catholic Congress 1923
Exodus 3: 1-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c; Romans 12: 9-21; Matthew 16: 21-28
He was just another homeless guy, the latest to be hanging around the church.
When we rang the bell for Wednesday Noon Mass, he would show up, the only neighbor to be called in. He would sit in the nave and simply listen to the service.
This day, after Mass, he wandered into the church hall. I found him standing there. I said, “Sorry dude, the preschool is in session, you can’t be here now.”
He looked at me. “My name’s not ‘dude’.”
He was right. His name was not “dude.” He had a name. Knowing it and using it meant respect, meant seeing him as a person, meant I was invited and obligated to acknowledge his history and his life and his unique being on this planet. Telling someone your name, especially in this suspicious age where we even fear identity theft, is an act of trust. Your name and your heart are one.
In the strange world of the Bible, that’s how names work, and more.
A God who has been silent for generations suddenly breaks into the life of a fugitive. Moses has run from Egypt after committing murder. He had found a home and some security and peace, marrying a Bedouin woman and joining his wife’s family. But God busts into Moses’ little slice of heaven. In one moment, in the space of this single meeting, God reveals the divine heart and the divine Name.
The divine heart burns with determination to liberate the Hebrew people from slavery. The divine Name is the promise and the seal that God wishes nothing but liberation for the people. God trusts the divine Name to Moses, in an act of trust and vulnerability. “I AM”—the name resounds with majesty and awe down to this moment when we speak it here. When God gave the divine Name to Moses and through Moses to Israel, God was entrusting his heart to them and to us. From this moment on, to speak the divine Name meant that Moses and the people had access to the heart of God. Speaking the Name made real and active the promise of God to liberate them from bondage. Speaking the Name sealed them with the sacred Name, stamped it on their own hearts and souls. Speaking the name bonded them to God, and began the work of changing them into a people shaped by the heart of God.
The Psalm says, “Glory in his holy Name; let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice.” Try tracking the moments when the Bible mentions the Name of God. When we do this, the power and meaning of the Bible begins to open in a new way.
We are people of the Name of God. As Christians we are the heirs of this rich tradition of Moses and of Israel. We believe that the heart of God has been revealed to us, the God of liberation has made himself known to us, in the name of Jesus Christ.
This summer I read a recently-written book on the “Jesus Prayer.”(1) The Jesus Prayer is a rich spiritual practice highly developed in the Eastern Orthodox world. In its essence the practice consists of the repetition of the phrase “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner” or some version of these words. The Prayer, centering on the sacred Name of Jesus, is meant to work itself into one’s daily life so that, with time, one repeats the Prayer in tune with one’s breath or even one’s heartbeat. It is a highly developed path of Christian prayer that I cannot do any justice to in a single mention in a sermon, but the practice of the Jesus Prayer relies on the power of the name of Jesus, the divine Name by which God has revealed and entrusted the divine Heart to us. If we truly and sincerely make “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me” a prayer that we breathe in and out, that we inhabit daily, then we accept into our lives the very presence of the living God and all the promises of God.
And be warned—this presence will not only give joy and comfort and peace. The divine Presence will change us into people shaped by the very heart of God.
Saint Paul trusts says in simple words what it looks like to be people shaped by the heart of God: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers…” There is a lifestyle being named here, a transformed life shaped to the contours of the divine heart. Jesus in the Gospel is even more blunt: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
A contemporary writer said that Christianity is not a path of self-fulfillment, but rather a path of self-transcendence. (2) Many folk come seeking a church because they are wounded in some area of their souls or their history or even their bodies. It is good that we come before the healing God with our wounds and needs. When we do, we find depths of healing and compassion beyond our wildest dreams. But that is not all. We find ourselves invited, seduced really, into the very heart of God, by the free gift of the Name of God, the Name of Jesus Christ. And when we walk freely into the heart of God, we are changed, we are transformed into people shaped by the heart of God, shaped by who and what God loves and about which God is passionate.
As I speak Saints Peter and Paul is struggling to discern what God wants us to do in terms of outreach to the poor. Our weekly hospitality, Brigid’s Table, is at a crossroads—volunteers and money both have run thin. The easy thing would be to say simply that times have changed, our lives are demanding, and we simply cannot do this anymore—it’s all we can do to get ourselves to Sunday Mass a couple of times a month.
Times have changed and our lives are demanding. I am not sure what in fact we are called to do. But I do know that if we call ourselves a church that loves the name of Jesus, then we need to ask ourselves how are we called and empowered to be a people shaped by the heart of God. Since here we identify strongly with the Anglo-Catholic stream of Episcopal tradition, here’s an Anglo-Catholic voice from the early 20th Century:
“You have got your Mass, you have got your Altar, you have…your Tabernacle. Now go out into the highways and hedges…and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet" (3)
These words speak of what it means to be a people who love the holy Name of Jesus. These words speak of one essential dimension of what it means to be shaped by the very Name and heart of God.
1. Frederica Matthews-Green The Jesus Prayer: The Ancient Desert Prayer That Tunes The Heart To God
2. cf Michael Casey OCSO in Strangers To The City
3. Concluding address by Bishop Frank Weston, Anglo-Catholic Congress 1923
Where God happens*
Proper 15 A 2011
God happens when forgiveness is given and received.
Genesis, the great first book of the Bible, concludes with the tale of Joseph and his brothers. It’s a story of family dysfunction, pride and jealousy. If you remember back to your Sunday School lessons, Joseph is his father’s favorite, and Dad even gives him that fancy coat that even got a Broadway musical named after it, “Technicolor Dreamcoat” and all that. Joseph’s brothers have about all the Joseph they can stand, so they trap him, sell him as a slave, and fake his death back home. But Joseph does OK as a slave, going from prison to a position of power and wealth in Egypt. That’s when the brothers show up, hungry and needy and begging food because of a drought and famine. They don’t recognize the powerful Egyptian official, perfumed and dressed in fine fabric and gold with his hair tricked-out Egyptian style as their brother.
If Joseph had taken this opportunity to work some revenge on the bros, nothing heinous, just a little roughing up, God himself would have called it just. He does throw one of his brothers in the clink for awhile, but hey, he’s only human. If Joseph had at least yelled at them, vented his feelings as our psychologized age would put it, Oprah would have sat and held his hand and affirmed him, and Jerry Springer would have egged him on. Instead, Joseph puts down any rage and pain and bitterness he still has and simply cries and asks about Dad. Genesis is a book full of miracles and spectacle, but the greatest miracle in that book is this moment of sheer grace and forgiveness. Something new is possible because of Joseph’s moment of reckless forgiveness. It is the moment, as one writer puts it, where God happens, where grace and forgiveness and new life and a story worth telling breaks into the world.
The Bible and Christian tradition speak constantly of forgiveness, but it is the least-practiced Christian principle in my opinion. Perhaps it is forgiveness that Ghandi had in mind when he famously said that he liked Jesus, but he had never met a Christian, one who put Jesus’ teachings into actual practice. Our surrounding world usually does not practice forgiveness. More often what we see is grievance and revenge. Just a few days ago the news claimed, with a certain sense of relish and the rightness of things, that the military had “taken out” the Taliban members responsible for shooting down the helicopter with 30 personnel on board. As I read that grim P.S. to a sad war story, I wondered if we were meant to feel somehow good about “taking out” those people, as if things had been put back in their proper order. I for one did not feel anything of the sort. Even within the wall of the church, forgiveness is often sadly absent. Instead of whole-hearted forgiveness, I have seen grudges, quiet resentments, and disguised anger simmer between people all too often. What will sometimes happen is that someone will drift away from the parish, often thinking words like “hypocrites” to themselves, rather that offer and receive forgiveness with someone who has angered or slighted them.
It’s not about being a doormat, letting people off the hook for their words or actions. It’s about acknowledging their actions and our own, and letting God make a new beginning. Where there is no forgiveness, we are all kept in the same prison, and God cannot happen, God cannot make hope and new life.
And God happens when old boundaries are crossed.
Today’s Gospel tale is a startling one, because it puts not only the disciples but Jesus himself in a unflattering light. The mission to proclaim the Kingdom of God has begun, full of outrageous hope and energy. But just when things are building up, something or someone happens that faces the disciples and Jesus himself with long-held prejudices. A foreigner, a Canaanite woman, cries out to Jesus, “son of David”, for mercy for her daughter. It’s embarrassing and irritating both—doesn’t she get it? This is Israel’s salvation, this is the Lord and heir of David who is restoring the ancient kingdom of Judah and Israel. No foreigners allowed, especially this woman.
But she will have none of it. She brushes past the hostility of the disciples and of Jesus’ inclination to simply pass her by and comes close. Jesus still attempts to deflect her with a proverb about dogs, not very flattering. But she meets that head-on and bandies words with him. We will never in this life penetrate the inner life of Jesus the Christ, but it seems like something changes in that moment not only for the woman but also for Jesus himself. “Great is your faith!”, and from Jesus there is no higher praise. And God happens, in that awkward moment where Gospel mission and racial and gender prejudice all had raised their heads. A child is healed.
God happens in our world in these ordinary yet astounding moments, when hate and resentment and prejudice are put aside and hands reach across great divides, when forgiveness or at least the possibility of forgiveness is grasped. We put aside the cold comfort of revenge or grievance or the cruelty of keeping someone or a whole people in a box of our making—“she’s always like that”, “what do you expect from THOSE people?”—and instead reach out in honesty and hope. And that is where God happens, where the Gospel finally makes sense, where all those lovely words like “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” become more than comforting traditional words and come to world-changing life.
The ancient hermit Antony the Great, who spent decades in solitude, once startled people who came to ask him the way to salvation. He said, “My life is with my brother.” Like Antony, our lives are with our sisters and brothers, within the walls of this church, and beyond to the world. It is in that unromantic and messy arena of resentment, grievance, and the possibility of forgiveness that the Gospel becomes real. It is in that human arena that God happens.
*phrase not mine, regrettably, but taken from the book by ++Rowan Williams of the same title
God happens when forgiveness is given and received.
Genesis, the great first book of the Bible, concludes with the tale of Joseph and his brothers. It’s a story of family dysfunction, pride and jealousy. If you remember back to your Sunday School lessons, Joseph is his father’s favorite, and Dad even gives him that fancy coat that even got a Broadway musical named after it, “Technicolor Dreamcoat” and all that. Joseph’s brothers have about all the Joseph they can stand, so they trap him, sell him as a slave, and fake his death back home. But Joseph does OK as a slave, going from prison to a position of power and wealth in Egypt. That’s when the brothers show up, hungry and needy and begging food because of a drought and famine. They don’t recognize the powerful Egyptian official, perfumed and dressed in fine fabric and gold with his hair tricked-out Egyptian style as their brother.
If Joseph had taken this opportunity to work some revenge on the bros, nothing heinous, just a little roughing up, God himself would have called it just. He does throw one of his brothers in the clink for awhile, but hey, he’s only human. If Joseph had at least yelled at them, vented his feelings as our psychologized age would put it, Oprah would have sat and held his hand and affirmed him, and Jerry Springer would have egged him on. Instead, Joseph puts down any rage and pain and bitterness he still has and simply cries and asks about Dad. Genesis is a book full of miracles and spectacle, but the greatest miracle in that book is this moment of sheer grace and forgiveness. Something new is possible because of Joseph’s moment of reckless forgiveness. It is the moment, as one writer puts it, where God happens, where grace and forgiveness and new life and a story worth telling breaks into the world.
The Bible and Christian tradition speak constantly of forgiveness, but it is the least-practiced Christian principle in my opinion. Perhaps it is forgiveness that Ghandi had in mind when he famously said that he liked Jesus, but he had never met a Christian, one who put Jesus’ teachings into actual practice. Our surrounding world usually does not practice forgiveness. More often what we see is grievance and revenge. Just a few days ago the news claimed, with a certain sense of relish and the rightness of things, that the military had “taken out” the Taliban members responsible for shooting down the helicopter with 30 personnel on board. As I read that grim P.S. to a sad war story, I wondered if we were meant to feel somehow good about “taking out” those people, as if things had been put back in their proper order. I for one did not feel anything of the sort. Even within the wall of the church, forgiveness is often sadly absent. Instead of whole-hearted forgiveness, I have seen grudges, quiet resentments, and disguised anger simmer between people all too often. What will sometimes happen is that someone will drift away from the parish, often thinking words like “hypocrites” to themselves, rather that offer and receive forgiveness with someone who has angered or slighted them.
It’s not about being a doormat, letting people off the hook for their words or actions. It’s about acknowledging their actions and our own, and letting God make a new beginning. Where there is no forgiveness, we are all kept in the same prison, and God cannot happen, God cannot make hope and new life.
And God happens when old boundaries are crossed.
Today’s Gospel tale is a startling one, because it puts not only the disciples but Jesus himself in a unflattering light. The mission to proclaim the Kingdom of God has begun, full of outrageous hope and energy. But just when things are building up, something or someone happens that faces the disciples and Jesus himself with long-held prejudices. A foreigner, a Canaanite woman, cries out to Jesus, “son of David”, for mercy for her daughter. It’s embarrassing and irritating both—doesn’t she get it? This is Israel’s salvation, this is the Lord and heir of David who is restoring the ancient kingdom of Judah and Israel. No foreigners allowed, especially this woman.
But she will have none of it. She brushes past the hostility of the disciples and of Jesus’ inclination to simply pass her by and comes close. Jesus still attempts to deflect her with a proverb about dogs, not very flattering. But she meets that head-on and bandies words with him. We will never in this life penetrate the inner life of Jesus the Christ, but it seems like something changes in that moment not only for the woman but also for Jesus himself. “Great is your faith!”, and from Jesus there is no higher praise. And God happens, in that awkward moment where Gospel mission and racial and gender prejudice all had raised their heads. A child is healed.
God happens in our world in these ordinary yet astounding moments, when hate and resentment and prejudice are put aside and hands reach across great divides, when forgiveness or at least the possibility of forgiveness is grasped. We put aside the cold comfort of revenge or grievance or the cruelty of keeping someone or a whole people in a box of our making—“she’s always like that”, “what do you expect from THOSE people?”—and instead reach out in honesty and hope. And that is where God happens, where the Gospel finally makes sense, where all those lovely words like “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us” become more than comforting traditional words and come to world-changing life.
The ancient hermit Antony the Great, who spent decades in solitude, once startled people who came to ask him the way to salvation. He said, “My life is with my brother.” Like Antony, our lives are with our sisters and brothers, within the walls of this church, and beyond to the world. It is in that unromantic and messy arena of resentment, grievance, and the possibility of forgiveness that the Gospel becomes real. It is in that human arena that God happens.
*phrase not mine, regrettably, but taken from the book by ++Rowan Williams of the same title
Friday, August 26, 2011
Anglo-Catholic?
From time to time the parish has wondered, asserted, discussed, and argued about "What exactly IS Anglo-Catholic?" Here's one from a Bishop Weston from 1923, who says what makes most sense to me on the matter:
"...If you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to come out from before your Tabernacle and walk, with Christ mystically present in you, out into the streets of this country, and find the same Jesus in the people of your cities and your villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum... Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet"
"...If you are prepared to fight for the right of adoring Jesus in his Blessed Sacrament, then you have got to come out from before your Tabernacle and walk, with Christ mystically present in you, out into the streets of this country, and find the same Jesus in the people of your cities and your villages. You cannot claim to worship Jesus in the Tabernacle, if you do not pity Jesus in the slum... Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel and try to wash their feet"
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
The MAX stop--cherries and blessings given and received
Just this AM Junior Warden Elaine Hogg and I hung out from 7-8 AM at the 82nd Avenue/Halsey Tri-Met train platform, offering cherries and coffee and St. Christopher's Day blessings to any who wished.
I wish I could say that I came up with this great idea on my own, but this was the brainchild of Mother Jennifer Creswell of St. Luke's Gresham. Jennifer has a flair and courage both for "liturgical evangelism", taking the charge of her priesthood vows "to bless" by public presence and blessing out and about in the world. Several small groups of Episcopal clergy and laity promised to keep vigil at Tri-Met stops throughout the city on this, the traditional Western feast of St. Christopher patron of travelers. I felt a special urgency to be present on the 82nd Avenue stop as by reputation it is one of the more crime-prone train stops in town.
I found this experience deeply, sacredly unsettling. For all my talk about evangelism and learning how to "go forth", I am actually quite shy of that, afraid of intruding on people, and averse to potential hostility. To avoid potential hassles by transit cops I made sure I had an actual ticket in my possession.
Elaine met me on the platform, our other companions being prevented from participating by illness. I had bought one of those Starbucks coffee cartons complete with cream and cups, and Elaine brought fresh cherries. Elaine said we should begin by invoking blessing on ourselves, on the Tri-Met travelers, and on the operators, as well as on ourselves. And so we did. Something changed in that moment, a sense of purpose and rightness, a feeling of being centered and of standing on a place which God has set aside, holy.
Elaine was great, our pro-active person, walking about with cherries and, when it felt right, saying simply why we were present, "Happy Saint Christopher's Day!" I stood by the coffee and the sign "Free coffee, free blessings for those who wish them, no obligation or back-talk!" Several people drifted over and spoke. Those who did were, judging by their dress and appearance, those who had known some pain or some poverty. People of color were more receptive by and large than non-colored folks, often saying first "God bless you!" before any such words came from our mouths.
One lost-looking man about my age with a briefcase gratefully took our directions for the correct train downtown, said he was on business from the Pittsburgh area. I told him I had gone to school at a tiny Roman Catholic seminary up Route 8 from Pittsburgh, whereupon his face registered shock and disbelief. "St. Fidelis--I went there too." We stood and stared at one another--St. Fidelis had maybe 45 students at its height in those days, before it closed. Some might call this coincidence, but I find I dare not.
Elaine and I would stand and speak between each wash of the commuting tide presaged by train arrival or a bus disgorging its preoccupied load of commuters above us on the overpass. We spoke of how, as the hour wore on, people seemed more tense and more preoccupied, less amenable to being approached even with cherries proffered by a gentle woman with a delightful Scottish accent. We spoke of how we can bless, with the name of Jesus, those passing by on train and those in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-84 next to the tracks without anyone conscious of that fact. In writing afterwards, I find myself thinking that it is somehow crucial that such anonymous blessing be something of value, something that makes a difference in ways I cannot put into words.
When we were done, we were done. We left and, with the 2/3 full coffee carton and the remaining cherries, went to the courtyard of JOIN and left the remaining spoils of St. Christopher in the courtyard which would soon be filled with poor folks waiting to get inside.
What does it mean to "take one's faith out into the world"? We all do this daily just by dint of being the Body of Christ in family and workplace. But to speak words of blessing, owning up to being intentional friends and servants of the Blessed One, that is something else again, at least to me. For one brief hour, it was an experience of vulnerability--needing a companion that we might go "two by two", needing prayer and assurance of the divine presence, needing the receptivity and kindness of those whom we approached, needing the assurance of divine presence and blessing. I suspect that it is this sort of presence and vulnerability that will be part and parcel of ministry in this and any church in the future, and those who are already so engaged have a head start! But we have a chance to offer the best of what our particular take on the Gospel gives to us--a generous, blessing-conscious, vulnerable faith, learning from the ground up what it is to take blessing and to receive blessing in a God-inhabited world.
I wish I could say that I came up with this great idea on my own, but this was the brainchild of Mother Jennifer Creswell of St. Luke's Gresham. Jennifer has a flair and courage both for "liturgical evangelism", taking the charge of her priesthood vows "to bless" by public presence and blessing out and about in the world. Several small groups of Episcopal clergy and laity promised to keep vigil at Tri-Met stops throughout the city on this, the traditional Western feast of St. Christopher patron of travelers. I felt a special urgency to be present on the 82nd Avenue stop as by reputation it is one of the more crime-prone train stops in town.
I found this experience deeply, sacredly unsettling. For all my talk about evangelism and learning how to "go forth", I am actually quite shy of that, afraid of intruding on people, and averse to potential hostility. To avoid potential hassles by transit cops I made sure I had an actual ticket in my possession.
Elaine met me on the platform, our other companions being prevented from participating by illness. I had bought one of those Starbucks coffee cartons complete with cream and cups, and Elaine brought fresh cherries. Elaine said we should begin by invoking blessing on ourselves, on the Tri-Met travelers, and on the operators, as well as on ourselves. And so we did. Something changed in that moment, a sense of purpose and rightness, a feeling of being centered and of standing on a place which God has set aside, holy.
Elaine was great, our pro-active person, walking about with cherries and, when it felt right, saying simply why we were present, "Happy Saint Christopher's Day!" I stood by the coffee and the sign "Free coffee, free blessings for those who wish them, no obligation or back-talk!" Several people drifted over and spoke. Those who did were, judging by their dress and appearance, those who had known some pain or some poverty. People of color were more receptive by and large than non-colored folks, often saying first "God bless you!" before any such words came from our mouths.
One lost-looking man about my age with a briefcase gratefully took our directions for the correct train downtown, said he was on business from the Pittsburgh area. I told him I had gone to school at a tiny Roman Catholic seminary up Route 8 from Pittsburgh, whereupon his face registered shock and disbelief. "St. Fidelis--I went there too." We stood and stared at one another--St. Fidelis had maybe 45 students at its height in those days, before it closed. Some might call this coincidence, but I find I dare not.
Elaine and I would stand and speak between each wash of the commuting tide presaged by train arrival or a bus disgorging its preoccupied load of commuters above us on the overpass. We spoke of how, as the hour wore on, people seemed more tense and more preoccupied, less amenable to being approached even with cherries proffered by a gentle woman with a delightful Scottish accent. We spoke of how we can bless, with the name of Jesus, those passing by on train and those in bumper-to-bumper traffic on I-84 next to the tracks without anyone conscious of that fact. In writing afterwards, I find myself thinking that it is somehow crucial that such anonymous blessing be something of value, something that makes a difference in ways I cannot put into words.
When we were done, we were done. We left and, with the 2/3 full coffee carton and the remaining cherries, went to the courtyard of JOIN and left the remaining spoils of St. Christopher in the courtyard which would soon be filled with poor folks waiting to get inside.
What does it mean to "take one's faith out into the world"? We all do this daily just by dint of being the Body of Christ in family and workplace. But to speak words of blessing, owning up to being intentional friends and servants of the Blessed One, that is something else again, at least to me. For one brief hour, it was an experience of vulnerability--needing a companion that we might go "two by two", needing prayer and assurance of the divine presence, needing the receptivity and kindness of those whom we approached, needing the assurance of divine presence and blessing. I suspect that it is this sort of presence and vulnerability that will be part and parcel of ministry in this and any church in the future, and those who are already so engaged have a head start! But we have a chance to offer the best of what our particular take on the Gospel gives to us--a generous, blessing-conscious, vulnerable faith, learning from the ground up what it is to take blessing and to receive blessing in a God-inhabited world.
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