(Note: this is a synopsis of a homily delivered for our Sunday observance of "Mary the God-Bearer", "St. Mary the Virgin" on the Episcopal calendar. I've added reflections based on our exploration of outreach ministries at Saints Peter and Paul--kn+)
A colleague of mine, a respected rector of a vital urban parish, once told me that he tries to spend at least twice as much time each week in coffee shops and brewpubs than he does in the church office. "If I am in the office too much" he opined, "I have the wrong conversations."
Well, he is very quotable on this and, I think, very right. These "wrong conversations" may not be "bad conversations" per se. But they are predictable conversations, about bulletins and church calendars and attendance and building maintenance and church programs and a great deal of things that have absolutely no meaning to anyone once one puts a foot over the threshold of the doorway. Frankly, I think those things I listed increasingly have little meaning for many of the folks who come inside the doorway as well!
The other day I was speaking with a parish member, in a coffee shop, about life and values and God and spiritual seeking. A woman I did not know walked past us, saw the book I had brought with me, and said "Richard Rohr! I have to talk with you some time!" Another customer, a young woman in a sleeveless top, walked past with her cup. I saw that she had a beautiful, full-color Our Lady of Guadalupe tattooed on her upper arm. It was August 15, the actual day of Our Lady's feast.
I smiled at seeing the beautiful tattoo and thought, "There she is. She's right where she should be." Like my colleague, Our Lady wants to have the right sort of conversations, and is outside of the walls of church office and sanctuary where her people are.
That is the outrageous character of the Gospel. God has left the building.
Most of us love temples. It is human instinct to build a temple, to provide a beautiful place for meditation and for prayer and for gathering groups of people to perform sacred acts. Temples establish mailing addresses for God, or at least we hope they do. Every major culture builds and has built temples, whether we call them cathedrals or mosques or synagogues or stupas. They are wonderful to visit and often invite prayer and reflection.
But the God of the Bible has left the building!
Remember David, the great king of the Hebrew Scriptures? He too wanted to built a temple, feeling guilty that he had a nice wooden house while the Ark of God was still under the old tent that was carried by the people of Israel while they wandered in the desert. The prophet comes to David after a dream and says, "Thus says God: I did not ask you to build me a temple. I traveled with my people in the wilderness." The God of the Bible is a pilgrim God, and the best and most intimate time with this God was when they traveled with God in the desert. On the road, in exile, homeless, learning in humility how different a God this was and how different they were called to be. The whole business of a temple was a very mixed experience for Israel, and prophets criticized the temple and predicted its destruction as much or more than the temple was praised.
And when the pilgrim God wished to break free of culture and time and ethnic loyalty, what happened?
This pilgrim God chose a young woman, anonymous and unmarried and away from the power and privilege of Jerusalem. On the day that everything changed, the Temple in Jerusalem was conducting business as usual, sacrifices and sung Psalms and incense and offerings and all. The Temple and its priests and singers and those attending were ignorant of the fact that God had left the building. God was up north, in a small town, where a mighty archangel spoke kindly and politely to a young woman and respectfully waited for her answer. For she was free to say yes or no.
The young woman, Miriam, said "Here am I, the servant of the Lord: let it be."
And God took up a new home, in the body of that young woman. Mary became the new Temple, which is why old litanies call her things like "tower of ivory, mystical tabernacle". God took a chosen place on the margins, in frail flesh, with people forgotten and pushed aside and silenced. God had left the building. Years later, when the God-made-flesh died on the cross, the Gospels speak of the curtain in the Temple veiling the Holy of Holies being torn in two. Out, out, no longer in a temple made of stone, but wild and out in the world. Look to where people are in exile and on the edge. Look to the margins, the forgotten places. There the divine wind blows and there the God-made-flesh will be found, making Nowheres into Somewheres and Nobodies into really Somebodies and leaving the powerful and the self-righteous standing silent with wide-open mouths amidst their offerings and their rites.
We all love a temple. We, meaning church-folk, usually love our churches. It is good for the praying community to have a home, a place to gather to celebrate and to pray. It is good to have a roof for our ministries, especially for those that benefit someone other than ourselves. But we must always be on our guard to have the right conversations, and to regard our buildings and other possessions in the right way, the way of the Gospel. The Gospel is a message for those who have not heard it, the divine energy pushing us past our inward-looking preoccupations and self-involvement and into a world where God has chosen to dwell, among people whom God has loved so much that he became one of them and is within them still. The right conversation for church-folk goes something like this: how do we seek and serve the Christ who walks past our doors, whom we encounter in work and errands and in our streets? It is one of the greatest irony of the organized Christian project that a church can be where we hold the least amount of conversations about the Gospel. So often we talk about other things, and at great length.
Last night as I write this, the Senor Warden and I accompanied a young couple, with us for the past year, as they walked the streets of Montavilla with an attitude of curiosity and of prayer. They are helping lead us into exploring anew some basic Gospel questions: Who is our neighbor? Where did we see you, Lord? Our steps took us down Stark Street, where a lone homeless woman welcomed us into her space of sidewalk that she shares with a lone white dove who keeps careful watch on her. Then up north, eventually to Montaville Park, where under trees we found small gatherings of homeless already worried about the ending of summer and the coming of the rains. Out of the church building with its lovely silence and lingering smell of incense and flickering candles, out among those who have not croseed our thesholds but whom Christ loves dear and lives among to this day. It can feel oddly vulnerable to be out and about in the streets and the lots, away from the protection of role and title. But it is one place to have the right conversations, like "Where is God when you are out on the street? How can we approach these people with respect? What is the Good News for them?"
I did not see another colorful tattoo, but I did not need to. The God of the Gospel has left the building and journeys with the people. It is still the Octave of Our Lady's feast and, unseen but powerful, she was already walking among those vulnerable and poor, those among whom the pilgrim God loves to travel.
archived musings and preachments
Wednesday, August 21, 2013
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Climb
Sermon: Feast of the Transfiguration
Exodus 34:29-35 • Psalm 99 • 2 Peter 1:13-21 • Luke 9:28-36
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
It is such a joy to be back in this place after a year away. The last time I stood in this pulpit, I had come to church from an empty apartment, all packed up to move to Boston for divinity school. It’s been a great adventure for my wife, Heather, and for me, but it sure feels good to be home.
Our new home on the East Coast, we share with a housemate. She is clean, quiet, mellow, with only one flaw: She loves to start big, serious conversations right as I’m trying to go to bed.
I’m walking to the bathroom, holding my toothbrush: “Catherine, I picked up more dish soap. And how do you know if you’re on the right career path?”
I’m getting a glass of water at 1:00 AM: “Catherine, I’m out of town this weekend. And how do you know when it’s time to have kids?”
And every time, I rub my bleary eyes and say the same thing: “I don’t know, but I think when the time comes, the answer will present itself.”
The Transfiguration answers the question the apostles must have been asking: How do we know if all this is true?
How do we know if you’re really God? How do we know if it was worth giving up everything we had to follow you?
I know I asked that question last summer. I believe in God: I do. And I want to follow Jesus: I do. And even though my faith in the church has taken some serious hits over the years, my faith in Christ has stayed strong.
But still, I wondered: How do I know if quitting my job and uprooting my family and leaving my friends and putting my cats on an airplane – horrible – is worth the risk?
The Feast of the Transfiguration is the answer presenting itself.
Peter and James and John were the lucky ones. They got to see Jesus transfigured: his face shining, and his clothes dazzling white. They heard the voice of God from the cloud, telling them all their greatest hopes and fears were true.
And they saw Moses and Elijah and they saw Christ in his glory and you better believe that after that they were never the same.
And that is what I want in my life of faith.
I want it so badly that sometimes I skip right over the prologue.
They had that transcendent experience on a mountaintop.
But to get there, they had to climb a mountain.
And here in the land of glaciers and mountaintops, we know that is no easy thing.
If you’ve ever climbed a mountain, you know: No matter how badly you want to reach the top, the climb only feels good for the first ten minutes. After that, your throat burns and your legs ache. You feel like you can’t get enough air. You look at the dark clouds rolling in above you and long for the safety of level ground.
And this is what it looks like to climb toward transfiguration.
If we want to see God in our own lives, if, like Moses, we want our own faces to shine, we have to start climbing that mountain.
And each one of us will have a different path, but nobody gets an easy way up. Part of the journey comes in those late-night moments of asking:
How do I know that this is worth the effort?
How do I know that God hears my prayers?
How do I know that God is even real?
And these are normal. And these are real. And these are part of the climb.
The author Patrick Califia tells us, “The true worth of our character is not determined by whether we have the ability to experience transcendent moments of insight or union with divinity. Rather, it is determined by whether we can remember the things that we are told during those moments and live them out during the long stretches of ordinary time when we are cut off from such inspiration.”
But we know the mountaintop is there, even in the moments when we can’t see it. We know that if we wait and we watch and we pray, if we commit ourselves to the climb, the answer will present itself.
And so we remember the Transfiguration, right in the middle of this long stretch of ordinary time.
This is my prayer for all of us: That we are brave enough to ask the hard questions, knowing the answers will come; that we remember the mountaintop, even in the middle of the climb.
Amen.
by Cat Healy Canapary 8/11/13
Exodus 34:29-35 • Psalm 99 • 2 Peter 1:13-21 • Luke 9:28-36
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
It is such a joy to be back in this place after a year away. The last time I stood in this pulpit, I had come to church from an empty apartment, all packed up to move to Boston for divinity school. It’s been a great adventure for my wife, Heather, and for me, but it sure feels good to be home.
Our new home on the East Coast, we share with a housemate. She is clean, quiet, mellow, with only one flaw: She loves to start big, serious conversations right as I’m trying to go to bed.
I’m walking to the bathroom, holding my toothbrush: “Catherine, I picked up more dish soap. And how do you know if you’re on the right career path?”
I’m getting a glass of water at 1:00 AM: “Catherine, I’m out of town this weekend. And how do you know when it’s time to have kids?”
And every time, I rub my bleary eyes and say the same thing: “I don’t know, but I think when the time comes, the answer will present itself.”
The Transfiguration answers the question the apostles must have been asking: How do we know if all this is true?
How do we know if you’re really God? How do we know if it was worth giving up everything we had to follow you?
I know I asked that question last summer. I believe in God: I do. And I want to follow Jesus: I do. And even though my faith in the church has taken some serious hits over the years, my faith in Christ has stayed strong.
But still, I wondered: How do I know if quitting my job and uprooting my family and leaving my friends and putting my cats on an airplane – horrible – is worth the risk?
The Feast of the Transfiguration is the answer presenting itself.
Peter and James and John were the lucky ones. They got to see Jesus transfigured: his face shining, and his clothes dazzling white. They heard the voice of God from the cloud, telling them all their greatest hopes and fears were true.
And they saw Moses and Elijah and they saw Christ in his glory and you better believe that after that they were never the same.
And that is what I want in my life of faith.
I want it so badly that sometimes I skip right over the prologue.
They had that transcendent experience on a mountaintop.
But to get there, they had to climb a mountain.
And here in the land of glaciers and mountaintops, we know that is no easy thing.
If you’ve ever climbed a mountain, you know: No matter how badly you want to reach the top, the climb only feels good for the first ten minutes. After that, your throat burns and your legs ache. You feel like you can’t get enough air. You look at the dark clouds rolling in above you and long for the safety of level ground.
And this is what it looks like to climb toward transfiguration.
If we want to see God in our own lives, if, like Moses, we want our own faces to shine, we have to start climbing that mountain.
And each one of us will have a different path, but nobody gets an easy way up. Part of the journey comes in those late-night moments of asking:
How do I know that this is worth the effort?
How do I know that God hears my prayers?
How do I know that God is even real?
And these are normal. And these are real. And these are part of the climb.
The author Patrick Califia tells us, “The true worth of our character is not determined by whether we have the ability to experience transcendent moments of insight or union with divinity. Rather, it is determined by whether we can remember the things that we are told during those moments and live them out during the long stretches of ordinary time when we are cut off from such inspiration.”
But we know the mountaintop is there, even in the moments when we can’t see it. We know that if we wait and we watch and we pray, if we commit ourselves to the climb, the answer will present itself.
And so we remember the Transfiguration, right in the middle of this long stretch of ordinary time.
This is my prayer for all of us: That we are brave enough to ask the hard questions, knowing the answers will come; that we remember the mountaintop, even in the middle of the climb.
Amen.
by Cat Healy Canapary 8/11/13
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Of donkeys and Orders: at Sean Wall's ordination
Sean Wall’s ordination
July 6, 2013
Jeremiah 1: 4-9; Ps 119: 33-40; 2 Cor 4: 1-6; Luke 22: 24-27
The story is told that Abba Isaac, one of the early Desert Fathers, was chosen by his fellow-monks to be ordained a priest. Hearing of this, Isaac fled. His fellow-monks pursued him, stopping to rest by a farmer’s field. While they rested, their donkey wandered into the field and stood still where Isaac happened to be hiding. The monks, retrieving the donkey, found Isaac and tackled him, and began to tie him up to lead him back to be ordained. But Isaac sighed and said, “No need for the ropes. Clearly this is the will of God.”
Now that’s a call and discernment process!
There are a number of stories like Abba Isaac’s, where far from seeking ordination the early monks and other early Christians dreaded it and avoided it, even to the point of being held down while the bishop imposed hands.
In those days there was one clear call, the call of God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit given in Baptism. Those were still the great days of baptismal catechesis, and the ancient power and dignity of baptism had not yet faded. Women and men fled to the desert so they could live that all-consuming, all-absorbing call to radical simplicity and poverty of spirit and humility and immersion in the mystery of the Christ that is the baptismal call of us all. Ordination was seen as presenting real problems, possible distractions from that one love of the one Lord, real temptations to pride and vanity and ambition cloaked as ministry.
Well, green and well-watered Lake Oswego is not the Egyptian desert, but as we gather here Christ gathers with us, and with Christ come all his friends, Abba Isaac among them. Old Isaac’s tale invites us to recall the one Baptismal call that we all share, the one Lord who gathers us, the one Love above all loves without whom nothing we do or say has life and light. Only in the light of Christ who calls us all can we understand ordaining Sean today.
It is that one Lord who gathers us. It is his Body, that wonderful and sacred mystery as the Collect says, that shines with his presence. It is the sacrament of the gathered assembly, the glorious and broken and comical and sinful and maddening and beautiful Body of Christ on earth, who calls us all into fellowship and who calls some of the baptized to Orders. Sean, you are to be ordered today as a deacon preliminary to, with God’s help, being ordered a priest according to our present practice. Holy Orders are just that, the church’s orders to be a specific presence that the Body needs, ordered to do certain tasks that the Body requires to grow and nourish our common life in Christ.
I can tell you with complete confidence, with the authority of my own existential experience, that what you are being ordered to do and be is humanly impossible. A transitional deacon on the path to priesthood is apprenticed to gather the Body in Christ’s name. You are apprenticed to unfailingly point not to yourself but to Christ, just as Saint Paul did when he said “We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.” You are to allow Christ to love and heal and speak hope in you and through you. You will be expected, on both regularly scheduled occasions as well as at barbecues and bus stops and brewpubs and hospital waiting rooms, to speak words that are not your words alone, but Christ’s words enfleshed in your words. You are to lead the Body of Christ to grow in mission and service in an age and a culture wherein the Gospel and Jesus himself are in disrepute, are out of fashion, are looked upon with indifference that quickly turns to suspicion.
The doors are open if you want to make a break for it. Ushers, please stand ready!
But know this: if this task and this life seems daunting, then you are in good company. Jeremiah’s call makes that clear. There is never a comfortable time to be a servant of God. Jeremiah’s “yes” to God’s call meant a life of tension and conflict. He names before God his sense of inability and his lack of preparation. I wonder if he passed all his GOE’s? But call is call because it is unexpected and unlikely, and any of us who are called rarely feel equal to the task. But with call comes a promise, God’s promise to be strength and rest and Word and voice, for Jeremiah and for all who hear and respond and for you.
We prayed a portion of Psalm 119, a Psalm that Celtic monks used to repeat daily from memory. They did this to renew their commitment to listen to and respond to God’s Word, to be people of the living Word. That is a wise idea—to be soaked daily in the living Word, in Scripture, in prayer, in the living Word made flesh in the Eucharist, in the living Word heard by listening deeply and carefully to God’s speech in the world.
And the Christ who speaks today in the Gospel says to us and to you over and over: Serve. Be in the world as a servant. Do not fear, because the Master came to serve. Let him serve through your service.
That simple call to serve is the most life-giving, unfashionable, deeply needed, and counter-cultural word you can proclaim with your mouth and with your fingers on a keyboard and, above all, by your actions and your stance in the world. So surrender to it. I know you have sought to.
And you do not come to this day alone.
Your wonderful family has supported you and challenged you and healed you and stretched you and make sure that you keep it real and that you keep your feet on the ground. That’s their job and I’ll bet they are good at it. Love them and treasure them for that gift among many. If they are like my family, they have already put up with a lot.
Value this community who raised you up. Value the years spent in a plane cockpit where I suspect this day seemed as remote as the horizon-line. Value the simple servanthood you have exercised feeding the poor at Brigid’s Breakfast. Your studies, your friendships, those who have challenged you, all those with whom you have served to this date—all are part of the journey and all are here today with you in this ending which is a beginning, this beginning that marks an ending.
The wondrous, maddening, dying and rising Body that we call Church is in a period of extraordinary change. Much has grown old. Much has reached the end of its course. And although there is much talk of leadership these days, the need for the ordained to lead, the paradox is that any skills or knowledge we may learn or deploy will not change the fact that most of what is happening in the Church and the world is utterly, utterly beyond our control.
Some may consider this a disaster. Me, I think it is an opportunity—to remember who we most truly and deeply are. Before his death, Henri Nouwen said, “I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love.” We are being given a terrible, wondrous grace in this age: all is falling away except Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as servants for Jesus’ sake. This is actually a wondrous gift of God.
So my brother Sean, in the name of this gathering I ask you to do what you know you are called to do. Do it as a life, one day at a time, with the help of God.
Answer the call of God in Christ. “Call” is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Your call will come daily, hourly. Keep your ears cleaned out and open, your attention alert, your eyes sharp. Your call to serve will be renewed each time the phone rings, each time the doorbell rings, each time an e-mail pops up on the server, each time someone tugs on your sleeve, each time someone springs into your mind unbidden.
Immerse yourself daily in the mystery of Christ. Do this by soaking in prayer, by marinating yourself in Scripture, by asking for grace and help over and over again. Never let this soaking be something that gets done if you have time for it, because you won’t. Do it as if your life depends on it. It does.
Love the church. I do not mean love the culture of an institution. That is changing under our very feet. I do not mean love the church as it might be, because that is a dream shaped by our own hopes and fears. Do not love the church you think you remember, because that is nostalgia often shaped by rejection of the present. Love the wonderful and sacred, comical and tragic, delightful and heroic, faltering and cowardly, and very real collection of pilgrims that we are and that Jesus loves right here and now.
Seek the servant Lord over and over again. Ask him humbly to serve in and through you.
And know that there will be days when you want to do nothing but cut and run. Believe me on that. But don’t worry—God will have Abba Isaac’s donkey all ready to look for you!
July 6, 2013
Jeremiah 1: 4-9; Ps 119: 33-40; 2 Cor 4: 1-6; Luke 22: 24-27
The story is told that Abba Isaac, one of the early Desert Fathers, was chosen by his fellow-monks to be ordained a priest. Hearing of this, Isaac fled. His fellow-monks pursued him, stopping to rest by a farmer’s field. While they rested, their donkey wandered into the field and stood still where Isaac happened to be hiding. The monks, retrieving the donkey, found Isaac and tackled him, and began to tie him up to lead him back to be ordained. But Isaac sighed and said, “No need for the ropes. Clearly this is the will of God.”
Now that’s a call and discernment process!
There are a number of stories like Abba Isaac’s, where far from seeking ordination the early monks and other early Christians dreaded it and avoided it, even to the point of being held down while the bishop imposed hands.
In those days there was one clear call, the call of God through Jesus Christ in the Spirit given in Baptism. Those were still the great days of baptismal catechesis, and the ancient power and dignity of baptism had not yet faded. Women and men fled to the desert so they could live that all-consuming, all-absorbing call to radical simplicity and poverty of spirit and humility and immersion in the mystery of the Christ that is the baptismal call of us all. Ordination was seen as presenting real problems, possible distractions from that one love of the one Lord, real temptations to pride and vanity and ambition cloaked as ministry.
Well, green and well-watered Lake Oswego is not the Egyptian desert, but as we gather here Christ gathers with us, and with Christ come all his friends, Abba Isaac among them. Old Isaac’s tale invites us to recall the one Baptismal call that we all share, the one Lord who gathers us, the one Love above all loves without whom nothing we do or say has life and light. Only in the light of Christ who calls us all can we understand ordaining Sean today.
It is that one Lord who gathers us. It is his Body, that wonderful and sacred mystery as the Collect says, that shines with his presence. It is the sacrament of the gathered assembly, the glorious and broken and comical and sinful and maddening and beautiful Body of Christ on earth, who calls us all into fellowship and who calls some of the baptized to Orders. Sean, you are to be ordered today as a deacon preliminary to, with God’s help, being ordered a priest according to our present practice. Holy Orders are just that, the church’s orders to be a specific presence that the Body needs, ordered to do certain tasks that the Body requires to grow and nourish our common life in Christ.
I can tell you with complete confidence, with the authority of my own existential experience, that what you are being ordered to do and be is humanly impossible. A transitional deacon on the path to priesthood is apprenticed to gather the Body in Christ’s name. You are apprenticed to unfailingly point not to yourself but to Christ, just as Saint Paul did when he said “We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.” You are to allow Christ to love and heal and speak hope in you and through you. You will be expected, on both regularly scheduled occasions as well as at barbecues and bus stops and brewpubs and hospital waiting rooms, to speak words that are not your words alone, but Christ’s words enfleshed in your words. You are to lead the Body of Christ to grow in mission and service in an age and a culture wherein the Gospel and Jesus himself are in disrepute, are out of fashion, are looked upon with indifference that quickly turns to suspicion.
The doors are open if you want to make a break for it. Ushers, please stand ready!
But know this: if this task and this life seems daunting, then you are in good company. Jeremiah’s call makes that clear. There is never a comfortable time to be a servant of God. Jeremiah’s “yes” to God’s call meant a life of tension and conflict. He names before God his sense of inability and his lack of preparation. I wonder if he passed all his GOE’s? But call is call because it is unexpected and unlikely, and any of us who are called rarely feel equal to the task. But with call comes a promise, God’s promise to be strength and rest and Word and voice, for Jeremiah and for all who hear and respond and for you.
We prayed a portion of Psalm 119, a Psalm that Celtic monks used to repeat daily from memory. They did this to renew their commitment to listen to and respond to God’s Word, to be people of the living Word. That is a wise idea—to be soaked daily in the living Word, in Scripture, in prayer, in the living Word made flesh in the Eucharist, in the living Word heard by listening deeply and carefully to God’s speech in the world.
And the Christ who speaks today in the Gospel says to us and to you over and over: Serve. Be in the world as a servant. Do not fear, because the Master came to serve. Let him serve through your service.
That simple call to serve is the most life-giving, unfashionable, deeply needed, and counter-cultural word you can proclaim with your mouth and with your fingers on a keyboard and, above all, by your actions and your stance in the world. So surrender to it. I know you have sought to.
And you do not come to this day alone.
Your wonderful family has supported you and challenged you and healed you and stretched you and make sure that you keep it real and that you keep your feet on the ground. That’s their job and I’ll bet they are good at it. Love them and treasure them for that gift among many. If they are like my family, they have already put up with a lot.
Value this community who raised you up. Value the years spent in a plane cockpit where I suspect this day seemed as remote as the horizon-line. Value the simple servanthood you have exercised feeding the poor at Brigid’s Breakfast. Your studies, your friendships, those who have challenged you, all those with whom you have served to this date—all are part of the journey and all are here today with you in this ending which is a beginning, this beginning that marks an ending.
The wondrous, maddening, dying and rising Body that we call Church is in a period of extraordinary change. Much has grown old. Much has reached the end of its course. And although there is much talk of leadership these days, the need for the ordained to lead, the paradox is that any skills or knowledge we may learn or deploy will not change the fact that most of what is happening in the Church and the world is utterly, utterly beyond our control.
Some may consider this a disaster. Me, I think it is an opportunity—to remember who we most truly and deeply are. Before his death, Henri Nouwen said, “I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. That is the way Jesus came to reveal God’s love.” We are being given a terrible, wondrous grace in this age: all is falling away except Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as servants for Jesus’ sake. This is actually a wondrous gift of God.
So my brother Sean, in the name of this gathering I ask you to do what you know you are called to do. Do it as a life, one day at a time, with the help of God.
Answer the call of God in Christ. “Call” is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Your call will come daily, hourly. Keep your ears cleaned out and open, your attention alert, your eyes sharp. Your call to serve will be renewed each time the phone rings, each time the doorbell rings, each time an e-mail pops up on the server, each time someone tugs on your sleeve, each time someone springs into your mind unbidden.
Immerse yourself daily in the mystery of Christ. Do this by soaking in prayer, by marinating yourself in Scripture, by asking for grace and help over and over again. Never let this soaking be something that gets done if you have time for it, because you won’t. Do it as if your life depends on it. It does.
Love the church. I do not mean love the culture of an institution. That is changing under our very feet. I do not mean love the church as it might be, because that is a dream shaped by our own hopes and fears. Do not love the church you think you remember, because that is nostalgia often shaped by rejection of the present. Love the wonderful and sacred, comical and tragic, delightful and heroic, faltering and cowardly, and very real collection of pilgrims that we are and that Jesus loves right here and now.
Seek the servant Lord over and over again. Ask him humbly to serve in and through you.
And know that there will be days when you want to do nothing but cut and run. Believe me on that. But don’t worry—God will have Abba Isaac’s donkey all ready to look for you!
Sunday, June 30, 2013
The right questions
Saints Peter and Paul 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC/HolyDays/PetPaul.html
On Iona, that sacred island of Saint Columba off the coast of Scotland, I had a few moments to myself before the pilgrim group gathered. I walked to the site of Saint Columba’s cell and presented myself in spirit to the old Abbot. A question formed itself in my mind, something to the effect of “How can I make my life work out?” After a silence, I clearly felt Saint Columba tell me “You are asking the wrong question.”
I am still working on what he meant by the “right question.”
We prayed at the beginning of our gathering: “Grant that your Church”, instructed by the teaching and example of Peter and Paul, “and knit together in unity by your Spirit, may ever stand firm upon the one foundation, which is Jesus Christ our Lord…”
To be the people of Saints Peter and Paul is to be a people who stand together on the one foundation, Jesus Christ. There is no other source of unity that will stand the test of time. One well-loved member told me, before I left, that they hoped I would find Iona and Ireland unchanged. Instead I found them very changed indeed. Even old monuments were more worn by time. If the very stones of ancient Iona change, then know that time will change us if nothing else will. In my brief 18 years here I have seen three different congregations and I think a fourth is emerging in front of our eyes. Life, time, culture, and people coming and going will all change us. And that change will be felt by some as loss and diminishment unless we are clear that our unity is based in Christ.
And if our unity is based in Christ, Christ Jesus will do marvelous things among us and with us. I promise.
We are a very diverse congregation in many ways. We have continuing members, some of whom welcome our present reality and others who look more to our past. We have newer members who have joined us for differing reasons: for depth of worship and spirituality in Episcopal and Catholic and Celtic tones, for the outreach we sustain to the poor and broken, for our community life and the fact that we are present in this complex neighborhood. We have a whole congregation of people who speak Spanish as well as English, who bring different insights but who are also deeply Catholic, who share our love for Mary mother of the Lord and who in the end are much more like us than they are different from us. Together we are Saints Peter and Paul, here and now. We are the church that is real and here and that Jesus loves, not the church we wish we had or the church we think we remember.
Only Christ can provide the mysterious unity that we need.
Are we asking the right questions? Maybe the old Saint’s challenging remark was meant for us all, because I did have our church on my heart that day as well. There are many wrong questions for a church to ask. Here are some examples:
How can I keep my church from changing? Or,
How can I change my church? (Both are flip-sides of the same coin)
Does this church meet my needs?
How can we fix our budget?
Am I comfortable with all my fellow-members?
There are others...
Here are some examples of the right questions:
How can we follow Christ more deeply?
How can we care for one another more authentically?
How can we serve our neighbors?
How can we welcome all who come to us?
There are others...
Seeking the right questions will make the right answers emerge in time. It is a messy, unresolved life, but it is a life illumined by the presence of the living Christ. Like Saints Peter and Paul themselves, we do not need to have all the answers. Here is a modern poem about St. Peter, in all his glorious incomplete humanity…
Impulsive master of misunderstanding
You comfort me with all your big mistakes;
Jumping the ship before you make the landing,
Placing the bet before you know the stakes.
I love the way you step out without knowing,
The way you sometimes speak before you think,
The way your broken faith is always growing,
The way he holds you even when you sink.
Born to a world that always tried to shame you,
Your shaky ego vulnerable to shame,
I love the way that Jesus chose to name you,
Before you knew how to deserve that name.
And in the end your Saviour let you prove
That each denial is undone by love. (Malcolm Guite)
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearABC/HolyDays/PetPaul.html
On Iona, that sacred island of Saint Columba off the coast of Scotland, I had a few moments to myself before the pilgrim group gathered. I walked to the site of Saint Columba’s cell and presented myself in spirit to the old Abbot. A question formed itself in my mind, something to the effect of “How can I make my life work out?” After a silence, I clearly felt Saint Columba tell me “You are asking the wrong question.”
I am still working on what he meant by the “right question.”
We prayed at the beginning of our gathering: “Grant that your Church”, instructed by the teaching and example of Peter and Paul, “and knit together in unity by your Spirit, may ever stand firm upon the one foundation, which is Jesus Christ our Lord…”
To be the people of Saints Peter and Paul is to be a people who stand together on the one foundation, Jesus Christ. There is no other source of unity that will stand the test of time. One well-loved member told me, before I left, that they hoped I would find Iona and Ireland unchanged. Instead I found them very changed indeed. Even old monuments were more worn by time. If the very stones of ancient Iona change, then know that time will change us if nothing else will. In my brief 18 years here I have seen three different congregations and I think a fourth is emerging in front of our eyes. Life, time, culture, and people coming and going will all change us. And that change will be felt by some as loss and diminishment unless we are clear that our unity is based in Christ.
And if our unity is based in Christ, Christ Jesus will do marvelous things among us and with us. I promise.
We are a very diverse congregation in many ways. We have continuing members, some of whom welcome our present reality and others who look more to our past. We have newer members who have joined us for differing reasons: for depth of worship and spirituality in Episcopal and Catholic and Celtic tones, for the outreach we sustain to the poor and broken, for our community life and the fact that we are present in this complex neighborhood. We have a whole congregation of people who speak Spanish as well as English, who bring different insights but who are also deeply Catholic, who share our love for Mary mother of the Lord and who in the end are much more like us than they are different from us. Together we are Saints Peter and Paul, here and now. We are the church that is real and here and that Jesus loves, not the church we wish we had or the church we think we remember.
Only Christ can provide the mysterious unity that we need.
Are we asking the right questions? Maybe the old Saint’s challenging remark was meant for us all, because I did have our church on my heart that day as well. There are many wrong questions for a church to ask. Here are some examples:
How can I keep my church from changing? Or,
How can I change my church? (Both are flip-sides of the same coin)
Does this church meet my needs?
How can we fix our budget?
Am I comfortable with all my fellow-members?
There are others...
Here are some examples of the right questions:
How can we follow Christ more deeply?
How can we care for one another more authentically?
How can we serve our neighbors?
How can we welcome all who come to us?
There are others...
Seeking the right questions will make the right answers emerge in time. It is a messy, unresolved life, but it is a life illumined by the presence of the living Christ. Like Saints Peter and Paul themselves, we do not need to have all the answers. Here is a modern poem about St. Peter, in all his glorious incomplete humanity…
Impulsive master of misunderstanding
You comfort me with all your big mistakes;
Jumping the ship before you make the landing,
Placing the bet before you know the stakes.
I love the way you step out without knowing,
The way you sometimes speak before you think,
The way your broken faith is always growing,
The way he holds you even when you sink.
Born to a world that always tried to shame you,
Your shaky ego vulnerable to shame,
I love the way that Jesus chose to name you,
Before you knew how to deserve that name.
And in the end your Saviour let you prove
That each denial is undone by love. (Malcolm Guite)
Sunday, May 26, 2013
The plunge
Trinity Sunday 2013
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CTrinity_RCL.html
Every morning that I drop my spouse off at her teaching job in the West Hills, I get back on the Hawthorne Bridge going east. At the top of the on-ramp, there is a “primo” corner for a panhandler that is always empty.
Up until last Fall it was always occupied. There sat Kirk Reeves, the “trumpet man”, clad in a white suit and Mickey Mouse hat. He played his trumpet and opened and closed a colorful collapsing plastic toy globe, or worked a hand puppet. Kirk inhabited that corner with whimsy and his own personal magic, and the day was only complete when you caught sight of him. Without words or a sign, Kirk called out with his simple, enchanting presence to all of us who were filled with our busy, distracted lives. No matter where your thoughts or attention were as you endured yet another commute, Kirk invited you ceaselessly into another reality, one of joy and surprise and pathos and sadness and compassion as well.
Tragically, Kirk ended his life last November. But for those of us who were touched by him, that eloquent empty corner still calls us and reminds us of joy and magic and of a human being whose life and struggle was lived in our midst.
“Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
"To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.”
Like a gentle clown at the crossroads, the divine Lady Wisdom, she whom the Church identifies with the divine Son of the Trinity, also calls to the depths of our souls. Come near, listen, and live.
Today is Trinity Sunday, the most dreaded day of the preaching year. I cut my teeth on four consecutive Trinity Sundays during the four years of my curacy in St. Louis. Bob Skinner, the rector, would grin maliciously and growl, “You’re up, Neilson.” Bob had no wish, as he said, to “preach on a doctrine.” That very word “doctrine” sets off alarm bells for people, as if something dry and abstract said with the weight of some distant authority is about to be expounded. So today is analogy-day, and somewhere someone is probably trotting out the old Saint Patrick legend about the shamrock—three leaves, one plant—or other images taken from here or there.
All of these attempts do just what we do not want to waste time on—making God the Three into some intellectual puzzle that we trot out once a year. In the end, any “explanation” is so inadequate that it flirts with heresy. The deeper the mystery, the more we impoverish it with our explanations. The simple truth is that God the One in Three is a revealed mystery, a profound reality that we cannot ever get to the bottom of with our very limited minds. The one God is Three persons. At the depth of God is dynamic relationship. The stillness of God is found in the depth of endless love given and received, endless knowledge shared and returned.
We are in that reality, encompassed by it, blessed and created and re-created by it. The simple image that comes to me is that of a diver plunging with confidence into a pool from a high board. The best way to get the Trinity is not to think, but to plunge.
But whatever attempt we make to plunge, to enter the mystery as close to us as water is to a fish, cannot come close to the Trinity’s ceaseless attempt to plunge into us.
Holy Lady Wisdom calls out ceaselessly to us, as gentle and as vulnerable as Kirk Reeves on his on-ramp street corner. “Come, come with me, I who was present always at the heart of God.” The eternal Word of God is not just “with God” as the Gospel of John says, but is “toward God”, ceaselessly moving in love and desire to the heart of the Father. The power and passion of that movement is God the Spirit. This Spirit is given to us, poured out in us, given not as a measured dose but completely, in generosity and trust. A contemporary writer points out that one of the Greek roots of the word we translate as “God” is “to leap.”* God the Father longs for the Son, breathes forth the Spirit, the Son ever longs for the Father and moves deeper into the Father’s heart. And God longs for us, leaps powerfully over any obstacle that we imagine prevents us from seeing and experiencing God. God makes the leap, and yet does not overpower, does not coerce. God the Three, in whom we swim and soak, yet calls out to us in love and longing and sadness and humor and joy and delight all at once. Come, come be inflamed, come join my life. Come hear my voice, and take my hand, and plunge into my depths.
Come take the plunge today. If your feet feel heavy, let the Spirit bounce the diving board for you. Come hear the voice that calls out, with sadness and joy, unnoticed on the street corner as we pass by with our forgettable errands. Come plunge into the depths of life beyond life, delight beyond delight.
*Clement, Olivier The Roots Of Christian Mysticism (2nd edition). Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2013, p. 32.
http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearC_RCL/Pentecost/CTrinity_RCL.html
Every morning that I drop my spouse off at her teaching job in the West Hills, I get back on the Hawthorne Bridge going east. At the top of the on-ramp, there is a “primo” corner for a panhandler that is always empty.
Up until last Fall it was always occupied. There sat Kirk Reeves, the “trumpet man”, clad in a white suit and Mickey Mouse hat. He played his trumpet and opened and closed a colorful collapsing plastic toy globe, or worked a hand puppet. Kirk inhabited that corner with whimsy and his own personal magic, and the day was only complete when you caught sight of him. Without words or a sign, Kirk called out with his simple, enchanting presence to all of us who were filled with our busy, distracted lives. No matter where your thoughts or attention were as you endured yet another commute, Kirk invited you ceaselessly into another reality, one of joy and surprise and pathos and sadness and compassion as well.
Tragically, Kirk ended his life last November. But for those of us who were touched by him, that eloquent empty corner still calls us and reminds us of joy and magic and of a human being whose life and struggle was lived in our midst.
“Does not wisdom call,
and does not understanding raise her voice?
On the heights, beside the way,
at the crossroads she takes her stand;
beside the gates in front of the town,
at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
"To you, O people, I call,
and my cry is to all that live.”
Like a gentle clown at the crossroads, the divine Lady Wisdom, she whom the Church identifies with the divine Son of the Trinity, also calls to the depths of our souls. Come near, listen, and live.
Today is Trinity Sunday, the most dreaded day of the preaching year. I cut my teeth on four consecutive Trinity Sundays during the four years of my curacy in St. Louis. Bob Skinner, the rector, would grin maliciously and growl, “You’re up, Neilson.” Bob had no wish, as he said, to “preach on a doctrine.” That very word “doctrine” sets off alarm bells for people, as if something dry and abstract said with the weight of some distant authority is about to be expounded. So today is analogy-day, and somewhere someone is probably trotting out the old Saint Patrick legend about the shamrock—three leaves, one plant—or other images taken from here or there.
All of these attempts do just what we do not want to waste time on—making God the Three into some intellectual puzzle that we trot out once a year. In the end, any “explanation” is so inadequate that it flirts with heresy. The deeper the mystery, the more we impoverish it with our explanations. The simple truth is that God the One in Three is a revealed mystery, a profound reality that we cannot ever get to the bottom of with our very limited minds. The one God is Three persons. At the depth of God is dynamic relationship. The stillness of God is found in the depth of endless love given and received, endless knowledge shared and returned.
We are in that reality, encompassed by it, blessed and created and re-created by it. The simple image that comes to me is that of a diver plunging with confidence into a pool from a high board. The best way to get the Trinity is not to think, but to plunge.
But whatever attempt we make to plunge, to enter the mystery as close to us as water is to a fish, cannot come close to the Trinity’s ceaseless attempt to plunge into us.
Holy Lady Wisdom calls out ceaselessly to us, as gentle and as vulnerable as Kirk Reeves on his on-ramp street corner. “Come, come with me, I who was present always at the heart of God.” The eternal Word of God is not just “with God” as the Gospel of John says, but is “toward God”, ceaselessly moving in love and desire to the heart of the Father. The power and passion of that movement is God the Spirit. This Spirit is given to us, poured out in us, given not as a measured dose but completely, in generosity and trust. A contemporary writer points out that one of the Greek roots of the word we translate as “God” is “to leap.”* God the Father longs for the Son, breathes forth the Spirit, the Son ever longs for the Father and moves deeper into the Father’s heart. And God longs for us, leaps powerfully over any obstacle that we imagine prevents us from seeing and experiencing God. God makes the leap, and yet does not overpower, does not coerce. God the Three, in whom we swim and soak, yet calls out to us in love and longing and sadness and humor and joy and delight all at once. Come, come be inflamed, come join my life. Come hear my voice, and take my hand, and plunge into my depths.
Come take the plunge today. If your feet feel heavy, let the Spirit bounce the diving board for you. Come hear the voice that calls out, with sadness and joy, unnoticed on the street corner as we pass by with our forgettable errands. Come plunge into the depths of life beyond life, delight beyond delight.
*Clement, Olivier The Roots Of Christian Mysticism (2nd edition). Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2013, p. 32.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Divine scattering
(Note: this text is a precis of two homilies, one given bi-lingually in an abbreviated form, on Pentecost Sunday 2013)
Pentecost 2013
(text: Genesis 11)
Here’s a quote: “Nun la tuta tero estis uno lingvo kaj uno parolmaneiro. Kaj dum ili migris el oriento, ili trovis valon en la lando SXinar kaj tie eklogis.”
Can you translate it? As Gandalf said in The Lord Of The Rings, “there are few who can.”
It is Esperanto. Esperanto was the creation of a very bright and well-intentioned scholar in the 19th Century. He wanted to create a world-wide, neutral second language for diplomacy, trade, and understanding.
It simply did not work. At least, not so far. At best, according to Wikipedia, 2,000,000 people speak Esperanto or have studied it to any degree. It’s more a hobby language and a special-usage tool.
Paul Ricouer, 20th Century Christian philosopher, said “We do not create language. Language creates us.” And, I would add, language re-creates us as we engage with one another, with our experience and with our classic texts, in search of meaning. We are our language; we are shaped by speech.
The Esperanto quote is the first two verses of our Genesis reading: “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.” It is the famed “Tower of Babel” tale. For years I thought that this brief fragment was nothing more than a parable of why there are so many languages in the world. I now think it is much more. It is a vital and core tale of Pentecost itself—what is speech? and how is God’s freedom is embodied in speech?
In Genesis, people are “scattered” by God throughout the world. Scattering means variety, diversity, change according to journeys and challenges and the life one lives in common with others.
But the divine scattering stopped in that valley, with one language and one building project.
I cannot read this text and imagine a harmonious and co-operative effort to build some Middle Eastern ziggurat. Building projects in the ancient world were for the most part slave-projects, forced and brutal. One language is needed by masters and slaves, in order to tell the slaves who they are and what they are to do.
One language. Throughout history efforts to enforce one language is the prerogative of empire, of conquerors. After Alexander the Great’s conquests, the language was Greek. When the Romans held sway, Latin spread, as an “official” language in the West for law and scholarship and proclamation and religion. In colonial times it was French, and to this day French appears next to English in our passports. English functions as a universal second language today, a blunt tribute to American economic and military power and the all-pervasive impact of American popular culture, God help us. In time, perhaps it will be Mandarin.
Dominant cultures conduct “monologues”, one-sided speech in their own language that everyone is supposed to listen to and obey. The languages of non-dominant culture people are demeaned or ignored or actively suppressed. “Why can’t they just learn English?” “It’s better for them; it will equip them to function in ‘society.’”
Monolingual societies are almost always oppressive. So are monolingual churches. Years ago Jessie Jackson remarked that Sunday morning is “the most segregated hour in America.” He’s still right.
Monolingual societies are not a good idea according to Genesis 11. They result in labor for dubious ends that use up people. They involve one voice dominating the conversation.
It is the divine wisdom and the divine mischief that undoes the tower-building machine with one creative stroke. “Come, let us go down and confuse their language...” And with that, the pointless tower-project was abandoned, the overseers could no longer be understood by the workers (read “slaves”), and the divine scattering could continue.
Pentecost does not undo either the variety of languages or the divine scattering. Here we do not re-erect the Tower of Babel. Here we gather by divine gift. We bring the results of our divine scattering, the rich diversity of our lives and our experience. And we bring our languages, the delight and insight and savor of each tongue as rich as the smell of tamales con salsa verde or Aunt Imelda’s kielbasa and sauerkraut. Remember than on the day of Pentecost, in the Acts reading we did not hear, each person present heard God’s works proclaimed in their own language.
What speech shall shape us? A monologue? Or the scattered diversity?
Saints Peter and Paul is not Babel. The divine mischief and the divine mercy instead has brought us together in a Pentecost. We have two distinct languages represented among the membership (although many dialects), and two distinct cultural groups (although many cultures among each). There is really no such thing as “Latino culture”; there are Latino cultures plural. And there is really no such thing as “white culture”; there is great variety. It’s when things get homogenous and monolingual that there is trouble. The gift of Pentecost is to be gathered, not to attempt a monologue and unanimity, but in our very diversity. Here God is praised, in the very beautiful and mischievous diversity of languages and cultures. Here we share one bread, one cup, united not by monologue or imposition but by a free Lord who is praised by all, each in the language that they speak and understand.
Pentecost 2013
(text: Genesis 11)
Here’s a quote: “Nun la tuta tero estis uno lingvo kaj uno parolmaneiro. Kaj dum ili migris el oriento, ili trovis valon en la lando SXinar kaj tie eklogis.”
Can you translate it? As Gandalf said in The Lord Of The Rings, “there are few who can.”
It is Esperanto. Esperanto was the creation of a very bright and well-intentioned scholar in the 19th Century. He wanted to create a world-wide, neutral second language for diplomacy, trade, and understanding.
It simply did not work. At least, not so far. At best, according to Wikipedia, 2,000,000 people speak Esperanto or have studied it to any degree. It’s more a hobby language and a special-usage tool.
Paul Ricouer, 20th Century Christian philosopher, said “We do not create language. Language creates us.” And, I would add, language re-creates us as we engage with one another, with our experience and with our classic texts, in search of meaning. We are our language; we are shaped by speech.
The Esperanto quote is the first two verses of our Genesis reading: “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as they migrated from the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.” It is the famed “Tower of Babel” tale. For years I thought that this brief fragment was nothing more than a parable of why there are so many languages in the world. I now think it is much more. It is a vital and core tale of Pentecost itself—what is speech? and how is God’s freedom is embodied in speech?
In Genesis, people are “scattered” by God throughout the world. Scattering means variety, diversity, change according to journeys and challenges and the life one lives in common with others.
But the divine scattering stopped in that valley, with one language and one building project.
I cannot read this text and imagine a harmonious and co-operative effort to build some Middle Eastern ziggurat. Building projects in the ancient world were for the most part slave-projects, forced and brutal. One language is needed by masters and slaves, in order to tell the slaves who they are and what they are to do.
One language. Throughout history efforts to enforce one language is the prerogative of empire, of conquerors. After Alexander the Great’s conquests, the language was Greek. When the Romans held sway, Latin spread, as an “official” language in the West for law and scholarship and proclamation and religion. In colonial times it was French, and to this day French appears next to English in our passports. English functions as a universal second language today, a blunt tribute to American economic and military power and the all-pervasive impact of American popular culture, God help us. In time, perhaps it will be Mandarin.
Dominant cultures conduct “monologues”, one-sided speech in their own language that everyone is supposed to listen to and obey. The languages of non-dominant culture people are demeaned or ignored or actively suppressed. “Why can’t they just learn English?” “It’s better for them; it will equip them to function in ‘society.’”
Monolingual societies are almost always oppressive. So are monolingual churches. Years ago Jessie Jackson remarked that Sunday morning is “the most segregated hour in America.” He’s still right.
Monolingual societies are not a good idea according to Genesis 11. They result in labor for dubious ends that use up people. They involve one voice dominating the conversation.
It is the divine wisdom and the divine mischief that undoes the tower-building machine with one creative stroke. “Come, let us go down and confuse their language...” And with that, the pointless tower-project was abandoned, the overseers could no longer be understood by the workers (read “slaves”), and the divine scattering could continue.
Pentecost does not undo either the variety of languages or the divine scattering. Here we do not re-erect the Tower of Babel. Here we gather by divine gift. We bring the results of our divine scattering, the rich diversity of our lives and our experience. And we bring our languages, the delight and insight and savor of each tongue as rich as the smell of tamales con salsa verde or Aunt Imelda’s kielbasa and sauerkraut. Remember than on the day of Pentecost, in the Acts reading we did not hear, each person present heard God’s works proclaimed in their own language.
What speech shall shape us? A monologue? Or the scattered diversity?
Saints Peter and Paul is not Babel. The divine mischief and the divine mercy instead has brought us together in a Pentecost. We have two distinct languages represented among the membership (although many dialects), and two distinct cultural groups (although many cultures among each). There is really no such thing as “Latino culture”; there are Latino cultures plural. And there is really no such thing as “white culture”; there is great variety. It’s when things get homogenous and monolingual that there is trouble. The gift of Pentecost is to be gathered, not to attempt a monologue and unanimity, but in our very diversity. Here God is praised, in the very beautiful and mischievous diversity of languages and cultures. Here we share one bread, one cup, united not by monologue or imposition but by a free Lord who is praised by all, each in the language that they speak and understand.
Sunday, May 19, 2013
Why we are
We are people gathered together by our common hunger to know, to serve, and to delight in Christ.
We experience the God revealed in Jesus Christ as mystery, fascination, challenge, and joy. Spiritual hunger has been awakened in us in many ways, understood differently by each of us. At Saints Peter and Paul we have been welcomed by other searchers and welcomed by the God who kindles our hunger. Here questions are honored, searching is supported, a desire to serve is affirmed, and opportunities to serve are given. In our diversity of backgrounds, cultures, viewpoints, and even languages, we glimpse the rich diversity and endless fascination of God.
Together we find support, common warmth when alone we would cool to ashes, healing when we are wounded, challenge when we are complacent, invitation to grow when we are stagnant.
When we gather, our time together is shaped by the wisdom and richness of classical Christian worship rooted in the customs and viewpoint of the ancient Church. We hold these treasures in common with other congregations worshipping according to the usages of The Episcopal Church.
Each gathering is in itself a miracle, since in our culture little support is given to committed Christian life lived in common.
We begin our weekly time in a stance of listening. We believe God may speak through the words of the Bible read aloud, through the words spoken by a preacher, and by the silence in which God's "still, small voice" may move any of us, alone or together.
We end this time by a response of faith, couched in ancient words, and by prayers for the world and for ourselves. For we believe God calls in this way, among others, to participate in the healing of the world.
Shaped by God's speech, as a body we give thanks in a common action we call "Eucharist." We believe Christ joins us to himself in a great act of thanksgiving to God. In this we share in the unconditional love God has for creation and for us expressed perfectly for God's love for the beloved, Christ Jesus. We share in his life through blessed bread and wine. We call this experience a "sacrament", tangible things like bread and wine and one another's presence making real the unutterable love of God.
From this we are sent out to be "God's hands and heart in the world." It matter that we gather, for us and for those whom we are sent to know and to serve.
You are welcome to explore your own questions and longings with us. You may find, with time, that you wish to stay longer.
We are people gathered together by our common hunger to know, to serve, and to delight in Christ.
We experience the God revealed in Jesus Christ as mystery, fascination, challenge, and joy. Spiritual hunger has been awakened in us in many ways, understood differently by each of us. At Saints Peter and Paul we have been welcomed by other searchers and welcomed by the God who kindles our hunger. Here questions are honored, searching is supported, a desire to serve is affirmed, and opportunities to serve are given. In our diversity of backgrounds, cultures, viewpoints, and even languages, we glimpse the rich diversity and endless fascination of God.
Together we find support, common warmth when alone we would cool to ashes, healing when we are wounded, challenge when we are complacent, invitation to grow when we are stagnant.
When we gather, our time together is shaped by the wisdom and richness of classical Christian worship rooted in the customs and viewpoint of the ancient Church. We hold these treasures in common with other congregations worshipping according to the usages of The Episcopal Church.
Each gathering is in itself a miracle, since in our culture little support is given to committed Christian life lived in common.
We begin our weekly time in a stance of listening. We believe God may speak through the words of the Bible read aloud, through the words spoken by a preacher, and by the silence in which God's "still, small voice" may move any of us, alone or together.
We end this time by a response of faith, couched in ancient words, and by prayers for the world and for ourselves. For we believe God calls in this way, among others, to participate in the healing of the world.
Shaped by God's speech, as a body we give thanks in a common action we call "Eucharist." We believe Christ joins us to himself in a great act of thanksgiving to God. In this we share in the unconditional love God has for creation and for us expressed perfectly for God's love for the beloved, Christ Jesus. We share in his life through blessed bread and wine. We call this experience a "sacrament", tangible things like bread and wine and one another's presence making real the unutterable love of God.
From this we are sent out to be "God's hands and heart in the world." It matter that we gather, for us and for those whom we are sent to know and to serve.
You are welcome to explore your own questions and longings with us. You may find, with time, that you wish to stay longer.
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