Tag Archives: development

Missional Communities and God’s Dream/Sermon for Aug. 23, 2015

This has been the week that a lot of parents are sending their children off to college, many for the first time. Our son is already in college and now soon to go back to school, and tomorrow our daughter is continuing her high school career. It hit me this week that my husband and I in being there for the big starting days of our son’s academic career, stood as witness to the days that began to change his worldview. As we dropped him off at preschool for the first time, and later dropping him off at college for the first time.

The big experiences change our worldview, but we still see them through the lens of our choosing. Image: iStock.

The big experiences change our worldview, but we still see them through the lens of our choosing. Image: iStock.

The big transitions in your life may have involved sending a child off to college, or maybe it was something else, like moving away from your parents, getting married, or going off to boot camp. Whatever your big events have been, they sparked a change in your worldview – for better or for worse, you never looked at things quite the same way again.
Other times our community worldview changed, globally or nationally or locally. The Renaissance, Industrialization, the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the Internet, Smartphones. All changed our worldview. And you can’t change your worldview without spinning the globe around a bit. These experiences are new, and unsettling, and scary. And different, and exciting, and – new.
The worldview was changing fast for the disciples of Jesus in today’s Gospel reading from John. It must have felt a little like their globe was spinning. Jesus is teaching in the Synagogue at Capernaum, and guess what, like us deep into Pentecost, they are getting yet another lesson on bread. Bread, bread, bread. But not just any bread – Living bread! And Jesus is asking them to eat his flesh and drink his blood.
There’s an interesting story about King David described in First Chronicles and Second Samuel. David and his army are fighting the Philistines, who have overthrown David’s home town of Bethlehem. At one point David starts talking about how good it would be to have a nice long, cool drink of that great Bethlehem well water – a well currently under siege by the Philistines. So three of David’s best soldiers go out and break through enemy lines, sneak into Bethlehem, hit the well, and bring their king back a big cup of his favorite water.
According to N.T. Wright, David knows that he can’t drink the water – because it would look like he was profiting from the death-defying work of his soldiers, who risked their life-blood for him, and that would be tantamount to drinking their blood – breaking a Jewish law against it, while at the same time making him look like one spoiled ruler. So he poured the water out onto the ground as an offering to God.
Jesus goes David one better. Jesus hopes that those around him will profit from his blood sacrifice. He invites us into the profit, into drinking his blood so that our life may be in him, and that he will raise us up on the last day.
The bread and the wine we take together in the Eucharist are a foretaste of the ultimate moment when our worldview changes, when into our vision is the fully revealed Kingdom of God. This is our peek into the eternal banquet already in progress around the throne of God. This is our reminder of the power of the Holy Spirit that is in us – of our Communion with God, the source of all power and love, and with the angels and archangels and the saints who have done their good work and gone on before us. This is the worldview we share, and are called to share with the world.

Worldview changes are unsettling. But God's Creation thrives on the unsettled messiness of searching, discovery, and growth.

Worldview changes are unsettling. But God’s Creation thrives on the unsettled messiness of searching, discovery, and growth.

Exactly how that communion happens is one of God’s holy mysteries. But we know this is where we encounter Jesus Christ, because this is where he asked us to meet him. The disciples didn’t have it figured out any better than we do. And they weren’t too happy about it. “Eat your flesh? Drink your blood? Eternal bread? This is hard stuff!” they said, complaining. “Who can deal with that?”
Jesus gives them a little something to think about – “Oh, you think accepting that is tough? What if you saw the Son of Man going right back up to where he came from?”
He’s telling his disciples that if they think wrapping your brain around what he’s said so far is hard, they’d better pace themselves, because there’s a lot more coming – his trial, death, resurrection, and his astounding ascension are still ahead.
Jesus calls them to quit trying to rationalize what he is staying to the exclusion of their faith in what he is doing. It is our spirit that gives us life, the eternal part of us God has created in us and through which Jesus reconciles us to the Father. Our spirit is what feels the authenticity of the love of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit. The flesh by itself won’t get you anything, Jesus says. God lives in you through the Spirit.
A number of disciples, following Jesus in addition to the original twelve, can’t accept his teaching, and they leave. This Messiah they encounter is not the stuff of their legend. He is not the Mosaic superhero King of the Jews casting down the Romans, and restoring the Jews to political power. The words and actions of Jesus offer a worldview they refuse to consider. And so they leave.
Jesus, knowing full well what is to come and how each of the twelve disciples will act, ask those remaining whether they will also go, offering them a chance to affirm their belief. “We won’t. You hold the words of eternal life,” they say.
The transforming, eternal worldview is God’s dream for us. A dream of the Word of God made flesh and walking among us. A dream that we will follow in the footsteps of Jesus and walk humbly, and carry his peace and grace and mercy into the dark places where hope and love and justice live outside the door.

The re-Evolution of God's Kingdom happens in and through relationships.

The re-Evolution of God’s Kingdom happens in and through relationships.

More than 2,000 years later, his Church the Body of Christ continues to wrestle with accepting God’s worldview. As our communities change shape and evolve around us, we struggle to adapt. We are losing our vision for how to live into God’s dream for his world, and the question before us is this: Will we have the courage to adjust our worldview, and keep working toward that Kingdom dream, or will we walk away because it’s too hard?
Yesterday, three members of our congregation and I attended a Missional Community Workshop with Bishop Doyle in Houston. If you’ve never heard the term “Missional Community” before, you will. It is in short, a satellite faith community of a larger sending Church, a community of Christian service that exists completely outside the main Church. Missional Community offers people a different place to plug in and experience the love of Jesus, and to discover what it means to serve him together right inside their own neighborhood.
Our bishops and our new Presiding Bishop-Elect Michael Curry are on fire to move the Church ahead quickly into the future so that we can unleash the power of the laity and the clergy that God has already given us through his Holy Spirit. We have to have the courage as a Church to get out of our own way. This worship space we are in today is sacred and beautiful – but it was never meant to be the end. We are meant to take what we experience here and go out and make more of it, and on and on.
What does that look like? How are we going to do that? If you’re confused by it all right now – that’s ok. One of the first things to understand about Missional Community work is that it can’t be tightly defined. God’s work cannot be boxed in to a definition because he is always doing a new thing.
Here’s the important thing to know today: if St. Paul’s wants to be a church that does the best we can for our congregational vitality, if we want a future where we don’t just survive, but thrive in God’s dream for us, then it is going to take some courage to take a good look at who we really are, and who our neighbors really are. We need to listen to them and with them about what they need, and what missional work makes sense for us in our community. It will take courage to adjust our congregational worldview, and transition our church culture according to those truths.

Image: Missio Dei Church.

Image: Missio Dei Church.

I want to be really authentic and very vulnerable with you, and say that right now, I don’t know what this means for us. I don’t know if this is something we are going to be able to do – or something enough of you will want to do. I don’t have any agenda or pre-conceived notion of what this kind of future would look like for St. Paul’s. This is very new to me. I don’t know where Missional Community will take us. I don’t know where it will take each of you. I don’t know where it will take me.
I do know one thing: God is with us. And knows our hearts. He knows the uncertainty and the excitement that the calling of the Holy Spirit causes in us. He know how it sounds when he asks us to live on his flesh and blood. But he knows how we benefit from life in him, and he asks us to have faith Because if you think where he’s taken us already is really something, wait until we see him lifting us up into God’s dream for us.

Visit St. Paul’s Episcopal Church online here.

Forgiveness and the Everlasting Gobstopper/Sermon Sept. 14, 2014

“So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
This is my favorite Willie Wonka movie quote, from the 1971 version with Gene Wilder, not the newer version with Johnny Depp. Sorry to any Johnny Depp fans out there, but he just can’t hold a candle to Gene Wilder’s version.This line happens at the very end of the movie, after a little kid named Charlie Bucket from a desperately poor family loses a contest to own Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory on a technicality, and gets yelled at good by Wonka to boot.

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On his way out of the factory, Charlie gives up his one last chance to save his family. In his hand is the Everlasting Gobstopper, one of Wonka’s new secret formula candies. Charlie could easily sell that candy to Wonka’s rival and ruin his business. But Charlie doesn’t do it. Even though he’s been treated badly, Charlie refuses to take revenge – he sets the gobstopper on Wonka’s desk and walks away, forgiving the anger and the injustice of the technicality. Wonka picks up the candy and says in a quietly moving voice – like only Gene Wilder could pull off – “So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
– Interesting side note, that quote is actually a line from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice about one lone candle burning in a dark hallway: “How far that little candle throws his beams. So shines a good deed in a weary world.”

In this long season of Pentecost following the birthday of the Church, we move today into Jesus’ teaching on Christian forgiveness. This is the last in the series of teachings to the disciples at Capernaum that make up a kind of employee manual for the kingdom, on the life and relationships within faith communities, and how Jesus expects those who follow him to behave toward each other. Last week, we talked about the community guidelines for handling sinful behavior between Christians, and the power God gives to the Body of Christ to make those decisions when we gather in his name. We follow that up today with Peter, coming to Jesus with a challenging question about sinful behavior and forgiveness, “Lord, how often should I forgive another member who sins against me? As many as seven times?” Jesus answers, “77 times,” or as some ancient manuscripts say, “70 times 7.” Either way, whether it’s 77 times or 490 times, it’s a crazy number that realistically would never happen – Jesus is making a point by using this ridiculous number to say that our forgiveness should have no limit. There is no end to God’s forgiveness, and so there should be no end to ours.

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Last week, we heard a very structured and tightly numbered process on church discipline and accountability in community. But our call to forgive each other has no limitations. The same Church empowered with accountability has its power checked and balanced with a requirement to offer forgiveness – a reminder that the love of God guides every single part of a faith community’s life. The love of God guides even our struggles with one another.
Jesus underlines the importance of this requirement to forgive in telling his disciples the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant. A king forgives his servant a ridiculously large debt, 10,000 talents. 10,000 was the largest Greek number, and a talent was the largest currency unit. That ridiculous amount of debt was something the servant couldn’t pay back even after working thousands of years. This servant who was forgiven a massive amount of debt fails to show any mercy to a fellow servant who owes him a comparatively tiny amount – 100 denarii, or about 100 days wages, and throws his fellow servant into jail. The king hears of it, and throws the unforgiving servant into jail. This is the same thing, Jesus says to the disciples, that my heavenly father will do to you if you do not forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.

Evidently, forgiveness is pretty serious stuff. Jesus makes a couple of things clear here: as sinners redeemed by God, we have been forgiven a debt that is bigger than we could ever hope to repay; so God expects us to be forgiving to others, and to really mean it, and if we don’t, he will hold us accountable. This is evident in the prayer of all the faithful that we say every Sunday, and in the Daily Office every day, the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…” Matthew’s version of the Lord’s prayer in the Sermon on the Mount explains it in a little more detail, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Forgiveness is pretty serious stuff. How many of you want to be forgiven by God – show of hands? Yeah, that’s pretty much everybody. We know that we do, but HOW do we about forgiving each other, especially when someone has never apologized for their behavior, or who has done something really terrible to us? Maybe that person’s not even alive anymore.
We are called simply to forgive. But forgiveness is not simple. Forgiving someone doesn’t mean pretending like what they did didn’t happen. In fact, it’s the opposite of that – forgiving someone means being honest about what has happened, then choosing to let go of the power that someone’s else’s sin has over you, by letting go of your anger and the desire for revenge. This can take time, prayer, and if the hurt is traumatic enough, we may need the help of a professional to guide us toward healing.

We are called by God both to forgive and to enact justice in the world. But forgiveness and letting go does not mean giving up justice. Jesus was very clear on the dangers of an unforgiving heart, but he was also clear about consequences for those who deliberately endanger the faith of vulnerable Christians, and those who continue to willfully sin against others in the Body of Christ.

We are empowered by God’s forgiveness. Because he forgave us first, our ability to forgive is therefore not dependent on the other person. We don’t have to wait for them to apologize. If they do it’s definitely nicer for us, and good for their soul if they do – as Jesus said, if they respond to accountability, then we have regained the one back into our faith community – but whether they are ever sorry or not does not matter to our call to forgive them. They don’t even have to be alive for us to forgive them. Forgiveness is a choice that is completely dependent on us discovering our own freedom in being a servant of God’s grace to others. When we make the choice to forgive, we are empowered by the healing grace of God at work in us.

Forgiveness is a spiritual practice, and like all spiritual practices, it takes time and regular work to get good at it. If you’ve been through something really difficult, and you don’t feel comfortable facing forgiveness in that right now, start by practicing forgiveness in smaller things. As you strengthen your forgiveness practice, you can begin to work on forgiving the big stuff. Don’t worry, God will make the journey with you. It is your willingness to have a forgiving heart he is looking for, not how perfect you can be at forgiving.

Charlie Bucket discovered that while he may have lost the contest, he ended up winning the chocolate factory and saving his family. Because he was able to let go of the way the world expected him to react, instead holding on to a commitment to doing what was right, he ended up getting everything he needed. Each time we let go and embrace the choice to forgive, we receive the grace of God that we need, and a sin-weary world sees a little more of the shining light of Christ.

"So shines a good deed in a weary world." - Willie Wonka

“So shines a good deed in a weary world.” – Willie Wonka

Christian Jenga: Building block or stumbling block?/Sermon Aug. 31, 2014

A couple of weeks ago, a little boy about 10 years old asked me to play a game of Jenga with him. If you’ve never played Jenga, it’s a game where you take turns pulling wooden blocks about the size of your finger out of a stacked tower of alternating trios of blocks and playing blocks on top, one at a time, until someone’s move brings the tower crashing down. The name Jenga comes from a Swahili word meaning, “to build.”

All the staring in the world won't help you figure out what piece to move next. You've got to make it a hands-on experience if you want to succeed. (Getty Images)

All the staring in the world won’t help you figure out what piece to move next. You’ve got to make it a hands-on experience if you want to succeed. (Getty Images)

We work really hard to be friendly and welcoming to the kids in need coming to the Children’s Advocacy Center where I work for my paying job (I’m a bi-vocational priest), so I said to myself, “I’ll pretend like I’m really trying at this game, so I won’t beat him too fast, and that way it will be more fun for him.” I needn’t have worried. A couple minutes into the game, this kid was giving me tips on how to play, and I needed the help. This kid I thought I was going to have to go easy on was slowing down to wait for me to catch up. And not only that, I could tell that he was holding back so he wouldn’t beat ME too fast. Talk about the shoe being on the other foot. The best part was that he taught me his best Jenga strategy, which was very nice, because there’s one person in my house who has two mechanical engineering degrees, and it isn’t me. (It’s my husband.) This really smart kid taught me that instead of using my technique of eyeballing the tower and trying to guess from its form where to pull a block out, while hoping the tower didn’t crash down, it worked much better if you tapped gently on the end of the blocks until a light movement indicated a loose block that was much safer to move. His technique worked so well that we ended up playing the longest game of Jenga I’ve ever played. The best part was that through the whole game, we kept helping each other instead of hoping the other person would mess up and lose. That wasn’t quite playing by the rules, but we were more excited about building the tower than we were about winning the game, and that made the experience much more fun.
“From that time on…” This is our opening phrase in today’s Gospel reading, and with it Matthew is giving us a large signpost that we’ve entered a significant turn in the ministry of Jesus and his disciples. Now that the disciples have finally understood Christ’s divinity and his kingship as God’s Messiah – now that they know WHO Jesus is, they are going to begin in these next Gospel readings to learn WHAT he is, what his purpose is in relationship to who he is as the Messiah.

20080504-mideastFor the people of Israel, the concepts of both an atoning sacrifice and a prophetic Messiah would be very familiar to them. What would not be familiar to them, what they and the disciples will witness and struggle to understand, is the combination of those two concepts into one Messianic atoning sacrifice. Jesus has come to save his people not by overthrowing a government, not by defeating the Roman Empire and stopping the oppression of the Jewish people, but by giving himself to be turned over to those same Romans, so that in dying he would overcome evil and sin and death for all us, and become our doorway to eternal life.
This is what Peter couldn’t face, no doubt because he couldn’t see past the pain of swinging from his God-given revelation of Jesus as triumphant Messiah-king to the next revelation Jesus has just begun to teach his disciples: their same Messiah, the prophetic hope of the people of Israel, is the same Jesus destined not for an earthly throne, but for a Roman cross.
That last, critical part – the Resurrection, Jesus rising to life again on the third day – seems to escape Peter’s attention. The keys to the kingdom are still fresh in Peter’s hands when he hears from Jesus that he is destined to lose his friend and mentor, and more than that, his Savior, in a terrible death at the hands of the Roman rulers they were hoping he came to conquer. We can probably all identify with Peter’s fear, and sympathize with his struggle at the same time to remember that if Jesus truly is the Son of God, then what he says about his own destiny is a God-ordained event, despite how hard it is for Peter to accept.

Poor Peter. He just got the keys to the kingdom, and he's already put a dent and scratch in it.

Poor Peter. He just got the keys to the kingdom, and he’s already put a dent and scratch in it.

It is important to note that the disciples following Jesus as Messiah likely assumed at this point that his mission was to restore Israel to power, with Jesus on the throne as their Davidic King. They did not yet understand the Kingdom that Jesus was sent to save was much, much bigger – that he is the Savior for the entire world.
Just last week, Peter was a building block. This week, he’s a stumbling block. This same Peter that Jesus gave the keys to the kingdom to, this same rock on which Jesus is going to build his Church, is the same disciple who Jesus sternly holds accountable for his actions, naming in him his fall into the temptation of Satan to turn away from godly discernment and to tune in to the devil’s fear and anxiety, and for Peter allowing himself to be used by the devil to try to tempt Jesus away from his mission by feeding into the fear and anxiety that he was vulnerable to in his humanness. We will later see him struggling with anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane.

A question to ask ourselves, "Am I being a building block or a stumbling block to those around me?"

A question to ask ourselves, “Am I being a building block or a stumbling block to those around me?”

Peter and the disciples are struggling to make the turn with Jesus toward Jerusalem. And Jesus honors that struggle with truth. He loves the disciples too much to give them anything less than a full picture of the reality of following him: to be a disciple of Jesus means to share in his suffering. To follow Jesus means to give up what they want for what God wants. To follow Jesus is to give up earthly values for what the world sees as God’s upside-down values – where the sick and poor are first in the kingdom, widows are loved and cherished, people in prison are remembered and visited, the needy are given food and care, and everyone is loved. Those and the values that God honors. But the world doesn’t honor them, and sometimes the world, or the worldliness in others, like the devil working in Peter, attacks us with the temptation to fall prey to fear and anxiety. That’s when we can call on God to give us strength, to be like Jesus and turn away from that temptation and look toward the cross. Today, we have the blessing of looking at the cross from the other side, of knowing it has been used for its purpose, and is now in its emptiness a source of strength and hope in the Resurrection for all of us.

We have an advantage the disciples. We can see the promise of the empty cross having already fulfilled its purpose for our hope in the Resurrection of Jesus.

We have an advantage the disciples didn’t at that time in their journey to Jerusalem. We can see the promise of the empty cross having already fulfilled its purpose for our hope in the Resurrection of Jesus.

Rarely in our part of the world will we be called as Christians to lay down our lives for our faith, although there are places where Christians do just that every day. We pray for them every week in our Prayers of the People. Here in our day-to-day life we rarely face death for our faith – but we are often challenged to die to self. To take up the cross of Jesus means to do the difficult work every day of laying aside our personal, fallible human mission so that we may work together on the mission of Jesus by working through the Church he established – to bring all people into relationship with God and each other through the love of Jesus.
Finding our way in God’s mission is like feeling for the right pieces to move in that Jenga tower. It’s hard to know what the right move is until you’re willing to get our hands on it and get a feel for it. But the good news is that we don’t do it alone – God has given us lots of brothers and sisters united in Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit to act together as the Body of Christ, to be the hands and feet, the ears and eyes, the heart of Jesus in the world. Jesus has left his Church the keys to the Kingdom. When he returns, we will be held accountable for how we’ve continued the ministry he started.

Focus on the mission to love everyone for Jesus, and don't forget to have fun in ministry!

Don’t worry if things don’t go as planned in ministry. Stay focused on the mission to love everyone for Jesus, and trust God to work out his purpose.

That is a pretty intimidating thought. But as we go forward in our ministries, serving this community, let’s keep the truth of Jesus in front of us: the beauty that comes from a life lived for God is not about how easy or how perfect it is – it is never easy, and it is rarely perfect. The beauty of a life lived for God is based in the rich spiritual life found in our deep relationship with him and each other through the love of Jesus. That is our mission. Anyone remember their Catechism? I see some worried faces! Don’t worry, this is not a pop quiz. But that’s what our Catechism says is the mission of the Church: to bring everyone together with God and one another through the reconciling love of Jesus Christ. If we are working together to build on that mission, and can stay more interested in that mission than in anything else, then we can focus on having a great time together in ministry, and trust the outcome to God’s guiding hand.

One Bread, One (Ceramic) Cup

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Somewhere in my training for priesthood, a teacher told my class there are three professions that attract people with the biggest egos: acting, journalism, and the clergy. Also being a former journalist, I figure my next stop is either Hollywood or humility training. The professor’s warning jangled in my head at my new church this morning as a broadly smiling member named Lou handed me a shiny coffee cup. “Hey, check out your new mug,” he said. Vaguely remembering hearing a conversation a few weeks before by members planning to restock the supply of St. Paul’s personalized coffee mugs, I looked down, noticing a large Episcopal Church shield covering the side of the mug. “Nice, looks good,” I said. “No, look at the other side,” he said, expectantly. I rolled the cup over in my hand, lines of text coming into view. A welcome, the church name, our Internet site, e-mail address and phone, and, finally, at the bottom in BIG BLUE lettering clear as day, was my name, “Rev. Ashley Cook.”

A couple of nervous reactions dashed through my head. “Oh no, what did you guys do?” I said to him, half-teasing, half-mortified. They had ordered a lot of mugs, he said. A LOT. Soon to finish my studies for priesthood in bi-vocational ministry, I’d only been assigned to the small, rural church in the deep pine forestland of East Texas for four short months. Egotistical is a label and a trait clergy have to guard against, and it probably wouldn’t help in that department if folks thought I’d put my own name on our mugs, I thought.

But then I took a second look – at Lou’s face, not the mug. His warm expression, his nodding approval, his big smile. These were signs of welcome, and I’d almost missed them. These were indications of a congregation ready to share both themselves and their new clergy with the wider community. Ironically, I’d almost let my ego about trying to control other people’s impressions of me overtake the open invitation to build a relationship with my congregation. Lou and his wife Carol, among the most faithful members at St. Paul’s, would shortly be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in the service that morning. The mugs were a symbol, I realized, of a congregation in it for the long-haul, stepping forward in faith to offer their part of a commitment to a long-term pastoral relationship. Swallowing my ego, I gripped the cup tightly, suddenly very conscious of its meaning. “Thank you, so much,” I said to Lou.

People are drawn to the Episcopal Church because of its connectedness. We are the people of One Bread, One Cup, as we say of our Communion practice of kneeling together to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, in the form of wafers and a shared cup. We are the Church expressing the transformational love of God, who draws all people to himself in Jesus Christ. And yet, a symptom of rural church life is that small mission congregations often go unconnected for years, without the guidance and pastoral care of having their own clergy, being fortunate if they have a series of well-meaning but short-term supply priests. Seldom having an opportunity to settle into a focused pastoral relationship, congregations may begin to feel neglected. Out of that neglect can grow a reluctance to evangelize, to build relationships in their community, or to foster a pastoral relationship when a newly assigned incoming clergy finally does arrive on the church doorstop. Bi-vocational clergy support in rural areas remains in short supply, which challenges the Church to re-imagine rural church structuring. It could be that an answer lies in our own connectedness.

To their credit, I received a warm and enthusiastic welcome on my arrival to St. Paul’s in September, from both the congregation and the local ministerial alliance. Still, there were questions asked of me regarding the longevity of my stay, most who asked assuming I was only placed there for training purposes, and that I would leave after graduation in June. Any reluctance to committing a lot of resources and energy to my arrival would certainly have been understandable. While it was yet unclear in their minds whether this would be a long- or short-term relationship, my experience of Episcopalians and their neighbors in East Texas was still that they are loyal and tightly-knit, whole-hearted and generous in their welcome. This innate spirit of strength and hospitality speaks of what may very well be the as-yet untapped full potential in small churches to creatively host and flourish God’s presence in their communities.

This morning as I looked at Lou, smiling at me over a new coffee mug, it was this welcoming gesture that reminded me of the Holy Spirit’s work in bringing us all together, to glorify God and to build up this corner of his Kingdom. Putting my worries aside, I thanked for Lord for his mercy, and heartily embraced the congregation’s tangible commitment to sharing ministry at St. Paul’s, evident in the shiny stacks of coffee cups now gracing the Parish Hall.

The Uncomfortable Confusion of Advent

Sermon preached Dec. 8, 2013 at the Iona School for ministry, The Episcopal Diocese of Texas

A senior student in priesthood studies, I began this Advent 2 sermon – a practicum given before the dean, faculty and students, after standing in silence in the pulpit for the first few minutes.

Interesting, isn’t it – what happens when we wait, especially when we’re not quite sure what’s coming next. Depending on your perception of what was happening the last couple of minutes, whether you figured out what I was doing, or you were somewhat confused, each of you were probably at least a little uncomfortable. You may have thought “Oh no, she’s living out one of those Iona School nightmares: she’s hit the homiletic wall and it is Deer in the Headlights Time”. Now I’m not going to say that will never happen to me, but at least that wasn’t what happened today.

Today I want to invite you to explore with me this feeling of uncomfortable confusion. It’s a feeling that doesn’t set well with us here at the beginning of the second week of Advent. As the rest of the world rushes and hurries into a premature Christmas season, this is the time when we who follow a liturgical progression through our walk of faith intentionally turn down a different path. We pace ourselves, working from the very first day of Advent to be quiet, reflective, peaceful, waiting an entire month to complete lighting one wreath. Putting our trees up late and leaving them up while all the others are back in boxes the day after Christmas or turning brown on the curb. It would drive most people up a wall to wait that long, but to us this annual slow intention is very familiar, very comforting.

            Yet our readings this Advent are far from quiet and comforting. The Gospel of Matthew gives us John the Baptist. John, an imposing figure to say the least. The colorful details of his location, clothing and diet form an image of a wild and wooly prophet: Living in the wilderness, dressed in a shaggy camel’s coat with a big, thick leather belt cinched at his waist. He’s lean to the point of that startling kind of gauntness from a diet of honey and bugs. 

No exactly kind of guy who inspires comfortable thoughts of "peace" and "quiet."

No exactly kind of guy who inspires comfortable thoughts of “peace” and “quiet.”

His speech isn’t any more comforting than this appearance. His simple but startling call to Repent!, and his warning that this foreign kingdom is right on our doorstep cuts across the layered practices of Jewish religious life, disturbing the comfortable, dependable structures of written law, tearing his way through the hedges of the Mishnah to proclaim the arrival of Salvation through the Messiah. “Comfort” and “peace” are not the words that come to mind when picturing an encounter with John the Baptist.

            Yet people from all over were flocking to him, drawn to his message, his proclamation of the advent – the coming – of the Lord. We have this idyllic, pastoral scene of people streaming in toward the River Jordan, and John taking them each in turn, one after another, drawing up in his arms soul after soul washed clean of sin in the waters of baptism. But just as we’re settling into that lovely idea, the peace of this image is quickly broken as the John the Baptist confronts the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to be baptized, with one of the most venomous direct condemnations by a prophet recorded in Scripture: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” 

Walken into that uncomfortable part of Scripture right. about. now.

uncomfortableHow dare you presume to think you’re going to get a free pass on what the Lord requires of you – just try slip by without true repentance. He’s ready now to wipe you out. I may be using water to baptize you, but he’s going to use the Holy Spirit and fire. He will clear this place out, keeping the good for himself, and burning up the bad.

            Not really much room in there for a peaceful Advent. In fact, as we slip into our familiar, cozy practices of preparation and gentle anticipation, few of the rest of our Advent lectionary readings to this point have been comforting or comfortable. Instead they include calls to action, end-time Kingdom visions, fervent, unsettling warnings to stay awake and alert, and to be prepared for the triumphant, unexpected, thief-in-the-night return of Jesus, who brings not a quiet peace, but a peace forged in God’s unexpected justice and mercy, handed out with a love like nothing the world has seen or can understand.

C.S. Lewis filled several notebooks with writings on grief after the death of his wife. Those notebooks were published as the short book, “A Grief Observed.” In it, Lewis is struggling to come to terms with her loss, and finds himself worrying over the accuracy of the photos that he has left of her. He fears that along with the photos, his memories of her, his perception of how he experienced her, are all he has left to define her image – and he is scared that never again will he know a fully real and accurate version of who she was.

            His experience of time spent moving through this very uncomfortable grief, transforms his view of his attempts at understanding God, and who he is in relationship to the Divine.“My idea of God is not a divine idea,” he writes. “It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. God is the great iconoclast.” Lewis goes on to say that the very act of God shattering his own image is one of the marks of the presence of God, with the Incarnation as the supreme example that leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins.

            As we continue to move through Advent, I encourage you not to be afraid to feel uncomfortable with your thoughts on where God is in your life, and who you are in relationship to him. I encourage you not to be afraid to sit with those who are also experiencing discomfort. 05262012_Mind-Spirit_Are-you-comfortable-being-uncomfortable-IMAGE_Shepherd1-300x206This is a season to take courage to look deep into ourselves. This is a time to face and acknowledge the selfish, hateful, sinful things we may find there, and with God’s grace to pull them out by the root, making straight the path for God’s continued entrance into our lives, and the lives of those we serve. This is the time to sit with the uncomfortable grief over what has been or is being taken away from us, so that we can rediscover that God is not only about taking away. In Advent we discover again that God always gives and is giving to us a new life, and a new purpose. He is always about the work of building his Kingdom through us.

Writer Martyn Jones says that in his grief C.S. Lewis’ theology, collapses but is raised again to show the signs of its wounds. I believe it is the collapse that we fear, yet it is in those shattering experiences that we encounter the presence of the Divine Healer, who is always working out his purpose in us. The times in our ministry where we walk with the grieving can be among the hardest work we do – to sit in pastoral care with the uncomfortable, to see up close and personal, and perhaps reflected in ourselves, the fears of the people sitting in our pews and walking our streets, whom we love and serve as ministers of God’s Church. ChangeIsUncomfortable

Advent is the time to take a deep breath and to come to terms with the uncomfortable reality that the Jesus whose body was broken for the sake of the world, this same Passover sacrificed for us, is also the peace-bringer we are quietly seeking. We are called to preach and to teach that a Resurrected, Scarred Savior heals shattered lives. In the course of our ministries there will be times when we will ask the people trusted to our care to enter peacefully into that uncomfortable space of God’s taking away, and God’s restoration. Whether we minister through tragedy or well-being, as clergy we are called to live an active peace, a peace centered in the unsettling confusion of waiting with God’s people for his purpose to be revealed and fulfilled.

Be aware this Advent of becoming too quiet too soon. Of being unprepared by settling too quickly and easily into spiritual practices that fail to offer the gift of discomfort . Peace does not begin with us. It is not of our own making, but comes through the working out of God’s uncomfortable justice. This Advent season we do not start with peace, but daily we are arriving at a peace that will be completed on that silent and holy night, when Emmanuel, God With Us, will shatter the world’s idea of a Savior. Amen.

 

Investing Boldly

Bi-vocational first week thoughts

It wasn’t my first time preaching. I’d preached before, off and on the last two years as an Episcopal deacon. But last week marked my first week preaching to a new congregation, and my first time preaching anywhere as a head of congregation during this, my last year of priesthood studies, God-willing, in bi-vocational ministry.

God invests in people and places the world doesn't value, but which he holds precious.

God calls his Church to invest boldly in people and places the world doesn’t value, but which he holds precious.

“What’s your preaching like?” had been the chief topic of Q&A conversation following a recent church welcome dinner. Short, long, political, spiritual? What were they in for on Sunday? The congregation wasn’t sure, but they were warm and welcoming, energized and encouraging. Their faith in our shared future, having just met me and my family, and their trust in a minister of the Church spurred me to greater levels of anticipation and nervous preparation ahead of our first week together.

The congregation and I stepped into this brave new world on Sunday, together walking through the lectionary from Jeremiah 32 on the prophet’s act of faith. We explored his very public witness from the midst of imprisonment, investing boldly through the “right of redemption by purchase” to claim for his family – and by example the nation – the real estate of living as God’s people in a war-ravaged land. Proclaiming a new covenant, Jeremiah stood in a seemingly indefensible position and delivered God’s message calling the people back into relationship with their Creator, into a future built on trust and hope. God’s promise was that they would again build houses and vineyards in this, their land, he said.

Investing boldly. Facing the unknown with trust and hope. This is the particular calling of bi-vocational congregations and their clergy. With no lengthy vetting process, no vestry-powered search committee, these little congregations and their bi-vocational clergy are brought together by discerning members of congregational development teams, often without either party meeting the other until right before – an arranged marriage, of sorts.

Personally, I find this an exciting process. I would imagine it is very much like the formative years of the earliest Christian Church – disciples largely being sent, not vetted, headed to new start-ups or rekindling dwindling gatherings, priest and lay partnerships developing in a space where time and funding are limited and worship and mission are central.

Spoken like a green recruit, right? Maybe. But I think the Church needs green recruits –  bi-vocational ministers who aren’t afraid to ask members to work and serve from a seemingly indefensible position of small real estate, smaller bank accounts and a predominantly aging membership. From the outside, it doesn’t make good business sense. But God is in the business of investing in people and places that the world doesn’t value, but which he holds precious.

I’ve discovered this week God has blessed the Church with a congregation made up of an amazing group of people, energetic and excited, gifted with abundant and broad skill sets developed in an environment of living simply from necessity, which may just be the perfect formula for the hope and trust it takes to plant vineyards in a war zone.