18th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20B

18th Sunday after Pentecost- Proper 20B September 23, 2018 What does it mean to be the greatest? This question resonates across the centuries from the disciples’ quarreling to our own day. From a pop song called The Greatest (which I threatened some of our youth that I would rap in the sermon today), to the popular movie The Greatest Showman to the political slogan “Make America Great Again,” our culture seems to be obsessed with greatness. So, this gospel reading for today is really difficult for us because we know, deep down in our hearts, that just like the disciples, we don’t really get it either. Jesus has, for the second out of three times in Mark, taken himself and his disciples away from the crowds, so that he can tell them about his impending death and try to help prepare them for when he’s gone. But they just can’t get it. We see they are so confused and afraid that they cannot even formulate questions for him about what he is trying to teach him. They try to fill that void of confusion and fear by arguing over who is greatest. Instead of the self-sacrifice and service and courage that Jesus is trying to teach them about, they become fearful, close-minded, and self-absorbed. So Jesus sits down with them (which is the posture that Rabbis would take when teaching), and he tells them: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” And then he brings in a child, the lowest of the low in that society, and tells them this is what they must be: vulnerable, powerless, and dependent. Jesus is telling his disciples and us that as his followers, we must look out for the nobodies; we must be the nobodies. This is the counter-cultural definition, both then and now, of true greatness. It’s interesting because I think that a desire for greatness is often a reaction to our being in a position of vulnerability, of insecurity, of suffering. (All the examples from above came out of this place—the song The Greatest comes out of failure in love; the movie The Greatest Showman comes out of childhood poverty and insecurity; MAGA…a desire for employment, stability, and working together to meet the American dream…) It seems to be our default as humans to seek to be the greatest, especially when we are feeling vulnerable. Last week, I read an older blog post by the Quaker teacher and writer Parker Palmer titled Heartbreak, Violence, and Hope for New Life. Palmer starts his blog post by sharing the following Hasidic story: “A disciple asks the rabbi: “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?” The rabbi answers: “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.” Palmer goes on to talk about how violence is what happens when we do not allow ourselves to feel suffering. When we try to avoid pain, we fall into practices that do violence to ourselves and to each other. Palmer writes, “Sometimes we try to numb the pain of suffering in ways that dishonor our souls. We turn to noise and frenzy, nonstop work, or substance abuse as anesthetics that only deepen our suffering. Sometimes we visit violence upon others, as if causing them pain would mitigate our own. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and contempt for the poor are among the cruel outcomes of this demented strategy.”i We see this happening in the gospel reading for today. The disciples are anxious and confused and upset as Jesus is trying to tell them about his impending death. And rather than dealing with their own pain, they turn to arguing about which one of them is the greatest. And we do the same thing, don’t we? But it isn’t as easy to identify in our own lives, in our church, in our greater common life, even in our country. A few years ago, I had an encounter that helped me identify some of these issues in my own life. It’s an important reminder for me today. I was driving home from Wednesday night programming one evening with the kids when I discovered that my van’s gas tank was completely empty. Since I had already passed the gas station, I dropped the kids off at home and went back out for gas. This was around 7:30 at the end of a long day. When I got to the gas station, all the pumps had people at them, and there were more people waiting. I got more and more frustrated as I watched people maneuver and cut in front of others to get to the open pumps, and so finally, I went to one of the pumps on the back of the lot and pulled up behind a woman to wait until she was done. As I waited with my window rolled down to enjoy the beautiful night, I watched this woman be completely engrossed in her cell phone as she pumped her gas. The truck in front of her left, and she was still pumping, but I couldn’t get around her car to get to the open pump. So I waited. Finally, the woman’s gas was finished, and she slowly close up her gas tank, never taking her eyes off her phone screen. I waited a couple of more minutes as she stood there looking at her phone, and she realized that she had to push the button if she wanted a receipt. (“Please, don’t want a receipt,” I said to myself, but alas it was not to be.) She continued to be consumed with what was on her phone as her receipt printed, and she slowly pulled it and made her way into her car, maneuvering herself into the driver’s seat while not taking her eyes off her phone. (At last, I thought, I will get my gas and get home to eat supper and put my children to bed! I put my car into drive with eager anticipation.) But it was still not to be. The woman turned on her car, and sat there looking at her phone. At this point, my curiosity about this woman and her obsession with her phone had turned into acute irritation. But what to do? I didn’t want to be rude (because I had just talked at church that night about how I try not to drive like a jerk because I have a church sticker on my van), but this woman had been obliviously blocking two pumps for a while now, and I didn’t want to wait any longer. So I hung my head out my open window and yelled nicely, “Would you please pull your car forward?” I got nothing except curious and startled glances from the people at the other pumps. (Who is this crazy woman in the van trying to talk to other people at the gas pump?!) So finally, I just couldn’t stand it any longer, and I did it. I honked my horn. And what do you think happened? The woman jumped-startled when I honked, and then she put her phone down so that she could have both hands free to make rude gestures at me in her rear view mirror. Then, FINALLY, she drove off. Well, I was livid! How dare she make rude gestures at me when she had been so self-absorbed that she had been blocking not just one but two pumps while a bunch of other people waited?! I pulled down the row to the first open pump where the gas attendant was walking over to empty the trash can. I said to her, full of my righteous anger, “did you see that woman blocking two pumps while she was on her phone?!” and the gas attendant said to me tiredly with her bag full of trash, “Honey, they all be like that. Every day.” As I stood there in my collar and pumped my gas, I thought about the gas attendant, what she said, what her life must be like having to deal with that level of self-absorption day in and day out. And I realized that, even though she didn’t mean it this way, when she said “They all be like that. Every day.” Her “they” also meant me. And I knew, in that woman I had encountered someone that Jesus meant when he said we are called to see the nobodies and to care for them, and I was simultaneously chastened and hopeful that I could be better, could do better. I had been so full of my own self-importance that I hadn’t even really seen this gas attendant who had to deal with people puffed up on our own greatness, people like me and the cell-phone obsessed woman day in and day out.ii How are you called to see the nobodies in your life and world? How are you called to care for them? How are we, as followers of Jesus, called to be nobodies in a culture obsessed with greatness? i. Palmer, Parker. Heartbreak, Violence, and Hope for New Life. April 15, 2015 https://onbeing.org/blog/heartbreak-violence-and-hope-for-new-life/ ii. This story was first used in my Proper 20B 2015 sermon.

Claire Harrison's funeral homily

Funeral homily-Claire Harrison September 20, 2018 One of Claire’s gifts is that she could find joy in small things. She found joy in her cats. She found joy in dressing up. She found joy in a nice shade of bright, red lipstick. Claire found joy in sitting near the wine table at Wednesday night supper (and she always remarked on how good that little sip of wine was that she would get when I would take her communion in the nursing home, so I’d always make sure to fill the small cup full); and oh, how she loved to go out to eat! She found joy in birthday parties put on for her by her friends, and she found joy in Christmas presents from her sister. Perhaps one of her most joyful moments was when John and Tara got married at the nursing home, so that Claire could be there for the wedding—she talked to me about that often. It is a gift to be able to find joy in small things, especially since Claire’s life has not always been joyful. In fact, it has been especially difficult in these her final years. She faced many challenges, but she was always able to hold on to these small sources of joy. We gather today to give thanks for Claire and her life, and to celebrate that she is no longer suffering, that she has been received into the dwelling place of God, prepared for her by Jesus who loves her. The reading from Revelation has a vision for what heaven will be like for us, the faithful: “[God] will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’” What a wonderful gift for Claire and for us all, to be made new once again! So today, we remember that death is not the end, but a change. And we give thanks that Claire has been received into the kingdom of God where there is no more pain or sorrow or suffering. In fact, she is, even now, feasting at God’s heavenly banquet! And don’t you know that her joy is now complete, and she is sitting at the table near the wine!

17th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19B

17th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19B September 16, 2018 Our gospel reading for today is the mid-point of Mark’s gospel, and it is also a crossroads for Jesus. In the first half of Mark’s gospel, Jesus spends all his energy on “creative resistance against death-dealing forces”. He is healing the sick, casting out demons, feeding hungry people… Our reading for today shows Jesus shifting focus. Today we see Jesus predicting his death for the first time out of three. We see Jesus looking toward the cross and sharing that those who follow him will walk a similar path. This week, I encountered a couple of different ideas that I will share with you today. The first is a lectionary commentary that had this to say about the gospel reading. “St. Augustine (and many theologians after him) often spoke of sin as a form of being curvatus in se, “curved inward on oneself” - the implication being that God’s redemption helps us unfurl and open up. It’s a helpful image for conceiving what Jesus is getting at when he speaks of “losing” and “saving” our lives. What’s the “for-the-sake-of-which” that animates our days? Are we living for ourselves, trying to save ourselves? Then we’re curved inward, like an empty fist. Are we living for each other, for the neighborhood, for the good news of God’s love and mercy? Then we’re curved outward, like an open, loving hand. But please note: the idea here is not to demean ourselves, or damage ourselves, or masochistically seek suffering for its own sake. Those are parodies of Jesus’ teaching, 180 degrees off the mark. Truly living for the sake of the Gospel means recognizing God’s love for each one of us, including ourselves. And think of how much stronger, how much more flexible, capable, and beautiful is an open hand, rather than a closed fist, tightly grasping at nothing!”i The second is the Lesser Feasts and Fasts commemoration for this past Wednesday that we marked at our weekly healing service. It was the feast day of John Henry Hobart who was bishop of New York in the early days of our country and our Episcopal Church. The collect for the day reads: “Revive your Church, Lord God of hosts, whenever it falls into complacency and sloth, by raising up devoted leaders, like your servant John Henry Hobart whom we remember today; and grant that their faith and vigor of mind may awaken your people to your message and their mission; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” Our meditation for the day from the priest Sam Portaro had this to say about Hobart and the collect: “The collect for the commemoration of John Henry Hobart is a prayer for the revival of the church, a prayer to rouse us from ‘complacency and sloth,’ words we do not like to associate with ourselves. Yet we are complacent; if we did not like things the way we have them, we would make bolder moves to change them. And we are slothful; we do not exert ourselves on behalf of our faith with anything like the energy we can put forth for the things in our lives we deem worthwhile.”ii This brings me back to a question from the first passage: “What’s the ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ that animates our days?” Is it our work, our family, our children’s extracurricular activities, our vacations? Is it our college football team? Is it our status, our wealth, our reputation? Is it our church? What would our true faith look like; what would our relationship with God through God’s son Jesus Christ look like if we put as much energy into our life of faith, as we do into all these other things? Your invitation this week is ask yourself, what is your ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ that animates your days? Do you put as much energy into your relationship with God as you do other areas? Then invite God to show you the areas of your life where you are curved in on yourself and for God to show you the ways that you can become more curved outward. i. http://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/9/11/crossroads-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-seventeenth-week-after-pentecost ii.Potaro, Sam. Brightest and Best… John Henry Hobart September 12th. Cowley.

16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18B

16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18B September 9, 2018 This is a difficult gospel passage for us today. Our lectionary gives us two seemingly unconnected healing stories in Mark’s gospel. First, we have Jesus’s encounter with the Syro-Phoenician woman. Jesus is fresh off a challenging encounter with the Pharisees (which we saw in last week’s gospel reading). They are challenging him because his disciples do not follow the Jewish dietary laws. And Jesus counters with the fact that the Pharisees are a bunch of hypocrites who put more emphasis on following human traditions than having their hearts be aligned with God’s teaching. At this point in Mark’s gospel, Jesus is exhausted, and he goes on retreat to the remote area-the region of Tyre. But his rest and retreat do not last long as word gets out he is there. Mark tells us that the Syro-Phoeneciann woman bursts into the house where Jesus is staying. She is Greek which means that she is both a foreigner and a Gentile. And she has burst uninvited into this houses to confront Jesus and demand healing for her demon-possessed daughter. Commentators on this gospel interpret what happens next in the story in two different ways. Jesus is a real jerk to the woman, calling her a dog and refusing to heal her sick child. One way commentators interpret this is to say that Jesus knew how the woman would react, and so he provokes her with the harsh language and the challenge to her request—pushing her to demonstrate her faith. The other way of interpreting this encounter is that Jesus is tired. He’s digging in and sticking to his guns about what he believes is his mission—to minister to the “lost sheep of Israel.” And he rests in the cultural norms and religious expectations of his day—that he didn’t need to help this woman or her child because they are not Jews. This second interpretation is actually the more challenging (and because of that, I think, the more interesting interpretation) because Jesus seems to be doing to the woman exactly what he criticizes the Pharisees for in the verses just before this encounter. And yet, the woman persists, and Jesus changes his mind and heals her daughter. Just like God changes God’s mind when faced with compelling arguments from Abraham and Moses against God’s chosen course of action against God’s wayward people, Jesus changes his mind, expands or opens his understanding of his mission when faced with the arguments of the foreign, Gentile woman But that’s not all! Our lectionary gives us a second story this week-the story of the deaf man with the speech impediment who is brought to Jesus for healing. Jesus takes the man apart from the others, and he heals the man by touching him, using Jesus’s own saliva, and commanding the man: “Ephaphthah” which means “Be opened” in Aramaic. This story is important to read with the first story because we see Jesus acknowledging how his own faith, his own sense of his mission has changed as a result of his encounter with the woman. Jesus, himself, has been opened. And that’s really the nature of faith, isn’t it? Being opened. None of us, not even Jesus, ever arrives at the fullness of our faith in this life. Our whole life-long, faith journey is the process of being opened by God and to God, through encounters with the sacraments, with God’s grace given through the Holy Spirit, and through encounters with each other. There’s an individualistic component to this. We can ask ourselves this week: “Are there any areas in your life, or in your faith, where you need to allow Jesus to come and open, perhaps areas that you shut long ago?”i But there’s also a corporate (church-wide) component to this being opened as well. I sometimes listen to a lectionary-based preaching podcast called “Pulpit Fiction.” One of the two hosts is a United Methodist minister, and in this week’s episode, he talked about the long-standing Methodist ad campaign: “Open hearts; Open minds; Open doors.” He said that some people in the Methodist church critique this slogan because they say that the church isn’t truly open to all people. And the minister said that he sees Jesus’s words “Open up” or “Be opened” in conjunction with this saying-not so much as adjectives but as verbs—as a prescription of what we are supposed to be doing—working to actively be open. He then shared a prayer for illumination that his church uses prior to the reading of scripture every week: “Holy Spirit, open our hearts to the story of your love. Open our minds to new ways of knowing you. Open our doors to whom all you would welcome. Amen.”ii Now, lest we start thinking too highly of ourselves as Episcopalians in this, let me share with you a couple of details. The first comes from an article that the bishop sent all the clergy of the diocese this week. The article is by Dan Hotchkiss and is titled Five Lies We Like to Tell About Church Growth. The very first “lie” is that friendly churches grow. Here is what Hotchkiss writes about this: “Declining churches often marvel at how many visitors show up once and don’t return. ‘But we’re so friendly!’ Like most lies we tell ourselves, this one has a grain of truth in it: a visitor who gets a friendly greeting is more likely to return. But most church consultants know that the more vehemently leaders say their church is friendly, the more likely it will feel quite cold to visitors. When people say, ‘Our church is friendly,’ generally they mean ‘My friends are here.’ Visitors to ‘friendly’ churches see the backs of people’s heads—heads gathered into tight, impenetrable groups of friends. Churches that excel at hospitality are more apt to give themselves a B+ or C– in the friendliness department—and appreciate that hospitality takes effort.” I’ve heard this described as the difference between being a friendly church and a church of friends. A church of friends is the phenomenon that Hotchkiss writes about, when visitors only see the backs of peoples’ heads. This is something that we need to be attentive to, asking ourselves often if we are truly a friendly church or if we are being, instead, a church of friends. The second detail is a reminder of the Welcome survey I preached about a few months ago. We left copies in the narthex and church office and asked people to fill it out and turn it in, and we gave you a little over a month to do this. We had 13 of those surveys turned in, which tells me either a. we don’t like to fill out surveys or b. we aren’t very interested in assessing how welcoming we are. So how do we as a church live more deeply into this call of Jesus? To “Be opened.” At this beginning of a new program year, what are ways that we as a church can be opened—expanding our understanding of our mission and ministry, growing deeper in our faith together to opening to those who are different than us—different faiths, different socio-economic classes, different skin colors, different political parties? Let us pray. “Holy Spirit, open our hearts to the story of your love. Open our minds to new ways of knowing you. Open our doors to whom all you would welcome. Amen.”iii i. From Pray as you go podcast for September 9, 2018 ii. From Pulpit Fiction episode for September 9, 2018 iii.From Pulpit Fiction episode for September 9, 2018

Funeral Homily for Tina Norris

Funeral homily-Tina Norris September 7, 2018 If there is one single word that keeps coming up as people reflect on the wonderful gifts that Tina Norris had, then if would be “an angel.” An Historic Savannah Newsletter article from July/August of 1983 that was written about Tina as one of the tour guides for the Historic Savannah Foundation begins: “Mrs. Jack Norris-Tina-is one of those perfect sort of guides: knowledgeable, kind, friendly, and understanding-‘an angel’ says one of her colleagues.” And the article concludes with “…we are sure that Tina’s tour recipients hope that Tina will continue tour guiding for at least ten more years. Heaven surely must be missing an angel!” And even before that, Tina was nominated for the Wings in Heaven Award through Woman of the Year in Atlanta. Her family shared with me the delightful nominating form that reads “Why I consider the Candidate worthy of [the] Award: Because she is always pleasant. Because she has a ‘voice with a smile, and a suggestion of daffodils in the springtime.’ Because she is efficient without annoying anyone with her efficiency. Because we need more people like her.” She was an angel. But here’s the thing about angels. We often only think about angels as celestial beings who hang out with God. But the very word angelos is actually a job description. Angel means messenger. Angels are messengers of God. They tell people of God’s favor. They remind people, over and over again, to not be afraid of the work that God is doing in the world. Tina lived her life fully rooted in God’s love, and she loved well. She loved her family. She loved her friends. She loved her church. She loved Savannah. She loved sitting on her screened porch and drinking wine (she loved wine!) with her family and friends. In those ways, Tina was an angel, because she was a messenger to us of God’s love and of how to live this lovely life fully, with joy, delight, and kindness. We are so thankful for her presence in all of our lives. And we will miss her loving, light-filled presence in our lives most dearly. We gather today to mourn her loss, to celebrate her life, and to remind one another that even now, Tina is at home with the God that she loved, and she is feasting at God’s heavenly banquet. (I do hope God got the memo because apparently Tina, as a long-time caterer, had very strong opinions about how cucumber sandwiches should be made…) And we gather today to remember the hope of our faith: that death is not the end but a change; that our Lord Jesus Christ has gone before us, showed us the way to our eternal dwelling place in God’s kingdom, a kingdom where there is no sorrow nor sighing but only life everlasting. We remember that God has shown us, through Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything-even death. And we give thanks. We give thanks to God for the gift of Tina and for the message that she lived of God’s love for her and for each and every one of us. We will miss her; and we will see her again. (Close with the 2nd collect.)

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17B

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17B September 2, 2018 A couple of weeks ago, I started asking you to begin thinking about how we are going to observe Labor Day as a community today. I invited you to begin thinking about a symbol that you could bring, a symbol of your labor-either how you make your living in the world, how you make money or how you spend your leisure, how you spend your free time. Hopefully, you have remembered and brought this symbol with you because today, at the offertory, after the collection plates have gone past you, I’ll invite you to bring your symbol forward and lay it on the altar or at the foot of the altar. Why, you may wonder, are we doing this today? Or you may even be thinking those five words that are frequently heard together in Episcopal Churches: “We’ve never done this before…..” Our epistle reading for today provides a clue as to why we are doing this today in conjunction with the secular holiday of Labor Day. “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.” All that we are and all that we have comes from God and through God’s generosity. This is what it means when we use the word: Stewardship. You may recall the definition I shared with you last fall that came from Terry Parson’s the former stewardship officer of the Episcopal Church: “Stewardship is all that I do with all that I have after I say, ‘I believe.’” The letter to James also reminds us that we are not just to be recipients of God’s gifts, or as James puts it “not merely hearers” of the word; but that we are to be stewards of God’s gifts, people who use those gifts in the service of God and others—or as James puts it “doers of the word.” What we do with the gifts God gives us matters; it is a part of our discipleship. We already acknowledge this every week, even though you may not think about it directly, during the part of the service known as the offertory: when we bring our gifts of bread, wine, and money to the altar. Liturgical theologians Charles Price and Louis Weil put it this way. “In placing on the altar bread, money and wine, the congregation offers itself and its world. Money represents the work of the congregation. As in every sacrificial act of time immemorial, a part stands for the whole. We give part of what we make. That part stands for ‘ourselves, for our souls, for our bodies.’ Symbolically we offer the bread to be the body of Christ. But the underlying reality of the action is that we offer our lives individually and corporately to become the body of Christ in the world. We acknowledge that what we offer to God is, in a certain sense, but [God’s] all along, given to us in trust as stewards of [God’s] creation.” (Liturgy of Living by Charles P Price and Louis Weil) So, today, we are intentionally offering this aspect of ourselves—the gifts God has given us to make our labor or our leisure. We are thanking God for these gifts, and we are offering them back to God’s service, so that we may become the body of Christ in the world. As we make this offering, this week and every week, we show our gratitude by singing (the doxology: Praise God from who all blessings blow. Praise him all creatures here below. Praise him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.) or by quoting scripture (“All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.” That’s I Chronicles 29:14). We are giving thanks to God, and we are offering to use these gifts in the world to be the body of Christ. So this week, I invite you to lay your symbol on God’s altar in thanksgiving. And then, as you use your gifts, through Labor or leisure in the world this week, remember the doxology, and ask yourself if you are using your gift to be Christ’s body in the world-as a doer of the word, and not merely hearers.