13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17A

13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17A August 30, 2020 This week, our gospel reading invites us to sit for a moment with paradox. Just last week, Matthew tells us, Jesus and his disciples have traveled to the district of Caesarea Phillipi, a Mecca of Roman wealth and civilization built by King Herod on the Mediterranean Sea and nestled in the heart of Israel. In this lavish, overly-Romanized area, Jesus asks his disciples who people say he is and who they say he is. It is Peter, impulsive, impetuous Peter, who wears his heart on his sleeve, who gets it unexpectedly right: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus commends Peter saying, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church...” Then there is this week, which follows immediately on the heels of last week’s gospel, when Jesus offers the first prediction of his death and how it will happen in Matthew’s gospel, and Peter just cannot hear it. He takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him, but Jesus in turn rebukes Peter saying, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” In a short span of time, Peter goes from being the rock upon which Jesus will build his church to a stumbling block for Jesus. In this instance, both Peter’s strength and his weakness are coming from the same source and are on full display in this gospel pair. It is Peter’s courage, his boldness, than allows him to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, and it is that same boldness which causes him to speak injudiciously and threaten to become an impediment to Jesus’s mission. And that’s a paradox—how something that is strong enough to serve as foundation can also be something that causes another to trip or stumble; that our very strengths are also, at times, the source of our greatest weaknesses. I did a little research on the word paradox. It’s from the Greek word paradoxos. “Para can mean both ‘next to’ and ‘in relation to.’” And we know doxos, right? We use the word Doxology weekly. “Doxos…literally means ‘praise’ [or glory] but also ‘awe’ or ‘celebration.’ A near-literal translation of paradoxos would be ‘things that, placed in relationship to each other, inspire awe and praise.’” i What if, instead of thinking of our strengths and weaknesses as opposites, we see them as shadows of each other, qualities that, “placed in relationship to each other inspire awe and praise”? What would that look like for ourselves and for others we come into contact with? Last week, a colleague spoke about wrestling with herself to create space in her heart for the weaknesses of others, to know them in that weakness and to love them in that as opposed to being frustrated or angry with them? What would that look like for us to do this for ourselves and for others, to recognize that strengths and weakness are from the same source and that they dwell side by side in each of us? So many folks that I talk to speak about the chaos of our lives and this current moment in time. As I contemplated that, I found this blessing in the chaos, by artist and clergyperson Jan Richardson that is its own paradox. May you find blessing in your strengths and weaknesses this week; may you find love in your heart for both the strengths and the weaknesses of others. May you find the love of God and its blessing, even in the midst of chaos. Blessing in the Chaos by Jan Richardson To all that is chaotic in you, let there come silence. Let there be a calming of the clamoring, a stilling of the voices that have laid their claim on you, that have made their home in you, that go with you even to the holy places but will not let you rest, will not let you hear your life with wholeness or feel the grace that fashioned you. Let what distracts you cease. Let what divides you cease. Let there come an end to what diminishes and demeans, and let depart all that keeps you in its cage. Let there be an opening into the quiet that lies beneath the chaos, where you find the peace you did not think possible and see what shimmers within the storm. ii i. Howard, Ken. Paradoxy: Creating Christian Community Beyond Us and Them. Paraclete Press: Brewster, MA, 2010. P 141. ii. http://paintedprayerbook.com/2012/01/24/epiphany-4-blessing-in-the-chaos/#:~:text=Thanks%20for%20noting%20that%20while%20%E2%80%9CBlessing%20in%20the,A%20Book%20of%20Blessings%20for%20Times%20of%20Grief.

12th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16A

12th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16A August 23, 2020 This past week, Facebook shared one of my memories with me. It was a post that I had shared five years ago from the brothers of SSJE (the Society of St. John the Evangelist is a Episcopal community of monks in Cambridge, Massachusetts). The post read: “For what am I most thankful today? When was I most fully alive? How did I receive love? How did I give love? Often in these moments, God was catching me: appearing in a surprising form. Stopping to reflect, I now see and say ‘thank you.’”i I shared this quote with my group of seminary friends that meets weekly on Zoom, and I was so touched by their responses. “For what am I most thankful today or this week? When was I most fully alive? How did I receive love? How did I give love?” This has not been a season where I have been closely in touch with my gratitude, and this question from my past served as an important reminder for me of the spiritual practice, the spiritual discipline of gratitude. Also this past week, I read a reflection on our gospel reading for today by the Lutheran pastor David Lose. The gospel reading for this week is the portion of Matthew’s gospel where Peter makes his confession of Jesus as the Messiah, and Jesus recognizes Peter as the rock upon which Jesus will build his church. Neither of them has acted in an obvious way to live into either of those titles in any way that the other could have expected. Peter, in all his fumbling bravado, hasn’t acted like the stalwart rock that Jesus names him; and Jesus hasn’t acted like Peter would have expected a typical Messiah to act. In some ways, I think that they see each other bathed in the light of gratitude, of hopefulness, of possibility. And it is this light that enables them each to have a clarity of vision for each other in this particular moment. David Lose writes that we can celebrate this reading this week, even be grateful for the way that Matthew lifts up Peter’s success, his clarity of vision because we all know what’s going to happen in next week’s gospel reading. Peter is going to fail miserably, immediately after his proclamation of Jesus as Messiah. Jesus will quickly turn from proclaiming Peter as the rock upon which he will build his church to calling Peter a stumbling block between Jesus and his mission of self-giving love. Lose suggests that we should “pause to give thanks” this week; to celebrate with Peter that he gets it right.ii I would include that we also need to celebrate the way that God reveals this truth of each of these men to each other; to celebrate the way that Peter is “not conformed but… transformed to seek the will of God” (as Paul puts it in our Romans passage for today). We are invited to remember that our practice of gratitude can be a way that God reveals God’s very self to us. Through our gratitude we can sometimes see the way God is surprising us, showing up in our lives through the way we have given or received love or when we have felt most fully alive. I truly believe that gratitude is the rock upon which this church is founded. We are most fully ourselves when we express our gratitude for each other, and God continues to show up and be revealed in and through that practice, that gift, even in this season of diaspora. There was an article that was circulating among clergy circles this week about how difficult it is to be a pastor during the pandemic, and the article cited a recent Zoom call that the author was on where no less than 4 clergy out of 10 expressed that they’d had suicidal thoughts recently. These clergy talked about the burden of the complaints from their congregation, how no matter what they did, a portion of the congregation was going to be unhappy. I read that article, and while my initial feeling was the sadness that I have for my colleagues who feel this way, my most profound feeling is a one of deep gratitude, because this has not been my experience. My experience has been that even in the deep loneliness that I feel as your priest who cannot be regularly with you in person, your gratitude, that you freely give and express, continues to nurture me in its light in ways that continue to reveal God to me. Your consistent generosity of spirit for me, for us, and for the work we continue to try to do has been a profound gift. And I am so deeply grateful for you. So this week, I invite you to ponder the question that I posed to my group of seminary classmates. If you feel so inclined, you can even post your responses in the Facebook comments as the service continues to share your gratitude with others. And reflect on the questions as the week goes on. “For what am I most thankful today? When was I most fully alive? How did I receive love? How did I give love? Often in these moments, God was catching me: appearing in a surprising form. Stopping to reflect, I now see and say ‘thank you.’” i. From SSJE’s Facebook page. Originally posted and shared by me on August 17, 2015. Ssje.org/word ii. http://www.davidlose.net/2017/08/pentecost-12-a-pausing-to-give-thanks/

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15A

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15A August 16, 2020 This past week, my friend and colleague here sent me a meme. She didn’t include any words to it-just the picture. It’s a picture of Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman on the basketball court in their Chicago Bulls uniforms. In the pic, the equanimous Jordan has gripped the back of the jersey of the notoriously hotheaded Rodman and is calmly walking him back as Rodman looks like he’s headed off to start a fight. The caption on the meme labels Jordan as “The Holy Spirit” and Rodman as “my response to people on social media.” Below the picture it reads: me: “first of all…”; Holy Spirit: “Delete it.” My friend knows me well, especially of my deep wrestling with not debating people on social media. This meme was especially true for me this week, as I walked away from a potential fight on Facebook. The younger sister of one of my high school friends posted a link to an article about the church Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Newbury, California who has refused to stop in person services indoors despite a county order mandated by the state in mid-July requiring that services be moved outdoors. She posted her own commentary about justice, about our rights as Americans and how they are being jeopardized as if we were in a Communist country, and she wrote that if her brother and sister in law, who live in California, were to attend that church they could be arrested for their faith. Well, of course, I had to read the actual article which states that the city council in this community has voted to pursue legal action against individuals or entities not complying with public health orders and that the board of supervisors of the county is asking for a temporary restraining order to stop the church’s plans to continue indoor services. A number of folks weighed in on the post, all touting freedom of religion for the individuals and sharing their fears that our liberties are being taken away under the banner of public health. “Justice! Where is the justice?” they clamored. I was already formulating my response when, like Michael Jordan for Dennis Rodman, the Holy Spirit intervened and told me to put down my iPad and walk away. But the whole thing got me to thinking. Why is it that some Christians have returned to in person worship indoors at this time and others have not? And what does our understanding of justice have to do with that decision? Our readings for today both give a nod to the theological concept of justice. In our Old Testament reading, we hear God telling the people, “Maintain justice, and do what is right, for soon my salvation will come, and my deliverance will be revealed…” Isaiah is talking about how God will do a new thing and that the former things are passing away. But this promise of a new thing, which will include gathering up all the people and even those who have been considered outsiders, requires a response from the people of consent and obedience. God’s expectations for their response include keeping Sabbath, refraining from evil, and holding fast to the covenant. In the gospel reading for today, Jesus encounters a Canaanite woman right after he’s been involved in a controversy with some scribes and Pharisees. The woman begs Jesus to heal her daughter, and Jesus’s response is less than complementary. But the woman is persistent, and she kneels before Jesus and says, “Lord, help me.” (Note that this is virtually the same thing Peter says to Jesus in last week’s gospel when he attempts to walk on water and begins floundering.) She and Jesus exchange more words, and Jesus, impressed by her faith, heals her daughter and sends her on her way. I’m struck by the fact that in this instance, when the woman says to Jesus, “have mercy,” even though our translation has mercy as a noun, in the original Greek, mercy is a verb. “Do something merciful” she is saying to Jesus. In both of these readings, people are invited to expand their understanding of justice. Now, keep in mind that the Hebrew notion of justice is very different from our current American understanding of justice. When we say justice now, I believe we think at best, of protecting individual rights, and at worst, a systematized way to enact vengeance for perceived harm or wrong-doing. The Hebrew notion of justice is to do right, to make right, to make things right for everyone. So in the Isaiah reading, God is showing God’s people that God is expanding the notion of justice, of making things right for everyone, to include not just God’s people who are a part of the covenant but to include people who have typically been considered outside God’s consideration. And in this gospel reading, Jesus is being challenged by the demand of the Canaanite woman to do something merciful on behalf of her daughter, to expand his understanding of his mission and his notion of justice. Perhaps in that moment, he realizes that his mission is no longer only about saving the lost sheep of Israel but it has now become about saving everyone, about making things right for everyone, about doing something of mercy for everyone. This week, I learned that we have lost one of our newer couples to the Catholic Church because they have resumed in person gatherings in church and the weekly distribution of the sacrament. In my sadness and my disheartened state, I had to remind myself why we are doing this. It is because your vestry and I believe that in order to do our part in making things right for everyone (in this church, in the greater community, and even beyond), the best way we can make things right is to not gather for in person worship. That for us, rather than infringing on our individual rights to worship together, rather than focusing on our individual wants and desires, we are choosing what we believe to be the path of justice and mercy that expands beyond individuals to what we hope to be the greater good. This week, your invitation is to be mindful in different situations that you encounter about how we might be called to expand our notion of justice. Look for ways to think beyond the rights that you want as an individual to how we might be invited to all together make things right for all. Look for ways in your life this week where you are called to do mercy, to think of mercy as a verb and not just a noun.

10th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14A

10th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14A August 9, 2020 I have a joke for all you golfers out there. Jesus and Moses were out playing golf one day. They pull up to a hole in their cart, and they see that this hole has a water element. So Jesus pulls out his 5 iron and prepares to hit. Moses says, ‘I don’t know about that, Jesus. I think you should use your 4 iron here. Jesus replies, “No, I don’t think so, Moses. I’ve been watching a lot of Jack Nicklaus, and I think he’d use the 5 iron here.” Moses says, “Ok, Jesus, whatever you say.” So Jesus hits his ball with the 5 iron and it goes right into the water. Moses takes out his 4 iron and his ball sails over the water. So the two get into their cart and drive down to the water where Jesus is looking around for his ball. Not seeing it on the edge of the water, Jesus proceeds to walk out across the water looking for his ball. Moses sits in the cart waiting when two other golfers drive up to him, and say, “Who does that guy think he is? Jesus?” Moses replies, “No, he thinks he’s Jack Nicklaus.” This past Thursday on our church calendar, we had one of our major feasts: The Feast of the Transfiguration. I’m a part of a weekly Zoom gathering with some seminary classmates every Thursday, and our question for reflection for this week was based on the collect for the Transfiguration. The first part goes “O God, who on the holy mount revealed to chosen witnesses your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty…” Our moderator for the day invited us to reflect on the question “What is the disquietude in your life right now that you need God to save you from?” (repeat) It was an interesting question to ponder, and as my friends were speaking, I realized that our disquietude is as unique as each one of us, so I jotted down all the different forms of disquietude I heard in our conversation (and then threw in a few more for good measure). The list of our disquietude included anxiety, loneliness, anger, despair, alienation, fear, noise of others’ opinions, being overwhelmed, unworthiness, sadness, resentment, frustration, loss of control, caring too much about what others think. We see people wrestling with their own disquietude in our lessons for today. Elijah has just come off of an enormous victory against the priests of Baal; he has showed them up with a display of fire from heaven, and he has hunted them all down and killed them. As a result the queen is after him and he is on the run. He is weary (and perhaps, as a result, a little overly dramatic); he is alone, as all the other prophets of Yahweh have been hunted down and killed; and he is beginning to despair. So he goes away to a deserted, holy place; he calls upon God, and God shows up, not in all the noise of the elements but in silence. As an antidote to Elijah’s disquiet, God offers him quiet and the peace of God’s presence. In the gospel reading, we have just seen Jesus feed the 5,000 with a few fish and loaves of bread. He has drawn away to a deserted place, and his disciples have continued on in the boat when a storm blows up. These seasoned fishermen become terrified of the storm, and then they are even more terrified to see Jesus walking to them across the water. Jesus offers them reassurance saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” And then Peter inexplicably says, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Jesus is like, “Sure. Come on.” So Peter gets out of the boat and actually starts walking to Jesus on the water, and he is rocking along, but when he notices the strong wind he becomes disquieted and afraid, and beginning to sink, he cries out to Jesus. Jesus offers his hand and says, “Faint-heart, what got into you?” And together they climb into the boat and the wind ceases. One of the reasons it was so helpful for me to talk about disquietude with some trusted friends is that by speaking it, naming it, it helped to refrain from acting out of place of disquietude. Peter steps out of the boat in a spirit of courage and faith to meet Jesus but then his disquietude gets the better of him. But even then, Jesus is there, offering him a hand and walking with him back to the boat. When we act out of our disquietude, it causes problems for us and for those around us. Our family has watched Hamilton since it came out on Disney plus in July, and I actually got to see it in the theater in Chicago this time last year. This week, I’ve been thinking about one of the turning points in the play, which is a number called “Hurricane.” Hamilton has made some bad decisions which he has kept secret, but then his political rivals learn of his indiscretions. And this song Hurricane is all about him wrestling with his own disquietude, worrying about his legacy, and trying to find a way out of the predicament that he is in. He even says that God has abandoned him, so it is up to him. And so Hamilton acts out of this place of disquietude, and it is devastating for his marriage and for his whole family, leading to even worse problems for all of them. It’s a cautionary tale for us when we are tempted to act out of our disquietude rather than seeking out God who promises to always be present with us and who offers what we need whether it is safety and quiet in the face of our enemies or whether it is an invitation to get out of our comfort zone and a helping hand when we begin to flounder. This week, I invite you to ponder the question “What is the disquietude in your life right now that you need God to save you from?” And in your prayers name that before God and ask for God’s saving grace to offer you the quiet your soul needs. In closing, I’ll share a prayer that I have seen posted several places this week that asks God to save us from the way that acting out of our disquietude hurts us and others. It’s attributed to Laura Jean Truman. God, Keep my anger from becoming meanness. Keep my sorrow from collapsing into self-pity. Keep my heart soft enough to keep breaking. Keep my anger turned towards justice, not cruelty. Remind me that all of this, every bit of it, is for love. Keep me fiercely kind. Amen.

9th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13A

9th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13A August 2, 2020 This week, while on vacation, I read a poem about hope. It reminds me of today’s gospel reading, the story when Jesus feeds over 5, 000 people with a few loaves of bread and some fish. The poem is by a poet named Denise Levertov and it is titled: A Shared Grain of Hope – I have a small grain of hope— one small crystal that gleams clear colors out of transparency. I need more. I break off a fragment to send you. Please take this grain of a grain of hope so that mine won’t shrink. Please share your fragment so that yours will grow. Only so, by division, will hope increase, like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source— clumsy and earth-covered— of grace.i Think for a minute about the desperation of the crowds, who follow Jesus to a place that is so remote, where they are so unprepared as to not have brought food for themselves and their families. Think about the disciples, who are at their wits’ end in knowing what to do for and with these people. Think about Jesus as he calmly tells the disciples to give the people something to eat. Think about the hope of whomever offered their small basket of food; think about the hope this shared with the disciples to even consider offering it to Jesus. Think about the gift of the abundance of the food offered out of that hope, how it was spread and shared until all were filled and the leftovers were gathered. In a moment, I’m going to read the poem again, and as I read it, I invite you to think about what small bit of hope you have to offer the world this week, and think about asking God to open your heart to how you might share a sliver of it so that it becomes an abundance. i. –Denise Levertov, “For the New Year, 1981”, Candles in Babylon