First Sunday after Epiphany—Baptism of our Lord Year C
January 10, 2010
“Thus says the Lord… ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine…Because you are precious and I love you…. Do not fear, for I am with you.” In the words from our Old Testament reading today, the prophet Isaiah reports God’s words to the people of Israel, a people taken from their home in God’s promised land and once again enslaved and in exile in Babylon. This poetry of the prophet seeks to reassure a people on the precipice of extinction, a people in grave doubt of their future because God seems to have abandoned them. They had come through the waters of the Red Sea when God rescued them from enslavement in Egypt. They had been established in Israel, the promised land, and named as God’s chosen people. But things are bad again for them, and they are afraid. In the words of the prophet, God commands the people of Israel to cast aside their fear by saying that fear is unnecessary. First, they have been redeemed by God. Now according to the laws of Israel as written in Leviticus (25:47-49), to be redeemed means to be bought out of human bondage by one’s kin, a close member of the extended family. So when God says that God has redeemed Israel, God is freeing them from enslavement (to fear) and is asserting a close, familial relationship with God’s people. Therefore, they belong to God….no matter what. Nothing can happen to destroy their purpose, their destiny, which is to be in relationship with God and to do the work that God gives them to do.
‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine…Because you are precious and I love you…. Do not fear, for I am with you.”
But these words could have just as easily been written for us, as fear and anxiety have run rampant through our parish these last few weeks….fear about what will be funded in a budget and what will be cut; fear about what this means for us as a church; fear about what it means about who we will be. In a little while, during our parish meeting, you will hear more about this and about the journey your Vestry has been on these last few weeks as we have worked to prepare a budget for this year. It has been an amazing journey, and I commend the Vestry for being willing to wrestle with tough questions and for being willing to consider new ways of doing things. They have all worked hard and faithfully out of a deep sense of commitment to the work of this church. One thing that I have learned in this process is that the opposite of fear isn’t always courage. The opposite of fear isn’t always faith (although it can be both of those). Sometimes, the opposite of fear is thanksgiving. In our conversations, we were reminded of all that we have been given, all the aid and assistance from the greater church and the diocese in the past. And I think that remembering made us thankful, and it helped us cast aside our fear and move forward.
Today, in addition to holding our annual parish meeting, we remember and mark the baptism of Jesus on this first Sunday after Epiphany. I can think of no more appropriate time to have a parish meeting as Jesus’s baptism helps us remember our own baptisms and the promises that we made or that were made for us. Today, we will once again recommit ourselves to those promises, but first, I want to talk about the overarching meaning of baptism that is found in Luke’s gospel. All three synoptic gospels have an account of Jesus’s baptism, but Luke’s account has two unique characteristics that I think are very important. First, in this account, we don’t get to see the actual baptism of Jesus as in Matthew and Mark. Instead Luke tells us that Jesus is baptized with a whole bunch of other people, and it is after his baptism when Jesus was praying that the heavens open up and the Holy Spirit descends upon him. It is as if the manifestation of the Holy Spirit is directly related to Jesus’s existing relationship with God. He prays, and the Holy Spirit comes. Second, the voice from heaven speaks directly to Jesus in Luke’s account. Instead of speaking to the crowds like in Matthew and saying, “This is my beloved Son…” the voice in Luke speaks to Jesus and says, “You are my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
In our baptism, we, too, are marked as God’s beloved, God’s redeemed, who no longer have to be enslaved by our fear. In our baptism, it is as if each one of us also stands before God and God looks at you and says, “You are my child, the beloved, whom I call by name. And I am proud of you.” And like well-mannered children we say back to God, “Thank you.”
So as the beloved and the redeemed of God, what will our thankful response be? My friend Jennifer Deaton, who preached at the deacon’s ordination yesterday, shared a poem in her sermon that gets right to the heart of what our thankful response as the beloved people of God must be; in fact, I think it is one of the clearest articulations of God’s call to the baptized that I have ever heard. The poem is called “The Work of Christmas” by Howard Thurman.
"When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart."
That is our thankful response and the call of God to God’s beloved: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart." It is who we are this day, and who we will work to be in the future. May the Lord who redeems us and calls us to do these things, give us the courage and the gratefulness to perform them.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Christmas II sermon
The Second Sunday after Christmas Year C
January 3, 2010
Today’s gospel reading may seem like a strange choice for the second Sunday after Christmas. The wise men have come and gone and then Joseph has a dream in which God’s angel (or God’s messenger --for that’s what angel means) appears and tells him to take Jesus and Mary and flee to Egypt where they will be safe from the wrath of Herod. So Joseph does as he is told, and the Holy Family flees to Egypt. In the meantime, in a part that we don’t read today, Herod discovers that the wise men have not come back to tell him the whereabouts of the Christ child, as they had promised, but they have, instead, sneaked out of town using an alternate route, and Herod is enraged. And he orders his soldiers to kill all male children ages two and under in Bethlehem. This is what our tradition calls the slaughter of the innocents, and it is definitely a dark chapter in the story of the birth of Jesus, that so many other boys were killed because of one tyrant’s rage and fear. Then our reading picks back up after Herod dies and Joseph has another dream where God’s messenger tells him that it is safe to return to Israel. There are many echoes in this reading that harken back to Israel’s history and sacred story. Once again, we have a Joseph who is favored by God and who receives messages from God through dreams. We have young male children slaughtered by a power-crazy king, just like how Pharaoh ordered all the male babies born to the Israelites enslaved in Egypt to be killed upon birth, but Moses was spared. We have a flight to Egypt when things become difficult in Israel, and then a return to the promised land after a few years of exile in Egypt.
But I think that this somewhat disturbing story has even more to offer us in these last days of the Christmas season. It serves as a reminder to us that through the gift of Christ’s birth, God remains with us, and that God continues to speak to us in many different forms and fashions.
A few years ago, I read a wonderful book called Natural Spirituality by a woman named Joyce Rockwood Hudson, and in this book, Hudson writes about all the different ways that God still speaks to us, ways that we are invited by God to grow more deeply in our spirituality: through our dreams, through music, through seemingly random conversations…all of these can be God’s messengers to us in our lives. Even that mindless tune that you catch yourself humming inexplicably at some point in your day, that can be a messenger of God. I will never forget when I had an experience that verified this, just after I finished reading Hudson’s book. I had taken Mary Margaret to pre-school that morning, and our brief time in the car had been a delightful time for us, as we talked and laughed and inter-acted with one another. Then I got to the office, and things just started to go downhill…you know what I’m taking about….when a perfectly good day just inexplicable goes South. I was frustrated and irritable, and I was walking from my office back to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, and I caught myself humming a tune. I focused my attention on what the tune was and discovered that it was the “Itsy, bitsy Spider”;for a moment, I was puzzled as to why I would be humming that song, and then I remembered that MM and I had been singing that on our way to school. In that one, brief, message, that one revelation, God helped me to reconnect with my joy, and everything else that was going on became much more insignificant.
“There is a story of a child who was taught a sacred tune in his native village. When he grew up and went out into the world, the rabbi said to him, ‘Don’t forget the tune. But if you do forget it, then come right back home and learn it all over again’…Our whole world shines with sacredness and we have forgotten how to see it; we have to learn from children, artists, and primitive peoples for whom it has not yet become necessary to put God into a sort of isolation hospital” (Monica Furlong)
This Christmas season, may we remember that our whole world shines with sacredness….all around us are God’s messengers who whisper to us or even proclaim boldly the message of God’s love for us, if we will but listen and trust and follow…
January 3, 2010
Today’s gospel reading may seem like a strange choice for the second Sunday after Christmas. The wise men have come and gone and then Joseph has a dream in which God’s angel (or God’s messenger --for that’s what angel means) appears and tells him to take Jesus and Mary and flee to Egypt where they will be safe from the wrath of Herod. So Joseph does as he is told, and the Holy Family flees to Egypt. In the meantime, in a part that we don’t read today, Herod discovers that the wise men have not come back to tell him the whereabouts of the Christ child, as they had promised, but they have, instead, sneaked out of town using an alternate route, and Herod is enraged. And he orders his soldiers to kill all male children ages two and under in Bethlehem. This is what our tradition calls the slaughter of the innocents, and it is definitely a dark chapter in the story of the birth of Jesus, that so many other boys were killed because of one tyrant’s rage and fear. Then our reading picks back up after Herod dies and Joseph has another dream where God’s messenger tells him that it is safe to return to Israel. There are many echoes in this reading that harken back to Israel’s history and sacred story. Once again, we have a Joseph who is favored by God and who receives messages from God through dreams. We have young male children slaughtered by a power-crazy king, just like how Pharaoh ordered all the male babies born to the Israelites enslaved in Egypt to be killed upon birth, but Moses was spared. We have a flight to Egypt when things become difficult in Israel, and then a return to the promised land after a few years of exile in Egypt.
But I think that this somewhat disturbing story has even more to offer us in these last days of the Christmas season. It serves as a reminder to us that through the gift of Christ’s birth, God remains with us, and that God continues to speak to us in many different forms and fashions.
A few years ago, I read a wonderful book called Natural Spirituality by a woman named Joyce Rockwood Hudson, and in this book, Hudson writes about all the different ways that God still speaks to us, ways that we are invited by God to grow more deeply in our spirituality: through our dreams, through music, through seemingly random conversations…all of these can be God’s messengers to us in our lives. Even that mindless tune that you catch yourself humming inexplicably at some point in your day, that can be a messenger of God. I will never forget when I had an experience that verified this, just after I finished reading Hudson’s book. I had taken Mary Margaret to pre-school that morning, and our brief time in the car had been a delightful time for us, as we talked and laughed and inter-acted with one another. Then I got to the office, and things just started to go downhill…you know what I’m taking about….when a perfectly good day just inexplicable goes South. I was frustrated and irritable, and I was walking from my office back to the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, and I caught myself humming a tune. I focused my attention on what the tune was and discovered that it was the “Itsy, bitsy Spider”;for a moment, I was puzzled as to why I would be humming that song, and then I remembered that MM and I had been singing that on our way to school. In that one, brief, message, that one revelation, God helped me to reconnect with my joy, and everything else that was going on became much more insignificant.
“There is a story of a child who was taught a sacred tune in his native village. When he grew up and went out into the world, the rabbi said to him, ‘Don’t forget the tune. But if you do forget it, then come right back home and learn it all over again’…Our whole world shines with sacredness and we have forgotten how to see it; we have to learn from children, artists, and primitive peoples for whom it has not yet become necessary to put God into a sort of isolation hospital” (Monica Furlong)
This Christmas season, may we remember that our whole world shines with sacredness….all around us are God’s messengers who whisper to us or even proclaim boldly the message of God’s love for us, if we will but listen and trust and follow…
Christmas eve 2009
Christmas Eve 2009
Have you ever noticed how many of our major Christmas carols sing about Silence? There is, of course, the ubiquitous Silent Night, which we will sing later in the service. And silence also features heavily in “O Little Town of Bethlehem…”(Say the first verse and then sing the third verse of O Little Town of Bethlehem (78). Silence. It’s fascinating to me, this Christmas carol emphasis on silence, because it is certainly not a characteristic that I would identify with our modern celebration of Christmas. (Any of you with young children or grandchildren can testify with me that this is true.) We are bombarded with Christmas carols in all of our stores, even the grocery store. We are bombarded with expectations (our own and those of others), with food to prepare, family obligations to meet. Silence at Christmas time is possibly one of the most foreign concepts that we as a modern people experience.
I also think that silence was pretty foreign at Jesus’s birth, those many, many years ago. Childbirth is hardly a silent endeavor, and Jesus is born into a stable (or even worse, some scholars think that it was actually a cave…can you imagine how loud livestock sound in a cave?). He is born into an occupied country, with soldiers everywhere and a mad king who is immediately out to get him. There is little silence or peace in any of that. And then the shepherds in the fields who may have had some silence initially, but whose night is spit right open by the overwhelming glory of a blinding light and a multitude of heavenly host proclaiming that God is now present on earth. No. I doubt that there was little silence there either.
So how is it appropriate for us to sing our Silent Night tonight? Where is this silence of which we sing?
Perhaps the silence is part of God’s gift for us this night? Our God who chose to work so unobtrusively those many years ago, by offering the gift of God’s very self, lifting earth to heaven and stooping heaven to earth, the silence is found in the union of God and humanity in a newborn, peasant baby. We come here tonight looking for the assurance that we can have this silent night, holy night, a time when we can leave all our worries and preoccupations behind us and we can believe, just for a few moments, that all is right with the world. That is, I think, what we seek in the silence, and what we sing about this night.
And the good news is this! It is not only for this one night that this gift of Silence and love is offered. It is offered to us every day of our lives. God has been and continues to be present in this world, in humanity, in the person of Jesus Christ, and we receive God’s gift of silence into our hearts and lives every time we pray; every time we receive communion; every time we open our hearts by loving. This silent gift is available to us whenever we choose to receive it, on this holy night and every moment following.
Sing verse three again….
Have you ever noticed how many of our major Christmas carols sing about Silence? There is, of course, the ubiquitous Silent Night, which we will sing later in the service. And silence also features heavily in “O Little Town of Bethlehem…”(Say the first verse and then sing the third verse of O Little Town of Bethlehem (78). Silence. It’s fascinating to me, this Christmas carol emphasis on silence, because it is certainly not a characteristic that I would identify with our modern celebration of Christmas. (Any of you with young children or grandchildren can testify with me that this is true.) We are bombarded with Christmas carols in all of our stores, even the grocery store. We are bombarded with expectations (our own and those of others), with food to prepare, family obligations to meet. Silence at Christmas time is possibly one of the most foreign concepts that we as a modern people experience.
I also think that silence was pretty foreign at Jesus’s birth, those many, many years ago. Childbirth is hardly a silent endeavor, and Jesus is born into a stable (or even worse, some scholars think that it was actually a cave…can you imagine how loud livestock sound in a cave?). He is born into an occupied country, with soldiers everywhere and a mad king who is immediately out to get him. There is little silence or peace in any of that. And then the shepherds in the fields who may have had some silence initially, but whose night is spit right open by the overwhelming glory of a blinding light and a multitude of heavenly host proclaiming that God is now present on earth. No. I doubt that there was little silence there either.
So how is it appropriate for us to sing our Silent Night tonight? Where is this silence of which we sing?
Perhaps the silence is part of God’s gift for us this night? Our God who chose to work so unobtrusively those many years ago, by offering the gift of God’s very self, lifting earth to heaven and stooping heaven to earth, the silence is found in the union of God and humanity in a newborn, peasant baby. We come here tonight looking for the assurance that we can have this silent night, holy night, a time when we can leave all our worries and preoccupations behind us and we can believe, just for a few moments, that all is right with the world. That is, I think, what we seek in the silence, and what we sing about this night.
And the good news is this! It is not only for this one night that this gift of Silence and love is offered. It is offered to us every day of our lives. God has been and continues to be present in this world, in humanity, in the person of Jesus Christ, and we receive God’s gift of silence into our hearts and lives every time we pray; every time we receive communion; every time we open our hearts by loving. This silent gift is available to us whenever we choose to receive it, on this holy night and every moment following.
Sing verse three again….
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
The attack of the Sugar Plum Fairy
The kids were both up by 5:30 this morning, on this second weekday of the Christmas holiday break. I got up with them but was still tired when David got up around 6:30, so I went back to bed for a short winter's nap.
I was awakened from my early morning nap by David's calm voice saying loudly, "Oh, you bad, bad baby!" In case you've never been awakened by that sentence, let me assure you that it is not a comforting sound for a mamma to hear. As I made my way blearily out of our room to investigate, I discovered my husband was in the kitchen vacuuming my son. When I inquired what was going on, I learned that Jack had been unsupervised for some period of time (?) and had decided to occupy himself by playing in the container of powdered sugar in our pantry. The result was a large amount of powdered on the floor and a powdered sugar-covered baby. David had received the crime-stopper tip by the concerned older sister, MM, who went to get him off the computer by saying, "Daddy, you have GOT to see what Jack's done!"
All in all, it was an interesting way to begin the day!
I was awakened from my early morning nap by David's calm voice saying loudly, "Oh, you bad, bad baby!" In case you've never been awakened by that sentence, let me assure you that it is not a comforting sound for a mamma to hear. As I made my way blearily out of our room to investigate, I discovered my husband was in the kitchen vacuuming my son. When I inquired what was going on, I learned that Jack had been unsupervised for some period of time (?) and had decided to occupy himself by playing in the container of powdered sugar in our pantry. The result was a large amount of powdered on the floor and a powdered sugar-covered baby. David had received the crime-stopper tip by the concerned older sister, MM, who went to get him off the computer by saying, "Daddy, you have GOT to see what Jack's done!"
All in all, it was an interesting way to begin the day!
Advent 3C
The 3rd Sunday of Advent Year C
December 13, 2009
One day this past week, I was very, very grumpy. I was feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of the season, wondering when I was going to have time to do my Christmas shopping, address and mail our Christmas cards, bake, and find that missing box of Christmas ornaments that we’ve managed to lose in the move. I was sitting at my desk, making an angel tree for our outreach project, and I was getting more and more cross as green glitter from the tree got all over my desk and my hands and my face, my hands got sticky from the glue stick I was using, and it became increasingly more apparent that making an angel tree for the parish is not one of my gifts for ministry—Martha Stewart I am not! As I was gluing the gift requests on the back of the angel ornaments, I stopped to read one of the lists of request for Christmas presents. It was from a 7 year old girl whose favorite color is purple or pink (like my own daughter) and who had asked for either a bike or a scooter for Christmas and also for a gift certificate to a portrait studio for her family to get their picture made. Intrigued, I read another from a 17 year old boy: itunes gift card and black ankle socks; and another: a full sheet set, a floor lamp, and any classic movie on dvd; and another: a 2 sided crock pot, scrapbooks, and comfortable shoes for work; and another: slippers, a monthly bus pass, and black hair dye; and another: Sponge bob square pants shoes to fit a size 4T and anything Spiderman or Superman…12 of these little sheets of paper I read, each one representing a beloved child of God whose humble hopes and dreams were offered to us with the hope that we could help them be fulfilled. And here I was irritated by all the green glitter getting on my desk.
I could just hear John the Baptist’s scathing comment to me across the ages as he called me worse things than a brood of vipers.
Now, I do not offer this to you in order to make you feel guilty or to make you share in my guilt. Today is Gaudete Sunday, rejoice Sunday, when our Advent penitence is somewhat lightened; we light the pink candle, and we are invited to join the call of the prophet Zephaniah, the apostle Paul, and even fussy old John the Baptist. My struggle this week has been how to live into this call to rejoice when our hearts may feel burdened by the cares and the concerns, the pressures of the season? How do we rejoice when our hearts feel heavy or anxious, stressed or broken? And what does it mean to rejoice?
We can learn something about rejoicing from Paul and from John the Baptist this week. First, Paul. His words may seem like an empty echo when read out of context of the rest of his letter to the church in Phillipi. But then we remember that in this letter, he has identified three great threats to the community: opponents who have caused them suffering, so much so that Paul fears that the church might divide in the face of it; alternative teachers who Paul unflatteringly calls “dogs” who threaten the gospel that he has been proclaiming; and a conflict between two female leaders of the congregation called Euodia and Syntyche who are at odds over an interpersonal and congregational issue. On top of all this, Paul is writing his letter in chains from prison. So when the people of the church of Phillippi hear Paul’s letter saying, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice…” they are listening with hearts that are weighed down from external and internal conflicts with anxiety about their future . He goes on to support his call to rejoicing by encouraging them to show forth their gentleness, to not worry and to pray, to turn their focus away from their fears and their conflicts and to focus outward on others in their community.
When the people come to John the Baptist in today’s gospel reading, even after his great tongue-lashing of them, they continue to ask him again and again…”What then should we do?” John’s great gift is that he is a person of vision who knows exactly who he is (not the Messiah but the one pointing to him) and that he has a very clear understanding of who his listeners are and who they could possibly be. He tells each one what they need to do in order to bear fruits worthy of repentance, and each prescription has to do with looking outside of themselves and their own issues and treating others with justice and mercy, gentleness and charity.
The poet Audre Lord wrote to her friend and fellow poet, Adrienne Rich: “Once you live any piece of your vision, it opens you to a constant onslaught of necessities, of horrors, but of wonders too, of possibilities.”
That is what John the Baptist offers his hearers: “possibilities”. It is the possibility of the good news—how we can be, how we will be changed for the better.
It is also at the heart of Paul’s hope and his call to rejoice—the possibility of transformation that he has experienced and continues to experience even in prison and the possibility of the church in Phillippi.
And so it is with us.
Our joy is not rooted in our own happiness, in our own prosperity, in our own stress and conflict-free circumstances. Our joy is rooted in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the way that he transforms our hearts and our minds so that we are no longer orbiting around our own sufferings and hardships, but we can be focused on God and on others and on the joy that springs forth from those relationships.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” For with God, all things are possible.
December 13, 2009
One day this past week, I was very, very grumpy. I was feeling overwhelmed by the pressures of the season, wondering when I was going to have time to do my Christmas shopping, address and mail our Christmas cards, bake, and find that missing box of Christmas ornaments that we’ve managed to lose in the move. I was sitting at my desk, making an angel tree for our outreach project, and I was getting more and more cross as green glitter from the tree got all over my desk and my hands and my face, my hands got sticky from the glue stick I was using, and it became increasingly more apparent that making an angel tree for the parish is not one of my gifts for ministry—Martha Stewart I am not! As I was gluing the gift requests on the back of the angel ornaments, I stopped to read one of the lists of request for Christmas presents. It was from a 7 year old girl whose favorite color is purple or pink (like my own daughter) and who had asked for either a bike or a scooter for Christmas and also for a gift certificate to a portrait studio for her family to get their picture made. Intrigued, I read another from a 17 year old boy: itunes gift card and black ankle socks; and another: a full sheet set, a floor lamp, and any classic movie on dvd; and another: a 2 sided crock pot, scrapbooks, and comfortable shoes for work; and another: slippers, a monthly bus pass, and black hair dye; and another: Sponge bob square pants shoes to fit a size 4T and anything Spiderman or Superman…12 of these little sheets of paper I read, each one representing a beloved child of God whose humble hopes and dreams were offered to us with the hope that we could help them be fulfilled. And here I was irritated by all the green glitter getting on my desk.
I could just hear John the Baptist’s scathing comment to me across the ages as he called me worse things than a brood of vipers.
Now, I do not offer this to you in order to make you feel guilty or to make you share in my guilt. Today is Gaudete Sunday, rejoice Sunday, when our Advent penitence is somewhat lightened; we light the pink candle, and we are invited to join the call of the prophet Zephaniah, the apostle Paul, and even fussy old John the Baptist. My struggle this week has been how to live into this call to rejoice when our hearts may feel burdened by the cares and the concerns, the pressures of the season? How do we rejoice when our hearts feel heavy or anxious, stressed or broken? And what does it mean to rejoice?
We can learn something about rejoicing from Paul and from John the Baptist this week. First, Paul. His words may seem like an empty echo when read out of context of the rest of his letter to the church in Phillipi. But then we remember that in this letter, he has identified three great threats to the community: opponents who have caused them suffering, so much so that Paul fears that the church might divide in the face of it; alternative teachers who Paul unflatteringly calls “dogs” who threaten the gospel that he has been proclaiming; and a conflict between two female leaders of the congregation called Euodia and Syntyche who are at odds over an interpersonal and congregational issue. On top of all this, Paul is writing his letter in chains from prison. So when the people of the church of Phillippi hear Paul’s letter saying, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice…” they are listening with hearts that are weighed down from external and internal conflicts with anxiety about their future . He goes on to support his call to rejoicing by encouraging them to show forth their gentleness, to not worry and to pray, to turn their focus away from their fears and their conflicts and to focus outward on others in their community.
When the people come to John the Baptist in today’s gospel reading, even after his great tongue-lashing of them, they continue to ask him again and again…”What then should we do?” John’s great gift is that he is a person of vision who knows exactly who he is (not the Messiah but the one pointing to him) and that he has a very clear understanding of who his listeners are and who they could possibly be. He tells each one what they need to do in order to bear fruits worthy of repentance, and each prescription has to do with looking outside of themselves and their own issues and treating others with justice and mercy, gentleness and charity.
The poet Audre Lord wrote to her friend and fellow poet, Adrienne Rich: “Once you live any piece of your vision, it opens you to a constant onslaught of necessities, of horrors, but of wonders too, of possibilities.”
That is what John the Baptist offers his hearers: “possibilities”. It is the possibility of the good news—how we can be, how we will be changed for the better.
It is also at the heart of Paul’s hope and his call to rejoice—the possibility of transformation that he has experienced and continues to experience even in prison and the possibility of the church in Phillippi.
And so it is with us.
Our joy is not rooted in our own happiness, in our own prosperity, in our own stress and conflict-free circumstances. Our joy is rooted in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the way that he transforms our hearts and our minds so that we are no longer orbiting around our own sufferings and hardships, but we can be focused on God and on others and on the joy that springs forth from those relationships.
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” For with God, all things are possible.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
One More Marker
On Tuesday, I celebrated my 5th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. I did not do anything special to mark it, other than what I did as a part of my work that day. I did remember it, and when I got home that night, I was nostalgic and a little mournful that I did not make time to say Mass in thanksgiving for God's call to me many years ago or even to read again the promises I made and the charge made to me in my ordination that was all made holy when the bishop laid his hands on my head five years ago.
However, this morning, I have realized that I have discovered another "marker" of my own pilgrim's way this week, my pilgrim's way that is the ordained priesthood. It has been in working on preparations for our Celebration of New Ministry this coming Sunday evening.
This week I have spent much time with the liturgy and its words have washed over me again and again: "Melanie Dickson Lemburg...Having committed yourself to this work, do not forget the trust of those who have chosen you. Care alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. By your words and actions, and in your life, proclaim the Gospel. Love and serve Christ's people. Nourish them, empower them for ministry, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come. May the One who has given you the will to do these things, give you the grace and power to perform them."
Those words echo the words of charge at my ordination, and they also echo the work that I have been doing as a parish priest this week in multiple hospital visits, drop-in office visits, midweek Mass, the feast of St. Nicholas and Advent wreath making, and preparations for upcoming liturgies.
I give thanks for them and for the way that they serve as a marker that (at my best) I am doing exactly what I have been called to do. "It is meet and right so to do." And the anniversary of my ordination could have no better marker than that.
However, this morning, I have realized that I have discovered another "marker" of my own pilgrim's way this week, my pilgrim's way that is the ordained priesthood. It has been in working on preparations for our Celebration of New Ministry this coming Sunday evening.
This week I have spent much time with the liturgy and its words have washed over me again and again: "Melanie Dickson Lemburg...Having committed yourself to this work, do not forget the trust of those who have chosen you. Care alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. By your words and actions, and in your life, proclaim the Gospel. Love and serve Christ's people. Nourish them, empower them for ministry, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come. May the One who has given you the will to do these things, give you the grace and power to perform them."
Those words echo the words of charge at my ordination, and they also echo the work that I have been doing as a parish priest this week in multiple hospital visits, drop-in office visits, midweek Mass, the feast of St. Nicholas and Advent wreath making, and preparations for upcoming liturgies.
I give thanks for them and for the way that they serve as a marker that (at my best) I am doing exactly what I have been called to do. "It is meet and right so to do." And the anniversary of my ordination could have no better marker than that.
The Pilgrims' Markers
I have lived my life at a break-neck pace these last few days. I can't even remember the last moment of quiet contemplation I have fully rested in. I'm up early this morning to go visit someone in the hospital pre-surgery, and I am thankful to find the office quiet at this early hour and hope to have some time to be before all the activity begins again.
I'm sitting out in the church's garden, looking out over the Gulf. The tide is low, and there are markers out just off shore. I'm not sure what their purpose is (peraps to mark the shallow water from the deep for boaters?), but they remind me of the markers at the Holy Island of Lindisfarne (in the UK) which look like they are just sticks coming up out of the sea, but at low tide, these sticks mark the path for the pilgrims to make their way across the dry land to make their pilgrimage to Lindisfarne.
This morning, I believe that is the purpose of quiet contemplation and of prayer. At low tide, the slower easier season in our lives, the way to God may be clearly marked; at high tide, the business and chaos may seem to occlude the path like water swirling over the sand. That's why we need the markers of prayer and quiet and contemplation; That's why we need the season of Advent. These practices invite us to once again set our sights on the markers that line the way.
I'm sitting out in the church's garden, looking out over the Gulf. The tide is low, and there are markers out just off shore. I'm not sure what their purpose is (peraps to mark the shallow water from the deep for boaters?), but they remind me of the markers at the Holy Island of Lindisfarne (in the UK) which look like they are just sticks coming up out of the sea, but at low tide, these sticks mark the path for the pilgrims to make their way across the dry land to make their pilgrimage to Lindisfarne.
This morning, I believe that is the purpose of quiet contemplation and of prayer. At low tide, the slower easier season in our lives, the way to God may be clearly marked; at high tide, the business and chaos may seem to occlude the path like water swirling over the sand. That's why we need the markers of prayer and quiet and contemplation; That's why we need the season of Advent. These practices invite us to once again set our sights on the markers that line the way.
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