20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25C

20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25C October 27, 2019 It feels to me that it has been a season of comparisons. We are fresh off the walkabout for the next bishop of this diocese, where we heard each of the 5 candidates answer questions. We also have election day coming up soon, so some of us are comparing candidates to determine who we want to vote for. And then we have this next parable in Luke’s gospel, where Jesus tells a story of a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee is doing all good things, actually doing more than he is supposed to be doing (fasting twice a week when he only has to fast once a week and giving 10% of his income), but when he lifts all that up before God, compares himself to the tax collector he sees praying in the temple near him; and the tax collector, who is quite a scoundrel, but who is aware of his sinfulness, prays for forgiveness from God. Amy-Jill Levine tells us that this parable would have been unexpected for Jesus’s original hearers because they would have expected to hear the story of a saint who was revealed to be a sinner and a sinner who was revealed to be a saint, and this does not happen. The other thing A-J Levine says about this parable that struck me is that the context of the Jewish community in this parable is actually like those horrible middle school group projects—you know, when you have one of two strong students grouped together with some not as strong or diligent students, and the more diligent students end up carrying the group. She says that righteousness in a community can be accomplished by a handful of righteous people, with the unrighteous being brought along with them. Or the converse is also true: that a handful of unrighteous people in a community can tip the balance for the whole community toward unrighteousness. And interestingly enough, this parable falls in our lectionary on this week—week two in our Consecration Sunday Stewardship program, where Jamie McCurry is going to get up here in a minute and take us through the big picture of giving in this parish and invite us to see where we fall in comparison to that. So the question I have been wrestling with is “Can there be any grace in comparison?” And here’s what I’ve come up with: that comparison just for the sake of comparison or trying to make ourselves feel better at the expense of others is what Jesus is condemning in the Pharisee of the parable. But there are ways that we can examine ourselves within the context of the community through which we can become more self-aware, and that increased self-awareness will bear all sorts of different fruit. I’ve started reading a book about the Enneagram; the Enneagram is theory which says that there are 9 different personality types and when we learn about the gifts and challenges of our particular type, then that can enrich one’s self-awareness and relationship with God through greater spiritual development. In this book titled The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery by Ian Morgan Cron (an Episcopal priest) and Suzanne Stabile (a long-time teacher of the Enneagram), I read two different quotes that get at the heart of this that I’ll share with you today. The first is “To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility.”i (I’ll read that again.) That’s from Flannery O’Connor. The second is a quote from the monk Thomas Merton: “Sooner or later we must distinguish between what we are not and what we are. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment it is…We must find our real self, in all its elemental poverty, but also in its great and very simple dignity: created to be the child of God, and capable of loving with something of God’s own sincerity and his unselfishness.”ii So, this morning, we are going to do an exercise where we will measure ourselves against Truth and not the other way around, not for the sake of comparison but for the sake of self-awareness which will help us deepen in our relationship with the God who knows us and loves us. [Jamie McCurry] Your invitation this week is to spend time in prayer reflecting on your need to give, what you are currently giving and how you feel about that, and what a change in giving might look like in your life and in the life of your family. “To know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility.” Cron, Ian Morgan and Suzanne Stabile. The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery. IVP Books: Downers Grove: 2016, p 17. Ibid. p 18

19th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 24C

19th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 24C October 20, 2019 I was a brand-new, baby priest, and I was sitting in my annual appointment with the bishop, a time that I later began calling my “well-baby check-up.” We had dispensed with the small talk, and he sat there with his blank yellow legal pad, and his face kindly, he asked me, “So, how’s your prayer life?” I remember thinking, “Wait, I didn’t know this question would be on the test!” Every year I would go back and I would squirm uncomfortably, knowing the inevitable question was coming, and not knowing how to answer it. “So, how’s you prayer life?” “Fine?” “It could be better?” “I have two small children and scarcely the opportunity to go to the bathroom by myself, so I think it’s safe to say it’s almost non-existent.” Year after year, I would sit in his office, and he would persistently ask me that same question, “so, how’s your prayer life?” And I found that over the years, my understanding of prayer shifted, and I began to look forward to that question, to see what surprises my answer might reveal to myself in any given year. Our passage from Luke’s gospel today is yet another parable. In this reading, the writer of Luke sets the stage saying, “Jesus told his disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” Starts off good enough. But then the actual parable is a very short story about two people with very ambiguous motives. There is a widow who continues to nag a judge to “grant [her] justice against her opponent.” (We learned in our study of this parable this past week that the word translated for justice can also be translated as “vengeance.” It kind of changes how you look at this poor, helpless widow who is demanding of the judge that he grant her vengeance against her opponent.) And then there is the judge himself, who is a strange mix of self-interested and self-aware. He continues to refuse the widow’s request until finally he says to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'" (The Greek word that is translated here as “wear me out” is actually a boxing term which literally means “give me a black eye,” perhaps showing some quirky humor on Jesus’ part.) Then the passage picks back up again with Luke’s commentary, which further complicates this short, quirky and morally ambiguous parable by bringing in issues not just of prayer but of justice and of faith. Are we supposed to understand that a part of faith includes tenacious, almost nagging prayer? That through our persistence we can affect God, change God’s mind, and that this is what we are to aspire to? So, how’s your prayer life? Years ago, I got to hear the newly retired Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold speak, and his words did more for me and my understanding of prayer than anything else I have ever encountered. He quoted Paul in Romans 8:26-27: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” And then Bishop Griswold went on to say of this that the Spirit is always at work, praying within us, below our consciousness. He said our very urge to pray comes when this ongoing prayer of the Spirit within us bubbles up, like a well-spring of life-giving water, into our consciousness, encouraging us, then to pray, to be in relationship with God.i So, how’s your prayer life? What I found was that the bishop’s annual question invited me to pay more attention to the ways that prayer was already bubbling up in me, to pay attention to the times when I actually paid attention to the Spirit’s prayers at work within me. Another way of considering this in light of this gospel passage is to ask myself, “am I giving as much attention to the Holy Spirit’s prayer that is already at work within me as I would to a grievance I wanted righted or vengeance that I sought?” Prayer is about creating time and space for listening. It is already happening, already at work deep within you. You do not have to do anything but pay attention and to be aware that this ongoing prayer often reveals itself in unexpected ways. In that same season of my life, I read a book titled Natural Spirituality by a woman named Joyce Rockwood Hudson. (She’s an Episcopalian who founded the Natural Spirituality Center in Athens, GA.) In this book, she writes about the different ways that the Holy Spirit tries to get our attention in this work of her ongoing prayer within us. Hudson writes about how sometimes when a song is stuck in our head, that can actually be a way the Spirit is trying to get our attention. Right after I read this, I was working in the church office and in a horrible mood, and suddenly I realized that I had the song, “The itsy-bitsy spider” stuck in my head. I became curious as to what on earth the Holy Spirit might be trying to get me to pay attention to with that particular song, and as I reviewed my morning, I remembered that MM and I had been singing that song with new and creative lyrics and motions as I had been driving her to pre-school that day. That memory transported me back to an earlier part of my day where I was fully present and taking pure delight in what I was doing in that moment, and it helped me get out of my funk and get back on the track of being attentive to the workings of God in my life and in the world around me. So, how’s your prayer life? Your invitation this week is to consider this question; to examine the ways that you make space in your life to listen to the prayer that is already being prayed in your soul by the Holy Spirit. Pay attention to what songs are stuck in your head this week, both literally and figuratively, and follow the path to return your attention to the workings of God in your life and in the world around you. i. From my sermon preached at Mediator-Redeemer, McComb-Magnolia on the 21st Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24C) on October 21, 2007

18th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 23C

18th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 23C-2019 October 13, 2019 I don’t think I tell y’all enough how grateful I am for you. I was the guest preacher in Tifton last week, and the people of St. Anne’s were lovely. And I missed y’all. We seem to have energy just bursting out every-which-a-way here. And I’ve been thinking about that this week in light of our gospel reading. Our reading from Luke for this week follows right on the heels of last week’s reading—Jesus has just told his disciples about the demands of discipleship. They cry out in despair, “Lord, increase our faith!” And he answers them that they already have everything they need. They just need to show up and do what they know that they need to do. Then we pick up with our reading for today, where Jesus and his disciples find themselves in an in-between time and in an in-between place on the road to Jerusalem where Jesus is going to die. They encounter from a distance 10 lepers who cry out asking Jesus to have mercy on them. He heals them from a distance and sends them to be purified by the priest so that they can be reinstated into the community from which they have had to live apart because of their disease. But on the way, one realizes that he has been healed, and so he disobeys Jesus and turns back to thank him. Then Luke continues with a portion that we did not hear today: “Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, “The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For in fact, the Kingdom of God is among you.” All 10 lepers were given new life. They had been living their lives separated from their communities because of their disease, and Jesus healed them, restoring their flesh to its fullness of life and enabling them to go back to their homes, families, and communities to resume their lives. It’s a huge gift that I am sure they all enjoyed. But when the 10th leper returns, Jesus makes a point of showing how expressing gratitude is an important aspect of our faith. The kingdom of God is already right here with us, and it is often through the lens of gratitude that it is revealed to us. And just like in practicing our faith, there are some seasons of our lives in which it easier to practice gratitude. That is why it is important to cultivate that practice, so that we can rely on it more when times are not as sunny and it is not as easy to be grateful. Because gratitude connects us—to God, to each other. Gratitude is a gift to both the one who receives the gratitude and also to the one who extends it. Several years ago, I heard an interview with the Quaker poet and songwriter Carrie Newcomer, and she talked about how she ends every day by naming 3 thing for which she is grateful. Through the voicing of these three things for which she is grateful, she said, she sends herself off to sleep from a place of wholeness and thanksgiving. So I started doing this practice with each of the children when they would go to bed. We would each name 3 things for which we were grateful about that day. Jack and I continue to do it. (MM usually stays up later than I do these days.) Some days it is easier to name three things than on others. Some season it is easier to name three things than in others. But part of the discipline is doing it every single day, no matter if we feel grateful or not. One of the things that I tell people when they ask me about y’all, about this church, is that we needed each other when we were first called together. Y’all eagerly received my gifts that I brought with me, and I recognized in y’all your gifts of hospitality and your joy in fun, the high energy that had been dormant under the surface and your willingness to embrace creativity. Together, I think the Holy Spirit has healed in us parts that needed new life and love, and for that I continue to be grateful. I believe that there is still room for healing here in all of us; healing that Jesus will continue to work through the gift of the Holy Spirit. This week, I have been especially noticing the times that we complain, because complaint is really the opposite of gratitude. In most instances, complaint is not the way that we build each other up. Instead, it is a way that we try to relieve some of our own anxiety, often at great cost to the receiver of the complaint. While gratitude unites us in the light of thanksgiving, complaint divides us, often setting us at odds with the one receiving our complaint or at odds with the one who we are complaining about. Now, hear me clearly. I am not saying that all complaints are bad; sometimes we need to speak our truth to what we perceive is injustice in a way that others can hear it to build up the community of faith. But most of the time, I think, our complaints reveal issues in our own souls that we have not yet dealt with, and rather than deal with them, we voice them in the form of complaint in an effort to make ourselves feel better and at the expense of others. So I am saying that we need to practice discernment before we complain. And that often the antidote to complaining is actually practicing gratitude. So, my invitation to you this week is two-fold. First, work on practicing gratitude. Set yourself to acknowledging three things you are grateful for at set times during the day—maybe first thing in the morning and at bedtime, maybe before each meal. Commend to God three things you are grateful for in the ordinary things of your life on that day, for in that you will find the kingdom of God. And second, work on censoring your complaints. When you find yourself about to complain, stop, and examine your soul before you say anything to anybody. Is this complaint an expression of your own anxiety that will not be helpful in strengthening relationships or community and which may actually be harmful? If you find yourself about to complain about someone else, then instead, list three things for which you are grateful about that person. Gratitude is an essential part of our faith, and it is also an essential part of a healthy community. This is why Jesus tells the leper that his faith, through the expression of his gratitude, has saved him. The medieval mystic, Meister Eckhart said: “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was ‘thank you’ that would suffice.” Thank you. Amen.

17th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 22C (for St. Anne's Tifton)

17th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 22C October 6, 2019 What a delight it is to be with you today here at St. Anne’s! I have heard so many wonderful things about you from my friend Lonnie Lacy. His love for you and your love for him clearly shine through in the way that he talks about y’all. I have also heard that St. Anne’s is a special place here in the diocese of Georgia. Your mutual love and affection for each other is unique and well-known, and I appreciate how y’all have fun together. You can often tell the health of a congregation by how they play together, how they have fun, and y’all are certainly a healthy, and fun-loving bunch—people after my own heart! I’m here today, as I’m sure you well know, as your guest preacher for Consecration Sunday. You have been hearing talks these last few weeks about the importance of giving in the life of St. Anne’s. You have been reminded that each of us is made in the image and likeness of God; that it is God’s very nature to give and to give joyfully with abundance and abandon. And you have heard that as those who are made in the image and likeness of God, we also need to give-as a part of our relationship with God and each other and as a practice of gratitude for all the good gifts God has given us. Y’all know this; you remember this. So today, instead of talking about giving, I’m going to talk about faith. Because I know all of you find yourselves in a curious and uncertain position in this season of life at St. Anne’s. Your beloved rector is on the slate for the next bishop of Georgia (and that is both exciting and terrifying for all of us that know and love him!), and none of us knows what is going to happen in the future. I would imagine that there is some anxiety in all your hearts over this around the uncertainty for your future together, and I would imagine that it is tempting to wait and see what happens, to live your lives in a sort of holding pattern until after November 15th and 16th. Many years ago, when I was in my early 20’s, I was riding in my friend’s car on a rainy January 1st crossing Lake Ponchatrain—that huge lake that borders New Orleans—and I was wretchedly miserable. My friends and I had celebrated New Year’s with another friend in New Orleans, and we were headed back home; for my friends that meant returning to their apartment in Memphis, but for me that meant returning to my childhood bedroom at my parents’ home. I had come home from college with the certainty that I was called to be a priest. But often the church moves much more slowly than we would like it to, and I was left waiting for an extra year to learn whether or not I could go to seminary. So, I got a pretty good job at a local non-profit, and I came up with the very sensible plan that I would live at my parents’ house and save all my money to go to seminary sometime in the future. On New Year’s Day, as I was headed home to that reality, I realized that I was miserable, and as I looked out at the gray day and watched the rain droplets blur together on the outside of the car window, I had an epiphany, a realization, a manifestation of the wisdom of God in my life. I realized that the reason I was so wretchedly miserable wasn’t because I was living in my childhood bedroom at my parents’ house. It was because I was living my life as if it was on hold, as if the present did not really matter. I was basing all the choices of my life on some unpromised future, and I realized, in that moment, that that wasn’t really faith or a faithful life. It was not really discipleship. So I went to work on Monday determined to ask some of the other 20 somethings if they knew of anyone looking for a roommate. The first person I encountered was the Executive Director’s daughter, who was volunteering as receptionist and who I didn’t know very well. When I asked her if she knew anyone who was looking for a roommate, she looked stunned, and then she told me that she needed a roommate. So began our friendship, and while I did not go to seminary with as much money as I could have saved if I had stayed in my childhood bedroom, the three years between college and seminary for me that would have seemed like an interminable sentence passed with many adventures and mis-adventures, life-learnings and companionship. Those years and those experiences became an essential part of the priest and person I am today. In our gospel reading for today, Jesus’s disciples are feeling overwhelmed by what they think are the demands of discipleship. And so they cry out to Jesus and say, “Increase our faith.” Now it’s easy to read Jesus’s response to them as rather harsh, but what if, instead, we hear him saying it, as one who loves them and knowns them, as one who knows what they are fully capable of and is actually cheering them on? You have everything that you need, he is telling them. And now is the needy time. You just need to show up and do what you know you are supposed to do, what you need to do in order to live fuller lives of faith and discipleship. Because faith is not just saying “I believe.” It is living as if “I believe that…” I believe that God is still at work in the world; I believe that all the suffering will one day be redeemed; I believe that love is stronger than anything, even death; I believe that God is with us in our hope and in our fear, in our comfortable times and in our anxious and uncertain times. Faith is so much more than just showing up and going through the motions. Practicing our faith means choosing a spot to be rooted in and to grow in that spot, in giving, in prayer, in good works. You have chosen this unique community of St. Anne’s to be rooted in; God is with you and you have absolutely everything you need, no matter what happens. You just need to show up and do what you know you need to do. May you live your life in the light of that and give in gratitude for God’s good gifts. One of the things that my friends know about me is that life often reminds me of words to a song, and when that happens, I am known to break out in song to share the lyrics. (I know I’m not the only one to do this.) Your life here together in this present moment reminds me of a song, and so today, I want to teach you this song, so we can sing it together as you dwell in this unique season in this unique place. It’s a really simple song—the words are “Jesus, won’t you come by here. Oh, Jesus, won’t you come by here. Jesus won’t you come by here. And then you repeat it. It goes like this. Ok, let’s try it. The second verse is “Now, it is the needy time. Now, it is the needy time. Jesus won’t you come by here.” And you repeat that. Let’s try it. Ok, let’s put it all together. Today is the day in the life of St. Anne’s when you will practice your faith and make your commitment in your discipleship of Jesus Christ to be rooted and to continue to grow in this place, specifically in the area of giving. After communion is over, we’re going to end the service slightly differently today. I’ll just say a couple of more words, and then (the ushers?) will pass out the Consecration Sunday commitment cards to each individual or family here. I may start singing that little song we just sang, and you’ll be filling out the cards, prayerfully considering all that you have heard leading up to this day and the work you have done on your own—remembering the need of each of us to give, the importance of this community of faith in your life and in your own faith, considering what percentage of your income you currently give to God and if that is reflective of your gratitude, of the practice of your faith. Then, when you are finished filling out your card, you will bring it up to and place it on the altar as an offering to God of your gratitude and as a symbol of your faith, and then you can go on out to the Consecration Sunday lunch. God has already given you absolutely everything you need. And now is the needy time. Amen. Addendum for Consecration Sunday: I remember someone once saying, “Give until it feels good.” Now that can’t always be accomplished in one year for everyone, but for some people it can. Do what you can today to make feeling good about your giving a reality. As the ushers begin to pass out the Consecration Sunday commitment cards, I invite you to pray with your card, to think of this special place and the commitment that you can make to your common life here--to the work that y’all, the people of God, are already doing here to build up the kingdom of God in Tift County Georgia and beyond. Think about the ways this place has blessed you, and fill out your card as an expression of your faith.

16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 21C

16th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 21C September 29, 2019 This past week, what had started out as a minor skirmish between the Lemburg family and our elderly next door neighbor developed into full-blown war. I had never actually met this woman, but she had not so nice words for Emerson when he was mowing our grass the first time, and I had noticed that she would openly glare at us when she was out walking her dog and we would drive by. Our neighbor spends a lot of time out working in her yard, and often when she is out in her back yard and our dogs are out, they like to go to the wooden privacy fence and act like they are going to eviscerate her. Usually, when I witness this, I call them back in and make them stay in the house. But this week, I wondered what would happen if I didn’t. So, I stood just inside the doorway on the screened porch, and I watched. I watched as my dogs went to the fence and began barking. I watched as the neighbor approached where the dogs were barking from her side of the fence and began fussing at my dogs. I watched as she disappeared again, and then I watched as she began shooting water at my dogs through the fence. I raised my voice: “Excuse me! Why are you trying to spray my dogs with water through the fence?” The neighbor, clearly unaware that I was outside watching, was caught off guard and said she was merely trying to water the plants on her side of the fence. I responded that I had been watching the whole time to which she countered that my dogs were disturbing her by being outside barking. Well, I will not bore you with the rest of the words that were shared except to say that while I never said anything untoward to our neighbor, I did have to apologize to our altar guild chair, Sandra Calver, who I was on the phone with during the whole encounter and to whom I vented some of my more colorful feelings about the nature of said neighbor. But even after the encounter was over, I still spent a fair amount of emotional energy imagining the revenge I could enact upon our nasty neighbor. Our gospel reading for today is yet another parable of Jesus. Just before the reading for today, Luke sets the stage by telling us that “the Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this [Jesus’s parable of the unjust steward that we heard last week] and they ridiculed [Jesus].” So Jesus lets them have it, and then he tells the parable today—a story about a rich man who feasted sumptuously and the poor man named Lazarus (one of the only named characters in the parables) who lay at the rich man’s gate longing for the crumbs that fell off the rich man’s table and suffered his sores to be licked by dogs. Both men die, and the rich man goes to Hades, and Lazarus is taken by the angels to be with Abraham. When the rich man looks up and sees Lazarus with Abraham, he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to him to help ease his thirst. Abraham responds that he cannot do that saying “between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.” Then the rich man asks that Abraham send Lazarus to his brothers to warn them of what is to come if they don’t change their ways, and Abraham refuses this request also, saying “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' …‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'" We talked last week about how some of the gospel writer of Luke’s agenda is revealed in how he talks about money, and this parable, along with its introduction, bears witness to that as well. Last week, I cited another commentator who said that “one of the prominent themes in Luke is the proper use of wealth. Except it’s not just the use of wealth; it’s more like Luke is concerned with our relationship to wealth and how that affects our relationships with others.”i And that is certainly true of this parable, too, but this parable, I think, goes beyond wealth to whether or not we truly see people and how our lack of seeing people is what fixes great chasms between us. Notice how even from Hades, the rich man is trying to get Abraham to send Lazarus here and there doing the rich man’s bidding. He didn’t actually see Lazarus as a human being, as a beloved child of God-hungry and suffering at his gates every day of his life, and he still does not see Lazarus beyond what use can be made of him. This great chasm that exists between the two in the parabolic afterlife began, actually, in life, and it was a result of the rich man’s disregarding of the teachings of the law and the prophets, who tell us how to care for the poor, how to treat our neighbor. And sometimes it is even the same for us, we who know the teachings of the law and the prophets and who have tasted the transformed life of people of the resurrection, followers of Jesus. So much of the hardships of this life are a result of the great chasms that become fixed between us when we do not take the time to really see each other—to see the other as a beloved child of God, to see what the other loves and values, to respect what the other needs. Once you start looking for these great chasms, paying attention to people’s suffering, you can see them everywhere you look. It’s certainly at the heart of the newly declared war between the Lemburgs and our elderly neighbor. Also this past week, maybe on the same day that I declared war on our neighbor, I read a Facebook post by Carrie Newcomer who is a Quaker singer, songwriter, and poet that I really like. She shared a story that she titled “A Goodness Down Deep That Keeps On Singing.” In it, she writes, “Last week my flight out of Sioux Falls was delayed several hours and so I missed my connection in Chicago, resulting in 4 hour layover in O’Hare Airport. I found a comfortable booth in a busy Starbucks and settled in with a book. There were three baristas working the busy counter. One was a young African American man with a wide smile. This wonderful man was singing mini arias in a beautiful operatic voice. He was obviously a trained vocalist, and a seriously fine baritone. He kept singing out the orders in soaring melodies as they came up, lattes and cappuccinos, the name of the patrons, and then always (with a final flourish) a thank you . I sat there for an hour, just listening to him, closing my eyes, enjoying the resonance of his voice, the flourishes, the final gratitudes. I noticed how some people stopped, clearly delighted by something so fine and rarefied. Others hurried by, so intent on getting where they were going, they arrived at their gate, but missed the miracle. There is a lot in this troubled world that feels like a gathering storm. But then something utterly unexpected and truly beautiful happens. There is a goodness down deep....that just keeps singing.” She continues, “Eventually I got up, ordered a latte - sang it to him ‘a small, with almond milk please...’ We got into a conversation (all sung) back and forth (his name was Owen, he had a show in town next Saturday, my name was Carrie, I just had a show in Sioux Falls). Finally, I sang an affirmation, “You have a truly beautiful voice. I have been so moved today by your generous and musical spirit." And then with a bow, I thanked him. He stopped. Leaned in and whispered, ‘I needed that today.’ Then he straightened up and sang with a flourish as elegant as a quill tipped pen, ‘Thank you.’ Yes, there is a goodness down deep...and it keeps singing....it just keeps on singing.”ii As people of the resurrection, we are called to be those who truly see others, to be those who try to bridge the chasm (those that we create and those that we don’t). May you look for ways to see people and to bridge the chasm this week. And lest you think I do not practice what I preach….after I wrote this sermon, I thought about what sort of peace offering I could make to my neighbor. I strode up to her front door with a pot of mums and some dog treats in my hand. I rang her doorbell, and when she opened it and glared at me, I said, “My name is Melanie. I’m your neighbor. I bought these for you. I don’t want to be your enemy.” For a moment she seemed almost overcome, and then she quickly invited me into her house where we talked, shared parts of our stories and exchanged phone numbers. The exchange ended with her and her little dog walking me back to my house as they took a walk around the block, and I felt that, at least for this moment, we had built a bridge over the chasm. i. David Lose from http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&rp=blog53&post=2746 ii. Facebook post by Carrie Newcomer. September 24, 2019

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20C

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20C September 22, 2019 I’ll never forget the time, years ago, when a member of my church showed up in my office and actually volunteered to be the stewardship chair for that year. (I can count on one finger the number of times I have seen that happen!) When I asked him why he wanted to volunteer to be the stewardship chair that year, he told me a story. He said that one Sunday, during the annual giving campaign the year before, I gave a sermon that was talking about the scripture passage from Luke 12:34: when Jesus says “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” In this sermon, I had invited the congregation to go home that week and to look at their checkbooks or online checking accounts. I invited them to investigate what their use of money had to say about where their hearts were. Well, he did that, he said; and he discovered something that really disturbed him. He said to me, “I realized I was paying more to my two golf club memberships that I don’t even really use than I was giving to the church in any given month. That upset me. So I have cancelled one of the golf club memberships and have increased my pledge to the church. He finished by saying, “I have been transformed in how I look at money and how I see what it says about my relationship with God and other people. And I want to help other people be transformed in this way.” Our reading for today from Luke’s gospel is one of the most difficult parables; it is known as “the parable of the unjust manager.” And one helpful thing that I have learned from our study of Amy-Jill Levine’s book Short Stories by Jesus and the study we are doing the corresponds with it, is that it is important, when looking at parables, to look at the actual parable itself and then to look at what Jesus or the writer of Luke has to say about the parable. Interpreters over the years have lumped these two together, and in order to see these old parables with new eyes, we need to separate the story from the interpretation. So, first, the story. Jesus tells his disciples that a rich man has a manager and charges are brought to the rich man that the manager is squandering his property. (We don’t know if this is true or not or what evidence is offered. We assume the charges are true and that informs how we read the parable, but what if they aren’t? Does that change how we read the parable?) The rich man calls the manager before him, ask for an accounting and says he can no longer be his manager. So the manager goes out (to get the accounting) and realizes that if he is about to be out of a job, then he needs to do something to preserve his future because he is cut out for neither manual labor or begging. So he looks to the relationships with his master’s debtors, and he reduces the master’s debt with each of them, so that they would think more kindly on him in the future and welcome him in their homes. When all is said and done, the rich man commends the “dishonest manager” (and can we assume, does not fire him?) “because he acted shrewdly…” Then the passage picks up with Jesus’s commentary on the parable, which shows us some of Luke’s agenda and also adds to the difficulty and complication of this parable. Another commentator points out that Jesus’s commentary via Luke offers at least 4 different interpretations to the parable: 1. The children of the light need to act more shrewdly. 2. Christians should make friends by “dishonest wealth.” 3. If you’re not faithful with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with the true riches? 4. You cannot serve two masters.i In the midst of those confusing interpretations, the commentator writes, it is important for us to remember “that one of the prominent themes in Luke is the proper use of wealth. Except it’s not just the use of wealth; it’s more like Luke is concerned with our relationship to wealth and how that affects our relationships with others.”ii So, what is our relationship to wealth and how does that affect our relationship with others? The only way I know to invite you to examine this question this week is to invite you to dive into how you spend your money. Look at your checking account statements-whether it is online or in your checkbook register; look at your credit card statement. Make a list of what relationships or priorities are most represented in those numbers and then sit with those before God and ask if how you spend money reflects what you would hope about your relationships. If not, why not, and how might you change that to be more reflective of who you want to be and who God is calling you to be? i. David Lose from http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&rp=blog53&post=2746 ii. Ibid.

14th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19C

14th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 19C September 5, 2019 This past week, my book club met to discuss the book we had chosen to read this month: Congratulations, Who Are You Again? by Harrison Scott Key. It’s a memoir by a local author who is from a small town in rural Mississippi and who now lives here in Savannah and works at SCAD, and this memoir that we discussed is actually his second book that is all about the process of having a dream of writing his first book, which was also a memoir. Did I mention that I usually hate memoirs? So reading a memoir about a person’s writing of their first memoir was not something I was particularly excited about. In an effort to help me, one of our members sent me the link to Key’s TED talk which he gave here at Savannah TEDx. In his TED talk, which is titled The American Dream Value Menu, Key debunks some of the common statements that motivational speakers say to young people about following their dreams such as “you can do anything you put your mind to;” “you can have it all;” and finally, “do what you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.”i In response to these lies, Key has created what he calls “The Great American Dream Value Menu” which consists of the following 6 areas: 1. Family 2. Friends (which includes church) 3. Fun (which is what we do for our hobbies) 4. Fitness 5. Financing (your day job) and 6. The Dream. And Key says of these, “According to my experience, at any one time in your life, you get to pick 3. That’s it.” What Key is talking about is that in life, we may have many things that we value. All 6 of these areas are important and very valuable to us as human beings. But Key says that we are only able to focus on three at a time, and when we put too much focus on one over others, then we begin to lose the others. This is primarily what he writes about—his struggle to find harmony among his competing values. Because when we put too much time and attention into one thing we value, our attention becomes spread too thin, and it is easy to lose other things that we value in the process. Our gospel reading for today gives us two out of three parables in Luke chapter 15. Luke writes that Jesus tells these parables in response to the Pharisees and Scribes who are grumbling because the tax collectors and sinners are coming near to hear Jesus’s teachings. And it’s easy for us to look down on the Pharisees and Scribes because of how the story of Jesus has been told throughout the years, but y’all, they are us. They are the faithful religious people who care about the community and who try to do what is right-trying to be in relationship with God as scripture teaches. The tax collectors are people who have sold out their own people to make money off of them in conjunction with Rome, the foreign power who has come in and taken over their land; and the sinners would be our equivalent of arms dealers, drug dealers, mercenary people who do not give one whit about the community around them and are ruthless in looking after their own interests even to the detriment of the community .ii So Jesus tells this series of three parables, and they are all about people losing things and then seeking after them until they find them. And Jesus begins by asking the Scribes and the Pharisees, “Which one of you wouldn’t do these things…” First, we have the parable of the lost sheep, where a man realizes he has lost one sheep out of 100, and he leaves the other 99 sheep to go off frantically searching for the one lost sheep. When he finds it, he brings it home and throws a party for his neighbors to celebrate its return. Then we have the parable of the lost coin, where a woman realizes that she has lost one coin out of 10, so she frantically cleans her house until she finds the missing coin. Then she throws a party and invites all her friends to celebrate her recovery of the missing coin. The third parable, which we didn’t get to hear today (we actually heard it back in Lent), is what is known as the parable of the prodigal son. There is a man who has two sons. The younger son asks for his share of the inheritance and then goes off and squanders it in dissolute living. When he comes to himself, he realizes he should go home and apologize to his father and beg him to take him back. So he does this, and the father runs out to meet him, decks him out in splendor, orders that a huge party be thrown and begins to celebrate the return of this son who he thought he had lost. Meanwhile, the older son is left out working in the fields. The party is going on, and the father doesn’t even think to send someone to tell him the good news and invite him to join the party. When the older son finds out what is going on, he refuses to come in, so the father finally goes out to him, reassures him of his love and his place of belonging and encourages him to come to the party. And that’s where the parable ends. We don’t know if the older son ever comes in to the party or not. We don’t know if he is ever reconciled with his father after he has become lost in his father’s attention and in his joy in the return of the younger son. The third parable shows us the stark reality of what is only hinted at in the first two parables. What on earth actually happens to the 99 idiot sheep who are left completely alone, left to their own devices when the man leaves all of them behind to go seek out the one lost sheep? And how much money of her 10 coins does the woman spend in throwing a party for the recovery of the 1? When we place a higher value and attention on one thing of value, other things of value get lost. So what is the invitation of the good news in these parables to us, the earnestly -trying-to-be-faithful-people-of-God this week? I think, first, it is the call to pay attention to what we value, to pay attention to where our focus is, and to help us to remember the valuable things that are lost when our attention wavers from them or when we place too much attention on one area of value over the others. Second, it is to remember that nothing and no one is ever lost from the heart of God. Even when God is maddest and most disappointed (like in our Jeremiah reading for today), God does not forsake anyone. All are present in the heart of God, even when we don’t know it ourselves. This means that as the people of God, it is our call to look for ways we can seek out, come alongside those who have been lost from us, members of our family who may be estranged or maybe who we haven’t talked to as much as we should; (are there people from our church we have lost? Then this applies to them, too). And it is also our call to be aware of how certain people have been lost from the priorities of society—the poor, the lonely, even those who put their own self-interested above and beyond the good of those around them (maybe especially them). What would it look like if people of faith encouraged people in power to consider ways to try lessen the damage that our existing societal structures do to the already lost—immigrants, people who are in prison, people who are homeless, people who are on welfare…?. When we place too much attention on one value to the exclusion of others, the other values get lost. When we place too much attention on certain people, to the exclusion of others, people get lost. May God help us be brave enough to be like the father who had two sons, who realizes when he has forgotten one son, and who goes after him and tries to make things right. i. http://www.tedxsavannah.com/talks/the-american-dream-value-menu/ ii. I got this interpretation from Amy—Jill Levine in her book Short Stories by Jesus.