17th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20A

17th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20A September 24, 2023 This week, I’ve been thinking about complaining. Our [Old Testament and Gospel] readings for today are chock full of complaining, and after I read these readings for the first time this week, I started to pay attention to how often I offer or listen to complaints in my life. I was reminded of an idea that Richard Rohr had in his book Falling Upward that has stayed with me since I read it years ago. The idea that Rohr poses is that when we complain, what we complain about says more about ourselves and the state of our own spiritual life than it does about whatever we are complaining about. In my quest this week to understand complaining, I listened to a podcast about it. The podcast was titled The Hidden Brain and the episode was “How to Complain Productively.” In the podcast, a psychologist talks about a study that he did on bus drivers in England. And what they learned in this study is that we most often complain to people who we think will support us in our complaint. (And if we don’t find that support initially, we’ll move on in our complaining until we find a different person who will agree with us.) We then often can get caught in a complaining loop with that person that creates a sort of echo chamber. And when we get caught in that complaining loop, the study revealed that our anger goes up and our forgiveness and our hope goes down. So, what’s the answer? The psychologist suggested that we need to reframe the situation that we’re complaining about—see it from a different angle. Often curiosity can help us in that endeavor. Sometimes we can do this by ourselves, or sometimes we need the help of a sympathetic listener who can help us reframe.i In our reading from Exodus today, we see the Children of Israel wandering in the wilderness, and they are complaining that they don’t have enough food: “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” (It’s a legitimate complaint, albeit perhaps overly-dramatic.) But Moses is not a particularly sympathetic listener: “For what are we, that you complain against us?” … Your complaining is not against us but against the Lord.” But he does help reframe the complaint—"don’t complain to me! Take it up with God!” Now it’s easy to think badly of the Children of Israel about how they are bunch of whiners, but just think for a minute about how they have fled slavery in Egypt and are now wandering around in the wilderness. They are understandably anxious; they probably feel pretty powerless, and the one thing that they can do is complain. (And that’s probably just the tip of the iceberg of what their complaining reveals about their spiritual lives in that moment.) And interestingly enough, God responds to the peoples’ complaining in a sort of divine eavesdropping and offers to provide food for the people as long as they follow God’s instructions on how to gather it. So God reframes the complaint, reminding the people that this same God who has brought them out of slavery in Egypt is with them in the wilderness and still provides for them, and as a part of that relationship, they need to do what God asks of them. The story ends with the peoples’ complaining replaced by curiosity when they ask about the manna: “what is this?” It’s interesting to me that in this story, the peoples’ complaining is rewarded with response by God and an invitation into a deeper relationship with God. In the gospel reading for today, Jesus tells a parable that comes right on the heels of Peter’s complaint (in Matthew 19:27): “Look, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” Jesus helps reframe Peter’s complaint by telling our parable for today, a parable about workers complaining about the generosity of the landowner and how they aren’t getting their fair share. When the all-day workers complain to the landowner, he pushes back and reframes the complaint saying, “‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” In both of these stories, the complaint gets re-framed within the context of God’s providence and God’s radical generosity. And interestingly enough, the lesson doesn’t stick for long. Just after this passage in the gospel, we see the disciples begin to fight about who is the greatest among them and who will sit at Jesus’ right and left hands when he comes into his kingdom (thanks for that, James and John’s mamma!). And we see next week in Exodus that the people once again start complaining, and this time it’s because they don’t have enough water. So, what’s the invitation (the big question) for us in all of this this week? I invite you to reflect on what you’ve been complaining about recently. What might it reveal about your spiritual life right now? Have you complained to God about what is bothering you? How might the Holy Spirit be inviting you to reframe the issue you are complaining about to see it in new light? i. https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/how-to-complain-productively/

15th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18A

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18A September 10, 2023 A few years ago, my husband David and I were stuck in a not-particularly-healthy spot in our marriage. The bishop recommended a book for us to read that’s by Dr. John Gottman and is titled The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. Gottman and his wife Dr. Julie Gottman have spent years researching the typical patterns of relationships in their “love lab,” and this book is a result of those years of work and research. I appreciate Gottman’s premise around conflict in his book and it’s one that I take when doing pre-marital work with couples who I’m going to marry. It isn’t a question of when you’re going to have conflict in your most significant relationships; instead, the important question is how. Conflict is an opportunity to grow and to learn more about each other and ourselves. Gottman also weaves a thread throughout the whole book that is a reminder that in our significant relationships, we need to spend time and effort building those up so that in the difficult times, we can approach conflict in ways that will work to continue to build us up rather than drawing us apart. In the book, Gottman lists several “keys to managing conflict” in significant relationships that are worth mentioning here before we dive into a closer look at the gospel. 1. Negative emotions are important. Gottman writes about how in our most significant relationships, we need to know that “when you are in pain, the world stops, and I listen.” It’s important to try to listen for what is under the negative emotions and to have conversations in ways that encourage healing rather than creating more hurt. 2. Noone is right. What? That can’t be right. Gottman quotes his friend Dan Siegel who says, “There is no immaculate perception.” All reality is subjective, and so in all conflicts, the reality usually falls somewhere in the middle of the two sides. 3. Acceptance is crucial. In our significant relationships, we have to start from a place of acceptance of who the other is before we try to navigate any kinds of requests for change. 4. Focus on fondness and admiration. There are systems that we can cultivate in our closest relationships that help us nurture fondness and admiration for the other. They can help us mellow about each other’s faults and they help us tackle issues from the foundation of knowing that each of us is loved and accepted, “warts and all.” i. In our gospel reading for today, Jesus is responding to his disciples’ question earlier in the chapter about who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus brings forth a little child to show them and then goes on about not putting stumbling blocks in front of these little ones. (Matthew likes to talk a lot about these little ones.) Jesus then goes on to tell the parable of a shepherd who has 100 sheep and when one is lost, he leaves the 99 to go off and find the one lost sheep, and he tells them that it is God’s will that not a single “one of these little ones” should be lost. Then our reading for today picks up—about what to do if you are wronged by someone. First, you must recognize your own negative emotions and how those have been impacted by another person, and you own those. Then you go directly to that other person to try to be reconciled. How many of you have ever done this before? It’s really, really hard, and it requires you to be so very brave. Most of the time, we don’t do this very first step, right? We either try to avoid whomever or whatever has hurt us, or we talk to other people about whatever has happened to us, and it’s usually the people who we know will agree with us. We gang up on each other, and we become entrenched in thinking that we are right and the other person is wrong (as opposed to the Gottman perspective that no one is fully right). But when we go directly to the person who we have a problem with, it shows that we value that relationship, that we trust them to try to work things out with us, and when it works, then ultimately addressing that conflict makes that relationship stronger. ii And I think two keys to those difficult, one on one conversations has to be that first, we go into them with the main goal being trying to repair a relationship that is important to us, and that second, we are willing to walk into those conversations with the understanding that no one is really right in this situation. Just think about how that might change how we have these conversations when we are attempting to repair relationships! Because that is what is at the heart of what Jesus is trying to teach us and his disciples this week. He’s trying to teach us about the lengths that we should go to try to repair relationships. But what happens when it doesn’t work? Because, let’s face it, we all have experienced times when we haven’t been able to reconcile our problems with someone. Jesus makes it very clear that estrangement is not a good option saying, “let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.” And what did Jesus do with Gentiles and tax collectors? He ate with them and continued to try to teach them the way of life of his good news. But we all know that sometimes, that just doesn’t happen. And those times when we are not able to be reconciled leave scars on our hearts and our souls. (In fact, when I asked the Wednesday group about a time when they had experienced accountability and reconciliation in a significant relationship or a church, only one person was able to speak about a reconciled relationship, and many more of us reflected on the failed reconciliation attempts and how painful that was for us.) Our gospel reading for next week will see Peter asking Jesus how many times he must forgive someone who has wronged him, so I’ll give you a bit of a spoiler for next week by saying that Jesus draws Peter’s attention through a parable to the importance of both unwavering forgiveness and mercy. In those times when we feel that reconciliation is failed, it’s important to recognize that in the Kingdom of God, nothing is ever lost. These moments of hurt can become for us opportunities to ask for God’s healing, to ask God to help us learn things about ourselves that can continue to benefit us and other significant relationships, and also to ask God to help us open our hearts to examining what reconciliation really means and looks like? What if reconciliation was less like the absence of conflict or peace and was more like growth in ourselves and our relationships? Then that can change how we look at what might seem to be old failures and see them in new light. Many of you know that I was forced out of my last church. It was an incredible painful example in my life of when conflict goes completely awry, and I felt for a long time that my relationship with that church could never be redeemed. But I don’t believe that’s true anymore. I’ve talked about how my relationship with you has healed some of the woundedness in me from that last experience. I also believe that God gave me the courage that I would not have been able to summon on my own to show up here willing to love you and let myself be loved by you. It’s miraculous when I look back on it now and was certainly an infusion of the Holy Spirit in and among us all. And while I won’t ever be a part of that former community again, I’ve come to realize that isn’t what reconciliation looks like for me in that relationship. Instead, reconciliation has meant the Holy Spirit revealing to me important truths about myself—about how no one was right in that conflict, about how there are things about myself that need to shift to support and strengthen relationships that are important to me such as the importance of compromising more and less intractability on my part and the importance of showing up with gratitude to help strengthen relationships so that the foundation of trust and appreciation is already laid when misunderstandings and conflicts do arise. Think about a time when you were not able to be reconciled in a significant relationship. What might God still be offering to teach you about yourself through that? Where might God be inviting you to grow? How might reconciliation look differently in that situation than what you hoped for or expected? i. Gottman. John M. The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work: A Practical Guide from the Country’s Foremost Relationship Expert. Harmony: New York, 1999, 2015, pp156-159 ii.

13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16A

13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16A August 27, 2023 I’ve been listening to and thinking about a song all week. Now before I tell you the name of the song and why it’s been inspiring me, I need to offer you a disclaimer. There are some issues, some controversy around this artist, and the song itself also has some profanity in it, so it is NSFW (y’all know what that means?—"not suitable for work”) and it’s definitely NSFC (“not suitable for church”) or NSFDAWYK (that’s “not suitable for driving around with your kids”). Ok, so you’ve been warned. The song is titled Esther, Ruth, and Rahab, and it’s all about how the singer attended a church as a child where only the men could speak in church. The singer found inspiration in the stories they found of the women of the Bible—Esther, Ruth, and Rahab-and others. It’s actually the chorus that’s been stuck in my head all week: “Castaways who outwitted and outplayed An immigrant ancestor to the incarnate divine Everyone has a star that lights their way We see our paths by someone else's shine Esther, Ruth, and Rahab, they were mine.” i It’s definitely a “girl-power” song, and y’all know I love me some girl-power! What has captivated me about this chorus this week is thinking about these people who have been the stars that have lit my own way, how I have seen my own spiritual path as a result of the shine of someone else. We see this effect playing out in our Old Testament reading from Exodus today. But first, here’s some context. We’ve just fast forwarded in time from last week. You’ll remember last week that we were witnessing a happy reunion between Joseph and his brothers in Egypt. Jospeh had been sold into slavery in Egypt; he’d been falsely imprisoned and then discovered by Pharoah because he had a God-given gift of interpreting dreams. Joseph successfully interpreted Pharoah’s dream that there would be 7 years of plenty followed by 7 years of famine in the land, so Pharoah promoted Joseph to his right hand man, and Jospeh saw Egypt through the famine. His dad, his brothers, and all their families joined him in Egypt, and time passed. Exodus starts with the recognition that this family has now grown into an entire people, and rulers of Egypt have forgotten the significant role that Jospeh played in their history. This new king (who isn’t even named and is even scarcely referred to as Pharoah) starts getting anxious, paranoid, and afraid, and so he starts making decrees which further deepen his adversarial relationship with the Hebrew people. Eventually, he decrees that all Hebrew males who are born must be thrown into the Nile River. (While we’re having our “girl-power” moment together, can we just notice the significance that only the two Hebrew midwives--Shiphrah and Puah—are named in this beginning chapter of Exodus, which in Hebrew literally means the book of names. And these women quietly work to defy Pharoah’s order to kill all the male Hebrew children.) Then our story reveals that a male Hebrew baby has been born, and his mother hides him for three months. But then she makes him a basket (literally an ark—like the same word as in Noah and the ark), and she sends him with his sister in his little baby ark to the Nile River. The sister, who we later learn is named Miriam, waits and watches and then strategically places her baby brother into the water where he will be found and adopted by Pharoah’s daughter (who also decides to defy her dad’s decree about killing all the male Hebrew children). The baby’s sister does some wheeling and dealing and makes it so her mom can serve as nurse for her brother, and eventually, the baby is named Moses which refers to his being drawn out of the water. (Miriam’s name, by the way, means “rebellion”.) I’ve really appreciated Miriam’s big-sister energy in our reading for this week. For the first time, I’ve realized that without Miriam, there wouldn’t have been a Moses. Miriam’s courage and ingenuity are part of what helped set Moses on his path as the leader of the Hebrew people out of their slavery in Egypt and into the promised land. And it’s also important to note that Miriam is right there beside Moses and their brother Aaron as they lead the people out of Egypt, and Miriam is a prophet in her own right. One of the oldest pieces of scripture in our whole bible is Miriam’s song that she sings right after the parting of the Red Sea. So Miriam has her own gifts, her own relationship with God, and she also uses her gifts to shine the light on the path of Moses so he can become who God is calling him to be. Can you think of someone in your life who has done this for you? Who has shared their gifts to help light your path for you, who has thrown some fabulous big-sister energy your way when you have needed it? I think it’s important for us to name them right now, so when I count to three, I want you to say the name (or names) of someone who has helped shine a light on your path in the faith. Ready? 1, 2, 3:____________. It’s really the essential call of discipleship, isn’t it? We aren’t in this faith business, doing this faith thing just for our own spiritual well-being, right? We do this together, and we are called to do this for each other—this shining of our own light on someone else’s path to help them find their way and who God has created them to be. We are also called as a church to try to shine the light on the paths of as many others outside our doors as we can. I’ve really appreciated getting to hear more about the work that the women of the St. Martha’s Guild have done in creating a Zen Den, a mindfulness room, at the Chatham Juvenile Court. This is a healing and nurturing space for the people who work at the court and who come face to face with horrible things and trauma every day. Our ladies offered their gift of making things beautiful as a way to shine the light on the path of those who work in the Juvenile Court system to give them strength and courage to keep doing this important work in our community. What other unusual ways might the Holy Spirit be calling us as a community of faith to shine our light on the paths of others in Savannah, Chatham County or beyond? Your invitation is to be on the lookout for ways that you can shine your light for someone else to help light their path in the faith. How are you being called to share some big-sister energy with someone else this week? “Castaways who outwitted and outplayed An immigrant ancestor to the incarnate divine Everyone has a star that lights their way We see our paths by someone else's shine Esther, Ruth, and Rahab, they were mine.” i. https://lyrnow.com/1600515

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14A

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14A August 13, 2023 11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 14A August 13, 2023 This past week, I came across a story with art by one of my favorite artist families—the Andreas family. Their studio is called StoryPeople. The story is titled “Deep End” and here are the words: “I used to believe if I prepared hard enough and long enough, I would be ready when I needed to be. But now I think the closest any of us really get to being ready is feeling not ready and then doing it anyway.” The image that accompanies the story is of a person stretching an arm higher than is comfortable with a ball of energy shining from their center. I’ve been thinking of this piece of art all week as I’ve been pondering the story of Peter’s attempt to walk on water that our gospel reading gives us this week. What on earth possesses passionate, impetuous Peter to inspire him to get out of the relative safety of a boat on an already storm-tossed sea and attempt to join Jesus out walking on the water? What is it that possesses any of us to take risks in our lives or in our lives of faith? Our reading from Matthew this week is especially interesting to me, not just for this risk that Peter takes, but because it shows growth in Peter and in the rest of the disciples in their faith in Jesus. This is actually the second time in Matthews’ gospel when Jesus is with the disciples in the midst of a storm on the sea. In the first story, Jesus is present in the boat with the disciples. (This is in Matthew 8:23-27.) Jesus falls asleep in the boat, and a storm blows up. The disciples start to panic, wake Jesus up saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” Jesus chastises the disciples saying, “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” and then he gets up, rebukes the winds and the sea, and everything suddenly becomes calm. The disciples’ response is amazement, and they say, “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” In today’s reading, Jesus has sent the disciples on ahead in the boat to the other side of the lake, while he goes up the mountain alone to pray. A storm blows up, and Jesus walks across the water to join the disciples in the boat. Interestingly enough, the disciples don’t seem to be freaking out in this storm like before. It’s only seeing Jesus walking across the top of the water to them in the midst of the storm that really freaks them out. Jesus speaks to them, assuring them that it is he, and Peter decides at that point that he needs to get out of the boat to join Jesus walking out on the water (because, why not?). Jesus seems to agree with Peter’s plan, and Peter is doing ok at first, until he remembers the storm blowing all around him. He becomes frightened, and then he begins to sink. Jesus wastes no time rescuing him and saying again, “You of little faith” and asking “why did you doubt?” But then, listen to what happens! The two get into the boat, the wind ceases, and the disciples in the boat worship Jesus proclaiming, “Truly you are the Son of God.” This is quite a different response to the first story, where they basically say, “who is this guy?” I can’t help but wonder if Peter’s risk and stretching and willingness to get out of the safety of the boat didn’t help inspire the other disciples to finally recognize Jesus for who he really is—the Son of God. Can you think of a time when someone else’s risk or stretching in their own faith helped inspire your faith or helped you grow deeper in your relationship with God? I know that your courage inspires me all the time and makes me want to be more courageous, too. It’s one of the gifts of Christian community. When we walk closely together, we see the ways that each of us grows in faith, and it can inspire us, challenge us to stretch, to take our own risks and to grow in our own ways, jumping off into the deep end even when we don’t always feel prepared. This fall, we’ve got plans to do some stretching here at St. Thomas. We’re going to start a Children’s Chapel program for kids in K-5th grades. (Older kids are welcome to join us as helpers if they want.) It’s time we tried something different for Children’s formation, and so we are committing to do this for a year to see how it does. We are so committed to this, in fact, that the two clergy are going to take turns, with one of us being in children’s chapel every week with the kids. So we are committing some energy and some resources to this to try to help it succeed. It’s definitely a risk, a stretch, for each of us. I’ve never done children’s chapel before, so we’ll see if this old dog can learn some new tricks. Hopefully our risk will inspire others to join us in this. For it to be successful, we need the parents to bring the kids (‘cause it ain’t children’s chapel without children), and I’m going to be asking our young families to make a commitment to regular church attendance while we try to get this off the ground. We’ve already got some volunteers who are willing to step up and help us in this endeavor. How else might this risk, this stretching, inspire us as the people of faith in this place? This past week, I finished reading the book How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith by Bishop Mariann Budde, the Bishop of Washington D.C. Bishop Budde writes all about the times in her life when she has been inspired to take risks, to get out of the relative safety of the boat. She also acknowledges that sometimes, it is not our choice to get out of the boat; sometimes, the storms of life toss us out into the water, ready or not, and it’s up to us to figure out where we go from there. In her final chapter, she writes about the importance of perseverance and she writes about how perseverance in prayer needs to be joined in us with a commitment to mindfulness and a willingness to learn some basic spiritual skills. If we don’t have mindfulness and spiritual skills coupled with our perseverance, she writes, “We fall pray, in the words of the late Harvard Chaplain Peter Gomes ‘to a false and phony version of the Christian faith that suggests that by our faith or our prayers we will be spared the burdens of life. Thus perseverance in prayer isn’t just about doing it more, but allowing our hearts to be stretched by the trials and struggles of life so that our capacity for love and forgiveness grows, as well as what we are willing to endure for the sake of love.” ii. Perhaps you find yourself outside the boat against your will. What might this allowing your heart to be stretched by the trials and struggles of life look like for you in this moment? Your invitation this week is to ponder how you might be called to stretch a bit, to take some risk in your life of faith? Or, if you find yourself in the midst of a trial or a challenge (tossed out of the boat, perhaps against your will) then your invitation is to persevere in prayer so that your heart may be stretched by the trials and struggles of life so that your capacity for love and forgiveness grows. Where might Jesus be inviting you to get out of the boat and do the seemingly impossible with him at your side? i. https://www.storypeople.com/products/deep-end-prints?variant=32107322081391 ii. Budde, Mariann. How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith. Avery: New York, 2023, p 175.

The Transfiguration-2023

The Feast of the Transfiguration August 6, 2023 A letter to Maisey Elizabeth Liipfert upon the occasion of her baptism. Dear Maisey, Today is a very special day to be baptized. It is the feast of the Transfiguration, a day that we celebrate on a Sunday only every six years. Today we remember the day that Jesus took his closest disciples up to the top of a mountain and they saw his face shining with God’s glory. Today we remember the voice that speaks from the clouds to Jesus and to all, proclaiming Jesus as God’s Chosen or as God’s beloved. Today in your baptism, your parents and godparents are making promises to God and to the Church, your faith community about how they want to raise you in the Christian faith, and we, the people of God, are making promises to you that we will be faithful companions to you along the way. Sweet Maisey, you have already been claimed by God as God’s beloved since even before your birth. Today your parents and godparents and all of us gather around you to accept your belovedness on your behalf, and we promise to teach you what it means to live as God’s beloved throughout the course of your life. So, what does it mean to be beloved? I watched you a couple of weeks ago shine in your own little baby belovedness as your mamma danced with you in church while the VBS children sang “This little light of mine.” So, I know that you grow up knowing what it means to be beloved. It is that sense of pure belonging, of being cherished, of long-held longings being fulfilled, of knowing that you are not alone. Belovedness is tasted when we discover unexpected gifts or delights, when we can see the synchronistic weavings of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the world around us. As we go through this sometimes hard and weary world, it is easy to lose sight of our belovedness. And it’s when we lose sight of it, that we live in ways that are not pleasing to the heart of God. We treat each other badly; we are unkind or disinterested in anything or anyone beyond ourselves; we don’t live up to our own capacity for sharing our belovedness with the world, shining a light of the good news of God’s love beyond ourselves to those we encounter. The Christian faith and life is all about being grounded in our own belovedness so we can share that with others. It’s why we come here, week after week, because we need each other to help us remember that each one of us is God’s beloved. We are fed from God’s table so that Christ’s body and blood can give us a belovedness-infusion every week, and we are sent out into the world to remind everyone whom we encounter that they, too, are claimed by God as God’s beloved. As we renew our baptismal vows today alongside your parents and godparents, Maisey, we remember that we, too, have said “yes” to God’s call and claim of each one of us as God’s beloved. We are confirmed and strengthened in that belovedness today. And we promise that as you grow, we will help you learn and remember it too. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+

The 9th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 12A

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 12A July 30, 2023 I read a quote this week about Jesus’s parables in this week’s gospel reading from the Episcopal priest Barbara Brown Taylor that I want to share with you. Here is what she writes, “The striking thing about all these images is their essential hiddenness—the mustard seed hidden in the ground, the yeast hidden in the dough, the treasure hidden in the field, the pearl hidden among all the other pearls, the net hidden in the depths of the seas. If the kingdom is like these, then it is not something readily apparent to the eye but something that must be searched for, something just below the surface of things waiting there to be discovered and claimed.” I love this idea of the kingdom of God lingering just below the surface of the things of our every-day life! (It’s actually the subject of a song by one of my favorite artists Carrie Newcomer titled “Every little bit of it.”) And interestingly enough, a few weeks ago, before I even knew that this gospel reading was coming up, I started journaling about moments in my own life when I encountered the kingdom of God, and I wrote about these in standard parable form: “The kingdom of God is like a giant fig tree whose owners invite you to come pick figs while they are on vacation. On the way over, you worry about how you will reach the higher branches, and when you get there, you discovered they have left ladders set up underneath to reach the figs on the higher limbs.” Or from VBS week—“The kingdom of God is like child-sized arms suddenly wrapping around your legs or waist when you are distracted and busy. If you take time to stop and look down, you see a face of joy and love shining up at your and in that instant, you remember who you’ve been created to be.” Or a random moment of domesticity: “The kingdom of God is like when your teenage children can do something that you can’t do, and they do it willingly and joyfully, and it contributes to the good of the whole family.” Or “The kingdom of God is like a healing prayer circle made of kind hands and generous hearts and the surprise of the Holy Spirit showing up in heat and light and happy light-headedness.” We talked about this all at last week’s healing service, and I invited them to write their own parables about when the Kingdom of God has shown up in their lives. Here are some of what they said. The Kingdom of God is like feeding the kids of VBS from the kitchen and then after all is cleaned up, going out to watch them sing their songs with such joy and life. The Kingdom of God is like when the light breaks through one of the stained glass windows in the church (which are easy to miss because they are up high), and the light shines in color on the floor. The Kingdom of God is moving to a new condo and discovering that you have marvelous neighbors who become like your family because we all need each other. The Kingdom of God is like a trip that you’ve worried about and prayed over that turns out being so much more wonderful than you could have ever imagined. The Kingdom of God is like my back yard where so many different animals come to be fed: aggressive racoons, slow moving turtles, three black crows, gentle deer, bird-food eating squirrels, cats-both inside and out. It is a reminder of how God is revealed to us in nature and through the peaceable animal kingdom. The kingdom of God is like a grandparent who will make you your very own cake when you didn’t get a slice of cake at church coffee hour. Isn’t it marvelous, this understanding that the kingdom of God is all around us, just underneath the surface of things! Would you like to try it? I’ll give you two or three minutes to think about it and write down your Kingdom of God moment, and then, if you want, we’ll also have some time for you to share it with someone sitting next to you. Here’s one final one to share with you: The kingdom of God is like a congregation who eagerly writes your homily for you when you’ve been away on vacation!

The 6th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 9A

The 6th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 9A July 9, 2023 This past week, I was scrolling on social media when I came across an article title that captured my attention: “Why your brain hates other people: and how to make it think differently.” As if the title weren’t enough to draw me in, listen to the first few lines: “As a kid, I saw the 1968 version Planet of the Apes. As a future primatologist, I was mesmerized. Years later I discovered an anecdote about its filming: At lunchtime, the people playing chimps and those playing gorillas ate in separate groups.” The author Robert Sapolsky continues, “Humans universally make Us/Them dichotomies along lines of race, ethnicity, gender, language group, religion, age, socioeconomic status, and so on. And it’s not a pretty picture. We do so with remarkable speed and neurobiological efficiency; have complex taxonomies and classifications of ways in which we denigrate Thems; do so with a versatility that ranges from the minutest of microaggression to bloodbaths of savagery; and regularly decide what is inferior about Them based on pure emotion, followed by primitive rationalizations that we mistake for rationality. Pretty depressing.” He concludes his introduction saying, “But crucially, there is room for optimism. Much of that is grounded in something definedly human, which is that we all carry multiple Us/Them divisions in our heads. A Them in one case can be an Us in another, and it can only take an instant for that identity to flip. Thus, there is hope that, with science’s help, clannishness and xenophobia can lessen, perhaps even so much so that Hollywood-extra chimps and gorillas can break bread together.” I’ve been thinking about this us/them division this week. It shows up in two of our scripture readings—the Old Testament reading and the Gospel reading. First, in the Old Testament, we see the conclusion of Abraham’s story that we’ve been following over the last few weeks. Sarah has died, and Abraham has decided that it’s time for his son Isaac to be married. But Abraham doesn’t want Isaac to marry a woman from the Cannanites, those people that he’s been living among. Instead, Abraham sends his servant back to his old, hometown where all his relatives still live. “Go to my country and to my kindred” Abraham tells the servant, and he promises the servant that God will send an angel before him to help him find Isaac a wife. So, the servant goes, and when he gets to Abraham’s brother’s compound, he prays that God will help him. Then we get our reading for today, when Rebecca shows up at the well, makes herself notable to Abraham’s servant by offering hospitality in the gift of water to him (and his 10 camels), and upon his investigation, reveals that she is the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother. Rebecca ends up agreeing to journey back to the land of Cana where she will marry Isaac-her first cousin once removed (and spoiler alert-where she will give birth to twins Jacob and Esau, and Jacob will go back home and marry not one but two of his first cousins-Rachel and Leah—the daughters of Rebecca’s brother Laban). This story illustrates not only how God continues to fulfill God’s promise to Abraham of making Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, it also shows the lengths that we will go to preserve our us versus them lines that we have drawn, and it shows how hospitality can help break down some of those lines and barriers. In our gospel reading for today, we see Jesus fielding complaints as he is on the road teaching and proclaiming his message in different cities. He’s growing increasingly more frustrated and angry as he reflects that his critics can’t be satisfied with either the more austere John the Baptist and his call to repentance or Jesus, who comes feasting and breaking bread with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus’s critics clearly want him to be more like “us” and they are criticizing him for his reaching out beyond the division of us and them. He is frustrated because the most religious are the ones who can’t seem to grasp his message. But then we see a turning point. Jesus moves from anger and judgement—specifically a grace-filled judgement that invites repentance and can see broader and better possibilities of and for these people Jesus cares about; it’s a judgement that’s all about lifting up and restoring relationships. He moves from judgement to an invitation to grace and care, where all can find rest and comfort. In this passage we see him breaking down the barriers of us and them, inviting all into the rest and comfort that he offers. So, let’s talk a little more about us versus them, and how that plays out in our own lives and in the life of our church. Can you think of a time when you have found yourself in an “us versus them” situation when somehow the lines became blurred or even broken down? Or can you think of a time when you found yourself in an “us versus them” situation and the lines weren’t broken down? We talked about this in our Wednesday healing service, and as we ended our conversation, we discovered that we had inadvertently divided ourselves into an us versus them scenario of people who are ok with women clergy (the us) and people who aren’t (the them). I couldn’t have created a better example of all this if I had tried! In a more painful encounter, I had a conversation with our nursery supervisor, Dianne Jones, last Sunday. Dianne and I were touching base on how things in the nursery were going, and she shared with me that she had thought about resigning her post with us. She told me about how she, a person of color, had felt the looks from some of our parishioners when she would bring the children into church or when she would come over for hospitality time—looks that said to her, “Who are you and what are you doing here?” As Dianne was telling me all this, I had to fight my natural inclination to get defensive, to defend “us.” As I watched her speak, I saw her gentleness and her heartbreak, I heard her longing, as a long-time Christian and practitioner of her faith, as the one who teaches and nurtures and loves our youngest parishioners for it to all be about us and how we live out our faith together here—no insiders and outsiders, all beloved of Christ in need of forgiveness, grace, healing, and a place to belong. I apologized and told her that I appreciated her sticking with us, and that we would try to do better. I asked her if I could share this with y’all today, and she graciously agreed. In the article I referenced earlier, Robert Sapolsky makes a scientific case for how our brains are wired to create these us versus them strata, these automatic characterizations of people, but he says it is fairly easy to rapidly recategorize individuals and even whole groups (giving three powerful examples) and writing, “We all have multiple dichotomies in our heads, and ones that seem inevitable and crucial can, under the right circumstances, evaporate in an instant.” You can read the article for yourself and see some of the strategies that he suggests. But what it really boils down to is intentionally practicing what Jesus taught—the importance of relationship with God and with each other, how we are changed and become more open when we are empathetic and curious, gentle and humble of heart, how we all have fallen short of the best possibility who God has created us to be and are all in need of Jesus’s forgiveness, and how Jesus invites all into his restful embrace. Your invitation this week is to pay attention to the times when you find yourself categorizing someone as a “them” to your us. Take one opportunity this week to be in relationship with that “them,” even if it just means a brief conversation, sharing a smile or noting or imagining something that you have in common. Pay attention to how the Holy Spirit works in, around, and through us to help us break down the false barriers of us and them. May you be willing to find rest this week alongside the gentleness of Jesus, who alone can offer you perfect belonging and perfect rest. i. https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/your-brain-hates-other-people/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0BvZIpgiC9B9ua7rJ-QjZxYebK2naD8SMX-xiZNznHXh8Xa7-XAu2hfWw_aem_AeWeLYurQH-6KeDzJ38dUr1k1Q0bcRt0ApTg-dNSHE4F_v4Vz6FXqJlz3ywfW6oa6iY#Echobox=1687990738