The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15B

The Very Rev. Melanie Dickson Lemburg The 13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 15B August 18, 2024 Our gospel reading for today is the fourth out of five weeks in chapter 6 of the gospel of John where Jesus is talking to his disciples and others about bread. John’s gospel uses repetition of certain phrases to help emphasize points, and it is the only gospel of the four that doesn’t include Jesus’s Last Supper with his disciples. Instead, John has Jesus washing the disciples feet in their last night together. So our reading for today is the culmination of this chapter where Jesus talks about bread over and over again, and it is how the writer of John’s gospel chooses to introduce the Eucharist or Communion. But if we flash forward to next week’s gospel (which actually includes some lines from this week’s gospel), we see that Jesus’ original hearers, including some disciples, struggle with the difficulty of this teaching around the Eucharist. And that can actually be comforting to us. Because who in this church is willing to say that you actually understand what is happening in the Eucharist? (Don’t look at me!) We can certainly talk about it, about how experience it. We can talk about what we have been taught about it-like how eucharist is the Greek word that means thanksgiving. And even though we participate in it week after week after week, there’s an aspect of mystery to Eucharist that defies our language. It’s a mystery that we know through our participation, that invites us more into a heart knowledge than a head knowledge. When we come before God and hold out our hands, our hearts know that this act of thanksgiving is both about our individual relationships with God through Christ as well as how we are connected to God through Christ all together as Christ’s body. We know that this gift is something that is completely unearned on our part, something we may at times feel unworthy to receive, and it is the free gift of God’s love offered to all people, a sign that each of us is made by God and belongs to God and to each other. We know that even as the bread is broken, we come to the altar-each one of us-with all of our own brokenness, and we celebrate Jesus’s brokenness which heals our own. Today at St. Thomas, we are celebrating Back to School Sunday. We’re blessing students, teachers, and administrators. We’ve got Children’s Chapel resuming after its summer hiatus, and we’re celebrating the grand-reopening of our nursery. Today is a day when we intentionally celebrate children. And I think that children have a lot to teach us about how they receive Eucharist. I’ve often had parents tell me that they want their children to wait to receive Eucharist until they understand it. And I will say back to them, so do you understand it? Because I don’t. When I see children receiving communion, I see people who freely receive the gift of belonging that Jesus is offering without overthinking it. I see open hearts and small, open hands stretched out eagerly to receive. I think children have much they could teach us about what the Eucharist means, so in closing, I’ll share with you the book the kids are reading together in children’s chapel today. (Here we read the book We Gather at This Table written by Anna V. Ostenso Moore and illustrated by Peter Krueger.) Big Question this week: Think about how you experience the Eucharist or communion. How has God been revealed to you in the Eucharist? What lessons can children teach you about the Eucharist? What are you being invited to take from the Eucharist out into the world?

The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13B

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 13B August 4, 2024 I’ve just started reading a book on organizational development titled Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less-and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined. In the introduction, the author, Scott Sonenshein, poses three questions: “Why do some people and organizations succeed with so little, while others fail with so much? Why do we get caught up chasing what we don’t have? How is it possible to achieve more prosperous organizations, rewarding careers, and fulfilling lives with what’s already at hand?” He begins to answer these questions by identifying two different ways of being in the world or dealing with resources: stretching versus chasing. He writes, “Stretching is a learned set of attitudes and skills that comes from a simple but powerful shift from wanting more resources to embracing and acting on the possibilities of our resources already in hand.” He continues, “Chasing, and those who frequently rely on it, chasers, orient themselves around acquiring resources, overlooking how to expand what’s already in hand. Their decisions and actions might appear very reasonable on the surface, but I will expose the harmful consequences that lurk deeper and ultimately upend success and make people miserable.” i Here’s an example that Sonenshein gives. Let’s say you need to put a nail into a wall. Chasers will spend time looking for a hammer, and if they can’t find one, then they’ll go buy one to get the job done. If they can’t acquire a hammer, then the job starts to break down and they can’t complete the task. So to anticipate future challenges, the chasers will try to acquire as many tools in their tool box as possible, even when those tools don’t meet an individual need. Over time, the toolbox gets larger and larger, making it difficult to remember what’s inside. But Sonenshein writes that Stretchers “make good use of the tools around, experimenting and testing the conventional limits of what’s a hand. If a rock is the only think around, a stretcher can pick it up to bang a nail into the wall-or an available brick, can of beans, high heel, or heavy flashlight.” Both are ways that can competently get a nail into the wall but with very different consequences. [While using a hammer may appear to be a more elegant solution to hammering a nail, much time and effort may be wasted on looking for the right tool and not putting nails into the walls. And, when we see that others have better tools, we not only feel bad but also think we can’t get things done with an inferior tool box.]ii So, what does all that have to do with church or faith or the gospel? This is our fourth week out of seven as we make our way reading through the book of Ephesians as our epistle reading. Scholars believe that Ephesians probably wasn’t written to the specific community in Ephesus, but rather that it is what is known as a “circular letter” which means it was written to be circulated to a number of different early Christian communities or churches. (It has been attributed to Paul, but scholars now think that Paul probably didn’t write it because there are many inconsistencies in the style and language used from the letters we know were written by Paul, but it was most likely written by someone working with Paul.) And one of the beautiful things about Ephesians is that it is a hymn or a love song to the Church or to Christian community. Our reading for today reminds us of the importance of unity among people in Christian community, that it is unity that is modeled for us in and through God. If this passage makes you think of baptism, then you get a gold star because it makes up the opening acclamation of our baptismal liturgy. Our portion for today also talks about how within a Christian community, each person is given gifts that come from Jesus, and these gifts are spread out among a community, so that not everyone has the same gifts. And the gifts that Ephesians enumerates here are to different roles or callings withing and beyond the community—all for the sake of building up the body of Christ and bringing people into unity in the faith. Our gospel reading today gives us a reminder of how we don’t always receive the gifts that are right in front of us. The people questioning Jesus have just received the gift of food (and the miracle or sign that provided it) in the feeding of the 5,000, and they have chased Jesus down and are asking for more miracles so that they might believe. They even reference the gift of manna, which is the bread that God provides for the Children of Israel when they are wandering in the wilderness so they wouldn’t starve, and at first they are grateful, but shortly after, when manna is the only thing they had to eat, they quickly pivot from gratitude to complaining. And we get this, don’t we? There’s an old saying that “familiarity breeds contempt.” We don’t always recognize gifts, even when they are right in front of our faces. It often takes some stretching to see gifts in a different light. This is true for both individuals and for organizations, even and especially the church. Can you think of a time when something that you took for granted was revealed as a gift, or when you stretched a bit to accept a new gift or a new way of being in the world? Was there someone who helped you see that gift or helped you grow into it? So many times, it takes another person recognizing a gift in us, holding up a mirror for us, in order for us to recognize it in ourselves. What are the gifts that you have right now that you might have overlooked or which new circumstances might be calling you to stretch into? Ephesians reminds us that this nurturing of and recognition of gifts is a part of the gift given to us by the Holy Spirit at our baptism, and it is the work of the church to seek out the giftedness in each other because when a variety of gifts is offered to the community, the community thrives. I can’t help but wonder what are the gifts that we as a faith community have that we might have overlooked or what new gifts are we being called to stretch into? i Sonenshein, Scott. Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less-and Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined. Harper Collins: 2017, pp xi, 7, and 8. ii. Ibid. pp10-11.

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 11B

The Very Rev Melanie Lemburg The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 11B July 21, 2024 I’m sure y’all know that we’ve had Vacation Bible School here at St. Thomas in the evenings this past week. Now I’ve been doing VBSes for my whole ordained life. (I did miss it one year; I was getting dressed to go, and then discovered that I had gone into labor with our son Jack. We sent Mary Margaret to church with my brother and sister-in-law because “The VBS must go on.”) So it’s strange that in all my years of doing VBS, every year, I seem to forget just how much fun it can be. I’ve been thinking about that this week and talking with colleagues about it, and I’ve realized that it is because at VBS even the adults give ourselves permission to play. In our gospel reading for today, Jesus and his disciples have regathered after Jesus has sent them out in pairs to proclaim the good news of the gospel, calling people to repent, casting out demons, and curing the sick. The disciples are excited to tell Jesus about all that has transpired while they were out working, and Jesus says to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” Jesus gathers them all together and invites them to rest together after their work. And I can’t help but wonder if there is a certain amount of play and playfulness in this homecoming gathering? Dr. Stuart Brown, who is the founder of the National Institute of Play defines play as “anything that is spontaneously done for its own sake…(Play) appears purposeless and produces pleasure and joy.” Brown’s research focuses a great deal on the importance of play for children and how that helps them build identity, but he also writes about the importance of play for adults. He writes, “The human being really is designed biologically to play throughout the life cycle…From my standpoint as a clinician, when one really doesn’t play at all or very little in adulthood, there are consequences: rigidities, depression, lack of adaptability, no irony…things that are pretty important that enable us to cope in a world of many demands.” i. So, can you think of the last time you really played? When was the last time you did something that was spontaneous and for its own sake, with little or no other purpose? What was that like for you? How did you feel? What might play have to teach you about your relationship with God? Your invitation this week is to pay attention to how and how often you play, and to intentionally work to cultivate play as a sabbath practice this week. i I can’t find an original sources for either of these quotes from Brown. They are quoted by Ben Conachan in his sermon “Getting Rest: Hours for Sabbath, Rest, and Play” for Pearl Church on May 21, 2023: https://www.pearlchurch.com/sermon-archive/2023/5/21/getting-rest-hours-of-sabbath-rest-and-play?format=amp

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 10B

The Very Rev. Melanie Dickson Lemburg 8th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 10B July 14, 2024 This week, as I was working out on the E-gym machines at the Y, I noticed the woman on the machines next to meet kept drinking from her water bottle. As we made the circuit, it bothered me more and more. You see, there’s a rule that we’re not supposed to drink anything on the machines; there’s even a big sign that says that right by the entrance to the machines. But this woman was openly defying the rule and drinking her water in front of God and everyone. As I made the circuit and contemplated my potential action or continued inaction, I began focusing more on myself and what I was feeling. In a moment of clarity, I was able to peel back the layers of righteous indignation to see what was below; and below it was resentment. In our readings for today we have two different pictures of resentment and its destructive power. Our gospel reading tells us of John the Baptist’s grisly demise at the hands of the machinations of Herod’s wife Herodias. Mark tells us that John had been telling Herod that it wasn’t lawful for him to marry Herodias, who was his brother’s wife, and so “Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him.” She sees an opportunity, and she takes it, and as a result of Herodias’s resentment of John (and Herod’s weakness), John the Baptist’s head ends up on a platter. In the Old Testament reading, we have one line that gives us a glimpse into resentment: “As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.” Now, as you might imagine, there is so much more to this story. It starts way back in 1 Samuel 18. Michal is Saul’s daughter, and she loves David. Saul is working really hard to hold onto his kingship after he has lost both God’s and the people’s favor, and David is his chief rival for that. Saul decides to offer his daughter Michal to David as his wife to try to bring David under his influence. He even makes it easy for David by only asking as a bride price of 100 specifically graphic severed body parts of their common enemy the Philistines. (If you want to know what body part, then you’re going to have to google it. I’m not saying it from the pulpit. But let’s just say it rhymes with “storefins”) Yep, 100. David and Michal marry and because Michal loves David, she becomes a part of team David instead of team Saul. At one point, Saul sends assassins to murder David, and Michal helps lower David out the window and then places an idol with a shock of goatshair in the bed and tells her father’s people that David isn’t well. But then David goes on the run, and at some point, Saul reclaims Michal and marries her off to someone else—a guy named Palti son of Laish. And they are happy. But then Saul dies, and David is working to solidify his claim to the kingship, and someone tells David he will only talk to David about being king if Michal, as a member of Saul’s family, is present. So David reaches out to Michal’s brother, who goes and gets Michal and returns her to David, and Michal’s husband Paltiel follows her crying until they tell him to go home. In our reading for today, David is king, and he has worked to bring the Ark of the Covenant home to his city Jerusalem. It is a huge victory for him and his people after years of war and scheming. So, he dances before the ark as it comes into the city. And Michal despises him in her heart. She is understandably resentful. (Later on in this same chapter, we hear Michal’s comment to David about his behavior implying that he’s not dignified enough to be king. She says, “How the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants’ maids, as any vulgar fellow might shamelessly uncover himself!”) But because of her understandable resentment, she misses experiencing this moment of joy when the Ark of God containing the 10 commandments is brought home. It’s a powerful symbol of God’s relationship with God’s people, and she can’t fully experience it because of her resentment toward David. So, let’s talk about resentment. Can you think of a time when you were resentful? How did it feel? How did it impact your relationship with that person? With God? This week, I’ve been thinking about how resentment feels to me like a piece of popcorn kernel that is wedged in my teeth, maybe even up under my gum, and can’t be dislodged. It’s hard, and it’s nagging, and it feels so much bigger than it actually is, and it can be inaccessible to the ordinary ways of knocking it loose. Many folks feel shame around feeling resentment. I mean, neither Michal or Herodias are people we would ever want to emulate. Their resentment makes them unattractive to us. In her book about human emotions titled An Atlas of the Heart, sociologist Brene Brown writes about her life-long battle with resentment. She writes about how she always thought that resentment was an extension of anger, but a friend and emotions researcher corrected her and told her that resentment is actually a part of envy. This was an epiphany for her as she began to now examine her resentment through the lens of envy. Brene Brown writes, “Now when I start to feel resentful, instead of thinking, What is that person doing wrong? Or What should they be doing? I think, What do I need but am afraid to ask for? While resentment is definitely an emotion, I normally recognize it by a familiar thought pattern: What mean and critical thing am I rehearsing saying to this person?” And here’s Brown’s definition on resentment: “Resentment is the feeling of frustration, judgement, anger, ‘better than’ and/or hidden envy related to perceived unfairness or injustice. It’s an emotion that we often experience when we fail to set boundaries or ask for what we need, or when expectations let us down because they were based on things we can’t control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they’re going to react.”i Our Wednesday congregation talked about resentments, about how they are burdensome, how they can be much more toxic to us than to the people whom we resent, but also how resentments make us do crazy things, shameful things that we will probably regret latter on (maybe, like asking for someone’s head on a platter!). We talked about how it’s important to recognize and process resentment as soon as possible, before it can take root and fester and run amuck, and we identified two tools to combatting resentment. The first is forgiveness. We have to forgive the person or situation that has inspired our resentment. And the second is to recognize our common humanity in a person toward whom we are resentful. That’s empathy. I was thinking about Brown’s definition of resentment as envy as I was working the circuit on those e-fitness machines at the Y, and I took a step back from my seething resentment and righteous indignation to ask myself Brene’ Brown’s question: “What do I need but am afraid to ask for?” And y’all, I realized that I was thirsty! When I dug down deep into why I resented her having her water bottle against the rules, I realized I was thirsty, so I got myself up in between sets and went and got a good long drink of water, and then I no longer cared that she wasn’t’ following the rules. Now, we all know it’s not always that easy or that simple. It was certainly much more complex for Michal who had been consistently used as a pawn in her father’s and husband’s political machinations. But the tools to combat resentfulness are sound and can be employed in a variety of situations. So, your invitation for this week: Can you think of a time when you were resentful? How did it feel? How did it impact your relationship with that person? With God? If the resentment is still stuck in your soul like a piece of popcorn kernel, then consider offering it to God in prayer and ask God to help you see the person or situation with empathetic eyes and to help you begin to forgive. i. Brown, Brene. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience. Random House: New York, 2021, pp30-33.

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost- The Rev Melanie Lemburg

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 6th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8B June 30, 2024 This week, I came across a quote about hope that I want to share: “Hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense…Hope is not optimism….Hope is a discipline and… we have to practice it every single day.” i I started thinking about how I talk about hope. How many times a day do I say, “I hope…” “I hope you are well.” “I hope it goes easier than you expect.” “I hope…” We’re talking about well-wishes when we talk about hope that way, a sort of love made manifest in words. But that’s not what this quote implies about hope. Hope isn’t a feeling; it’s a discipline, a practice. What on earth does that mean and how might we practice hope as a daily discipline? Our gospel reading gives us two pictures of hope in the same story. Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, is seeking healing from Jesus for his young daughter. He throws himself at Jesus’ feet, tells him his daughter is near death and begs Jesus to come heal her. It’s definitely got the feel of a last-ditch effort from a desperate father. They set out, and on the way, a woman who has been bleeding for 12 years approaches Jesus and says to herself, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well.” And miraculously, she is healed in that moment. It seems at first that she’s going to get into trouble or get called out by Jesus when he seeks to know who touched him, but instead, Jesus commends her and her faith and sends her on her way. Then they get word that Jairus’s daughter has died, that Jesus has come too late, and the unnamed woman becomes a lesson in hope to the faithful synagogue leader Jairus. Because rather than giving up hope for his dead daughter, Jairus continues on with Jesus to his house where the parents and Jesus and his disciples go in to see the girl, and they all witness Jesus raising her from the dead. Both the unnamed woman and Jairus practice hope by pursuing a path that they believe will make lives better. So, what can these two different characters in the gospel story today teach us about practicing a daily discipline of hope? Each of them, in their own way, is willing to take a risk, acting in the belief that the world could be better and centering their faith in that better outcome in the person of Jesus. They also are at the end of their own limits; they have no delusions that they can affect the change they want through their own devices. So they seek out Jesus who they believe can bring about the healing they are looking for. In her book Atlas of the Heart, the sociologist Brene Brown writes about hope saying, “Hope is made up of…. ‘a trilogy of goals, pathways, and agency.” We need all three of these aspects in order for hope to be fulfilled. She also writes that “hope is a function of struggle-we develop hope not during the easy times but during adversity and discomfort.” (She continues by writing about how hope is a learned behavior. That children often have to learn the habit of hope from their parents and how they need boundaries characterized by love, consistency and support to cultivate hope along with the space to experience and grapple with adversity in their own lives. When they are given the opportunity to struggle, they learn how to believe in themselves and their abilities.) ii Hope is a choice that must be coupled with action in order to truly be hope and not just wishes. This week, after we discussed hope in our Wednesday healing service, one of the congregation sent me two different links talking about how she was seeing conversation around hope everywhere after our discussion. One of the links was to an Instagram story by a woman whose username is anniebjones05. Here’s what she writes: “In April, I planted a bunch of wildflower seeds in my front yard. My parents came over, and we raked and weeded, dug holes and fertilized. I fretted and tended and watered, until two days later, when a torrential rainstorm came and swept all the seeds away. I watched the dirt and fertilizer flow into my front yard turning everything into puddles of mud. I waited and waited to see if anything survived. Nothing did.” She continues, “In May, my parents came over and we tried again. We planted flowers in my front beds and tried seeds again in the back. I tried to not care if anything grew. I was afraid to hope. I am always a little afraid to hope. A few weeks ago, I started to see green sprouts peeking up along our back fence. Maybe the sunflowers we’d tried on a whim? A zinnia? Two? In April, I cared so much. By May, the rainstorm had taken my seeds and my care right along with it. Now it is June, and there are flowers. Plural! Zinnias. Sunflowers, I think, to come. They bloomed, disregarding my level of care and despair. They bloomed, ignoring my exhaustion, unconcerned with my cynicism. They did not need my hope. She concludes, “This is a true story. A literal one. Of course, it’s a metaphor, too.” It's interesting to me how in this story she uses the word “hope” to describe her wishes for her flower garden, but really what was hope in this story is her action to get out there with her parents and plant again after the first failure. I also appreciate the aspect of loving detachment that she introduces around hope, a sort of sense of working toward making things better with healthy detachment toward the outcome. Today, we had a baptism at the 8:00 service. Her name is Sophie. So that’s why, in just a few moments, we will renew our baptismal covenant as a part of this service. But I think it’s also an important reminder to us in this ongoing conversation about hope. It’s a reminder that in our baptism, we are invited to practice this hope by loving action on behalf of not just ourselves but also our neighbors. Notice how in the last five invitations of baptism, the first two are practices that help us nourish our own hope: continuing in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers, and resisting evil and whenever we fall into sin, repenting and returning to the Lord. But the last three are about how we turn outward and practice hope in the world around us: proclaiming by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being. Our baptism calls us to practice hope through loving action for ourselves and for others. A year ago, I shared a post from Bishop Steven Charleston that came up in my memories this week. I was grateful for the timing of this reminder from past Melanie. Here’s what he wrote, “I have a little broom called hope. I use it to sweep out the corners of my life where the dust of my past has settled and the shadows of my heart cling like cobwebs. It does a good job. I sweep fear and worry out the door, leaving only sunshine where the dark spaces once pretended to rule. I have a little broom called hope: please feel free to borrow it whenever you like." iii Your invitation this week is to seek to daily practice the discipline of hope in your life. Do one thing every day this week that could bring positive change to another person’s life or the world around you. i. Original quote by Mirame Kaba as listed in Everyday Connections: Year B. Ed Heidi Haverkamp. WJK, Louisville, 2023, p 638. ii. Brown, Brene. Atlas of the Heart. Random House, New York: 2021, p100. iii. Posted on Bishop Charleston’s Facebook page on June 27, 2023

6th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8B 8 am baptismal letter

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg The 6th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8B June 30, 2024 A letter to Sophie Winslow Smith upon the occasion of her baptism. Dear Sophie, Today is a big day in your young life. Today is the day of your baptism, a day when we gather to accept on your behalf that God has loved you and known you since before you were born, that God has claimed you as God’s beloved. Your parents and godparents are saying “yes” to your belovedness on your behalf, and they are making promises about how they will raise you to help you nurture your belovedness and to teach you how to see the face of God’s beloved in every person you will encounter in your life. And we your church are making promises that we will also support you in this work of growing into your belovedness, even as you will teach us more about our belovedness as well. Our gospel reading for today gives us a glimpse of the hope that can be found in following Jesus. I read a quote this week about hope that I want to share with you: “Hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense…Hope is not optimism….Hope is a discipline and… we have to practice it every single day.” We see in our story from Mark 5:21-43 that both the unnamed woman and the desperate father Jairus have hope that leads them to action, either for themselves or someone they love. They don’t just sit there and wish for things to get better, they take a step forward in their faith, acting to approach Jesus and ask for (or in the woman’s case, take) what they need. True hope is not just a practice, a discipline. It also involves action. Today, sweet Sophie, your parents and godparents will make promises on your behalf of how you will live your life, and they make promises to raise you in this life of discipleship to Jesus. And we will all renew our own baptismal covenant alongside them. As we do this, we remember that in our baptism, we are invited to practice this hope by loving action on behalf of not just ourselves but also our neighbors. Notice how in the last five invitations of baptism, the first two are practices that help us nourish our own hope: continuing in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers, and resisting evil and whenever we fall into sin, repenting and returning to the Lord. But the last three are about how we turn outward and practice hope in the world around us: proclaiming by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and striving for justice and peace among all people, and respecting the dignity of every human being. Our baptism calls us to practice hope through loving action for ourselves and for others. That practice of hope will look different for you in different seasons of your life, sweet Sophie, but it is our job as your family and your faith community to help you discover what that looks like, what it means for you to practice hope. In closing, I’ll leave you with a reflection written by Bishop Stephen Charleston about hope. He writes, “I have a little broom called hope. I use it to sweep out the corners of my life where the dust of my past has settled and the shadows of my heart cling like cobwebs. It does a good job. I sweep fear and worry out the door, leaving only sunshine where the dark spaces once pretended to rule. I have a little broom called hope: please feel free to borrow it whenever you like.” Your sister in Christ, Melanie+

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 4B

4th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6B June 16, 2024 Samuel is stuck. And God knows it. He hadn’t even wanted Israel to have a king, but the people clamored for one. God tried to convince them, through Samuel, that it would be bad; that things wouldn’t turn out like they wanted or hoped. But the people insisted, so God said, “OK, but remember when it turns out badly that I told you so,” and God gives them the king they want in the person of Saul. And things with Saul are ok-for a while. Saul and Samuel work together to force the other tribes out of their territory. Until one day, Saul disobeys God, and God decides to be done with Saul and to find a new king for God’s people. Samuel hadn’t even wanted a king, but now he’s invested in Saul, so when Saul turns away from God, and God turns away from Saul, Samuel grieves. He mourns what they had; he mourns what could have been. And Samuel is stuck. But then God says to Samuel, Sam, you are stuck. “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel.” It’s time to get up, dust yourself off, because I have a job for you. Fill up your horn with oil and set out on a journey because you’re going to anoint a new king for me. God is hopeful that this new king will be the answer. Spoiler alert: It’s David, and he is and he isn’t. But I appreciate how God doesn’t give up on Israel or the kingship because Saul was a disappointment. And maybe Samuel is inspired by God’s hope, too, because Samuel shakes off his grief and his stuckness, and he does what God asks, anointing David as the new king. Samuel has grieved for what was lost, but in order to move forward into God’s future, he must let go of the past, of the failures, of the disappointments, and maybe even of the comfort of the “devil you know…” so that he can move forward into the future and the task that God has set for him. As humans, we, too, get stuck. Things change around us, and we can be reluctant to even recognize the change, let alone embrace it. Or sometimes, change is thrust upon us in a way that we cannot deny, and we can get mired down in our grief or our apathy or our hopelessness. We know it is important to mourn what is lost or changed, but how do we know when it’s time to move on? To look toward the future so we can be ready to embrace something new? And why is it so hard for us to let go? To change? (I have a friend who likes to regularly rearrange all her furniture in her house, and I never understand it. Seriously, why?) One of our Wednesday congregation described that moment of getting unstuck, of letting go of the past and looking toward the future like being on a trapeze, when you’ve let go of the bar you’ve been hanging onto, but the one you’re jumping toward hasn’t quite yet arrived. So you find yourself suspended in mid-air for a moment-between what has been and what is yet to come. And several others reflected on the freedom that they finally found in letting go of the old and learning to trust again. Often in order to really let go of the old and move forward, we have to forgive—forgive one who hurt us, forgive circumstances for not turning out how we wanted, forgive ourselves for our own mistakes or bad judgement. I wonder if we can ever be ready for change if we haven’t forgiven? What’s most helpful to me about this interaction between Samuel and God is that it’s a reminder to me that most of the time, we need God’s help to get unstuck. Getting unstuck isn’t a pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstraps kind of activity. Our gospel parable is a helpful reminder of this. No matter what the farmer may do to prepare the field and sow the seed, it is God who gives the growth. The farmer is God’s partner, but at some point, the farmer recognizes there are things beyond his control. And so it is with us. This stuckness isn’t limited to individuals. Families can get stuck; churches get stuck and even the big C church gets stuck from time to time. I watched a webinar last week titled The Role of the Diocese in a Changing Church that was a panel interview of several Episcopal bishops who are trying to lay the ground work in their partnership with God to get the church in their dioceses unstuck and moving into the future. One bishop pointed out that the structures of our church were built to accommodate the baby boom in the early 20thcentury. Our church has been in decline for at least the last decade, probably longer, but still we cling to these structures, whether they are buildings or administrative structures, that were built to support the church in a very different time. You can see that here in that we have an entire building devoted to a way of offering Christian education this is no longer relevant to us or our culture. And so we’ve tried to lay the groundwork of offering more creative ways of using that space to do the work of God. You can see it in all the ways that we are trying to figure out how to engage the community around us, and in the ways that we are wrestling with how to create new pathways of belonging for the new people who are joining us. We are in that gawky, awkward phase similar to adolescence, where we haven’t yet grown into the new creation that God is calling us to be and that the Holy Spirit is creating among and through us. God has not and will not abandon us. Perhaps God is saying to us, how long will you mourn the loss of what is past? I have a new task for you. Go do this new thing to which I am calling you. And it feels like we are mid-swing on the trapeze, floating in the air between what has come and what will be. Our own diocese has just begun a strategic planning process which you’ll hear more about in the coming months. It is my hope that this is our attempt in the Diocese of Georgia to begin to do the work we need to do as partners of God, so that when the Holy Spirit shows up with our new task, we are ready to follow. Can you think of a time when you had to let go of something old to be able to embrace something new? What might God be inviting you to let go of now in order to embrace something new? In closing, I’ll offer a prayer from Bishop Steven Charleston that may speak to us as we open ourselves to becoming unstuck. Let us pray. “Spirit, watch over us, please. We are feeling a little anxious, a little uncertain, as if something was hanging over us, something beyond our control. Give us your confidence, Spirit, let us feel your presence among us, for when you are by our side, fear cannot be found. Amen.