Christmas Eve 2019

Christmas Eve 2019 Yesterday, when I was driving back and forth to the grocery store, I noticed a new political sign on Ferguson Ave. Have you seen it? It says, “Jesus 2020: Because only Jesus can save this nation.” (Let me interrupt this sermon for a Disclaimer: I know absolutely nothing about this phenomenon of the Jesus 2020 signs; I even googled it to see what it’s all about but couldn’t find much of anything beyond a Twitter hashtag. So, please, don’t hear me endorsing any particular candidate for any future elections. But also, know, that I’m not one to waste a good sermon illustration, so there you go. ) As I was driving home, I wondered about the person who placed the sign there. I wondered what he or she hoped to accomplish. I wondered what that sign even means: “Jesus 2020: Because only Jesus can save this nation.” And I wondered what if that were to come to pass, what that would even look like. (Something tells me that we probably wouldn’t actually like the look of things if Jesus became president. I know most of the time Jesus’s priorities are not always my own priorities, and I suspect I would be as uncomfortable as the good religious people in Jesus’s day were if he were to return and rule here and now.) But even with all my wild wonderings about that random road sign, I get it; don’t you? Because there’s at least a little part of me that wants Jesus to come and save us from ourselves. And this is not a new longing. “The people who walked in darkness/ have seen a great light;/those who lived in a land of deep darkness--/ on them light has shined.” During a time of great political unrest, Isaiah names this longing for the people of Israel. They are a land deeply divided, at great risk from their political opponents which will eventually result in their homeland being overthrown and many of them being taken into captivity in a foreign land. Isaiah has let them know that it is Israel’s unfaithfulness to God that has gotten them to this point, and yet, they still long for God to step in and save them from themselves in the form of a righteous ruler from David’s line. In the time of Jesus’s birth, Israel finds itself once again in trouble. This time they are occupied by a foreign power, the Roman Empire. They are in the process of being counted in the great bureaucratic machine that is the Roman Census. They long for God to break into the world and to save them, to restore them to independence. And God does break in-in the form of a helpless child born to two ordinary parents. This birth is announced by angelic messengers to an unsavory lot of shepherds—an untrustworthy bunch if you can ever find one and certainly not a group you would trust with an important, world-changing message. The angels tell the shepherds: “Do not be afraid; for see-- I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” And this child who is born in this most ordinary and unlikely place is the full reconciliation of God’s divinity and our humanity—both fully human and fully divine. He shows the world that God’s realm is not made up of the powerful but of the lowly; that God’s passion is not for the mighty but for the down-trodden. He shows us that God doesn’t swoop in to save us from the messes that we have created, like a brave knight rescuing the princess from the tower. Rather, God joins us in the mess and stays there with us shining the light of God’s countenance in the dark for us to help us find the way. Whether we are immersed in the muck of our own bad decisions or misfortunes or whether we are throwing up our hands at the unprecedented division and deep distress of our nation, it is tempting to long for “Jesus 2020”. Jesus, take the wheel, we need you to come in and save us. But this night shows us that is not how God works. That is not who Jesus is. Jesus is God with us, always and forever. This Savior has already been born to us, on this day thousands of years ago. And through the grace of God, Jesus shows us the way and invites us to join him in being agents of God’s mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation in our own lives, in the lives of our families, in the life of our nation, and in this needy and heart-broken world. God is with us. And God has given us everything we need through the gift of Jesus Christ, the Savior of all creation. That is the truth and the glory of this night. In closing, I’ll leave you with a poem by the theologian, poet, and mystic Howard Thurman that talks about the work of Christmas to which our Savior calls us this day and every day. The Work of Christmas by Howard Thurman When the song of the angels is stilled, When the star in the sky is gone, When the kings and princes are home, When the shepherds are back with their flock, The work of Christmas begins: To find the lost, To heal the broken, To feed the hungry, To release the prisoner, To rebuild the nations, To bring peace among others, To make music in the heart.

Advent 4A 2019

Advent 4A_2019 December 22, 2019 Our gospel reading for today is Matthew’s version of the nativity story. Unlike Luke, Matthew tells the story from Joseph’s perspective, and Matthew uses a series of 4 dreams to reveal information about Jesus’s birth and to assist in his safety. Our reading for today starts with heartbreak, with what seems like broken promises between and man and woman, with a man who is struggling to “do the right thing” without causing unnecessary harm. Joseph’s expectations of his upcoming marriage to Mary are completely upended, and he is left trying to figure out the most faithful way forward in the midst of the scandal of the incarnation. Then, an angel comes to Joseph in a dream and tells him to not be afraid to take Mary as his wife. (What fear in Joseph is the angel countering, do you think? Fear of what people will think? Fear of further heartbreak or betrayal?) The angels tells Joseph that the child that Mary carries is in fact the child of God, and the angel gives Joseph instructions on how to name the child, which through this naming, Joseph is adopting the child as his own. When Joseph awakes, he does exactly what the angel has told him to do. I am struck this week by the fact that this portion of Matthew’s gospel uses the word for genesis two different times (although our NRSV translation doesn’t reflect this). Matthew is connecting the birth of Jesus with God’s creation of all that there is- as is reflected in Genesis; and Matthew is showing that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s long-standing promise to God’s people. I am mindful of how often creation comes out of chaos; how new life comes out of heartbreak. I think about the times in my life when I have stood at a crossroads between where I wanted to go and where God was calling me to go. So much of this life and the heartaches we bear come because we are unwilling to relinquish our own dreams in order to embrace the dream of God which we are being invited to participate in. I think about the times in my life when I have been truly heartbroken; in those times, I am often more receptive to God’s invitation to join in God’s dream than I am at other times when I feel like everything is going smoothly. I wonder if this is how Joseph felt, too? I think about the alertness of Joseph-his willingness to be open to signs and messengers from God in both the ordinary and in the extra-ordinary. I think about the courage of Joseph—the courage to say yes, to participate in the dream of God; the courage to love after heartbreak and disappointment. Every one of us is invited to participate in the dream of God. In the days leading up to the celebration of the birth of God with us, I invite you to reflect on the times in your life when you accepted God’s invitation to participate in the dream of God (and, if you are really courageous, to reflect on the times that you didn’t). I invite you to keep your eyes wide open to look for signs and the ways that God continues to invite you to participate in the dream of God. And I invite you to be courageous in your love, even after heartbreak and disappointment.

Blue Christmas 2019

Blue Christmas 2019 The Feast of St. Thomas December 21, 2019 One of my friends shared a lovely story on social media this past week about the German writer Franz Kafka. “When he was 40, the renowned Bohemian novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, was strolling through Steglitz Park in Berlin, when he chanced upon a young girl crying her eyes out because she had lost her favorite doll. She and Kafka looked for the doll without success. Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would look again. The next day, when they still had not found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter "written" by the doll that said, ‘Please do not cry. I have gone on a trip to see the world. I'm going to write to you about my adventures.’ Thus began a story that continued to the end of Kafka’s life. When they would meet, Kafka read aloud his carefully composed letters of adventures and conversations about the beloved doll, which the girl found enchanting. Finally, Kafka read her a letter of the story that brought the doll back to Berlin, and he then gave her a doll he had purchased. ‘This does not look like my doll at all,’ she said. Kafka handed her another letter that explained, ‘My trips, they have changed me.’ The girl hugged the new doll and took it home with her. A year later, Kafka died. Many years later, the now grown-up girl found a letter tucked into an unnoticed crevice in the doll. The tiny letter, signed by Kafka, said, ‘Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.’ It may seem strange to combine this Blue Christmas service with the Feast Day of St. Thomas, which is today and from which our readings come, but that story about Kafka, I think, gets to the heart of both. In the gospel reading, we see Thomas, who was away when the rest of the disciples had a visit from the resurrected Jesus. They all were huddled together in a locked room, afraid and grief-striken. We don’t know what Thomas was doing to not be there, but the very fact that he wasn’t there suggests that he wasn’t so afraid to be out and about. Perhaps he was doing what many of us have done in times of grief—he was trying to keep calm and carry on. Like Kafka’s doll, both Jesus and Thomas have been changed by Jesus’s death, by the love and the loss that came with that. But fearless Thomas is not afraid to ask Jesus for what he needs to be on the same page with the other disciples as a full participant in the astonishing event that is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. On this night, may we be like Thomas, not afraid to ask God for what we need—to live our lives faithfully, to fully participate in the astonishing event that is Jesus’ resurrection from the dead—the ultimate result of what it means for us in the birth of Emmanuel: God with us. May we who have tasted heartbreak remember the truth of Jesus’s nativity which can never escape the shadow of the cross: ‘Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.’

Advent 3A_2019

Advent 3A_2019 December 15, 2019 “Advent is a season of waiting,” she said to me. “What are you waiting for?” What are you waiting for? Anyone else, I would have just made something up, maybe even made a joke about it, but since she was my spiritual director, I told her the truth. Sadly I responded, “I’ve been too busy to wait. But I’m hopeful there is still time yet to wait, and I’ll be thinking about what I am waiting for.” What are you waiting for? We see John the Baptist in greatly reduced circumstances just in the course of a week. Last week, he was loose in the wilderness, preaching about repentance and calling the religious authorities who came out to see him a “brood of vipers.” Now, we see him imprisoned after having angered the wrong person, and he sends a single question back to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Many other commentators have read John’s question as one of uncertainty and doubt, but this year, it struck me that maybe there is another interpretation. What if John’s question comes, not from a place of anxiety but a place of curiosity? What if John’s question reflects that he is comfortable waiting for as long as it takes because he trusts that the Kingdom of God will be brought to fulfillment; he knows that his job, his only job at this point, is to wait and see? What would it look like for us if we trusted whole-heartedly that the Kingdom of God would be fulfilled, not through any work of our own but through the grace of the Holy Spirit and through the person of Jesus Christ? How would our waiting be different? Would it change what we are waiting for? I had a conversation with a friend of mine the other night. She was telling me about a season of discernment that she finds herself in pertaining to her work and her family needs. “What are you waiting for?” I asked her. And she responded that she did not know. I then told her about one of my touchstones of discernment, a print my mom had gotten me years ago on a trip out west. It’s a drawing and poem by an artist named Brian Andreas, and the title is “Waiting for signs.” “I used to wait for a sign, she said, before I did anything. Then one night I had a dream & an angel in black tights came to me & said, you can start any time now, & then I asked is this a sign? & the angel started laughing & I woke up. Now, I think the whole world is filled with signs, but if there’s no laughter, I know they’re not for me....” I’m going to invite us to sit in silence for a bit today. During that time, if you feel anxious or agitated, I invite you to pay attention to your breath, and to ponder: What are you waiting for? Where is the laughter in your life in this season of expectation and waiting?

Funeral Homily_Rita Lewis

Rita Lewis funeral homily December 9, 2019 Rita Lewis was a force to be reckoned with. She was a devoted daughter, sister, wife, mother, and grandmother, and she loved fiercely. She was someone who you would want on your side, because she was tenacious. Her sister Liz called her “the little bulldog” because she would not rest until things were taken care of. And in Rita’s petite 5 foot 1 inch frame dwelled the heart of a lion. She was courageous, undaunted by life’s circumstances. When her husband died, Rita was only 49 years old, and her children were college age. Wes and Brooke remember that time as being remarkable because their mother didn’t just keep things going; she helped them thrive in a very difficult time in all their lives. Rita also survived a kidney transplant here in recent years, and she not only recovered from that but was very intentional in how she took care of herself, so that she also thrived after that challenge. Rita had a diverse career. (She liked to remind her family that she was voted best all-around in her high school.) She was a music teacher, a “real estate agent in 3 states,” and a small business owner, having owned Lauren’s Hallmark Shop here in Savannah for many years. One of my favorite stories about Rita is of the time when she was at the shop, and she discovered a man stealing. When he ran out into the mall with the stolen item, Rita chased him all the way onto the CAT bus where she retrieved the item and returned it to the store. Rita was also incredibly thoughtful, empathetic, and kind. When her brother in law, Rusty, was activated in Desert Storm, Rita sent him a box of blank holiday cards for him and his colleagues so they could send them home to their wives and families for holidays. I knew Rita best through her work on the pastoral care team here at the church. We most often communicate via email, and just before Thanksgiving, Rita emailed the group to let us know that she had sent Thanksgiving cards to many of our church members on the prayer list. Rita was deeply faithful. She and Bud had a strong marriage that has served as an example for their children and given them something to aspire to. She was a long-time member of a regular bible study, and a long-time member of this church; and she believed firmly in the power of prayer. She would pray for people, and then she would follow up and ask for updates on them, so she could continue to pray for them in ways that they needed. Rita’s death was sudden and shocking, and such a large presence in the lives of those of us who loved her will be deeply missed. She died doing what she loved: Christmas shopping for people that she loved. And we hold fast to our faith that in her death, Rita was lifted up in the arms of Jesus, who was her “friend and not a stranger,” and that he has taken her to his heavenly dwelling place, where he has prepared a place for her. And so we grieve her loss here in this life with us, but we do not sorrow as those without hope. We gather today to remember the hope of our faith: that death is not the end, but a change; that through Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, God has proven once and for all that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything-even death. We’ll see Rita again, and together we will all feast again at God’s table and dance together in God’s heavenly kingdom. We give thanks for Rita: for her courage and for her kindness. And we’ll all live a little bit more kindly and a little bit more bravely for having known her.

Advent 2A_2019

Advent 2A_2019 December 8, 2019 In a sermon I gave several months ago, I shared a story with y’all about a plant someone had given me—a bromeliad, to be exact. Do y’all remember this? It came in this little glass container, and I watered it sporadically until one day, I picked it up to water it, and to my horror, the whole top of the plant came off in my hand! (I am accustomed to killing plants, although since coming here, I’ve managed to “turn over a new leaf,.” But this was a new low, even for me!) After church and my show and tell during the sermon with my poor bromeliad, our resident plant doctor, Selina, offered to take it to her plant hospital and to try to coax it back to life. Several weeks later, she broke the news to me gently—the bromeliad was beyond any saving. Her diagnosis was that the container it had been planted in had actually killed it. It was too small, too contained, without enough air or drainage. She kindly brought me a new plant that requires very little attention or water to keep it alive and some specific handwritten instructions to assist me. Time passed, and one day Selina found me after church and said, “You’re not going to believe this! I dumped the dirt out of your old bromeliad into my yard, and now, there’s a bromeliad growing there! I’ve put it in a pot and will bring it to you next week!” The reading from Isaiah for today begins with the words, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,/ and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The passage goes on to talk about the peaceable kingdom that will be ushered in by God through this new kind of king. It’s all about Israel’s future hope: what it means to hope even when the future seems uncertain. And it is all about the connections between justice and peace. Because at this point in Israel’s history, things are really bad. The once united kingdom has been divided into two; the king of the southern kingdom has sold out the northern kingdom to their mutual enemies, and the northern kingdom has fallen. The people in the southern kingdom, including Isaiah, know that it’s only a matter of time until they, too, are conqured. So they long for a new kind of king who will hold justice and peace together, a king who will be God’s agent in ushering in the peaceable kingdom where enemies, predators and prey will all lie down together and be at peace. For Isaiah, he is looking at something that seems dead or dying, and he is hoping that new life will yet spring up from it. This is not an unfounded hope. It is, in fact, the hope of our calling as Christians. It can be true for society, and it can be true for own lives as well. As another writer puts it, “According to Isaiah, the transformation from a culture of fear to a world at peace begins with a stump. Out of something that appears finished, lifeless, left-behind, comes the sign of new life—a green sprig. This is how hope gets its start-it emerges as a tiny tendril in an unexpected place.”i Much like my now resurrected bromeliad-which went from being a pile of dirt in Selina’s yard to a newly re-potted plant in my office (where plants go to die!). I became curious about this bromeliad resurrection, so I’ve been doing some research. Apparently, there is a saying in the northern counties of England where something is described as being “wick.” This basically means that it is alive or lively. In the classic book The Secret Garden, Dickon teaches Mary how to determine if something is “wick”—meaning that it looks to be dead on the outside, but then when you prune it or cut deeper, you can see that there is still life and growth there. (There’s even a whole song about this in the musical version of The Secret Garden). “Bear fruit worthy of repentance” John the Baptist tells his listeners. What if, for us, that involved reflection during Advent about what containers our lives may have outgrown that may be slowly killing us? What if it meant a closer examination of the stumps of our lives—those places that appear to be dead—to look for possible signs of new life there? What if it meant examining our old, dead dreams and seeing them in the light of God’s hope, looking for ways that God may be resurrecting them, recreating them, to help us become agents of God’s peace and justice in this world that desperately needs signs of hope and new life? What if it means looking for signs that something is wick when it appears to be lifeless, dead, useless? Your invitation this week is to look for shoots that grow out of stumps, things that you once thought were dead which may exhibit signs of life. iFrom Feasting of the Word for the Isaiah passage for this week. I don’t have the book with me to cite author and page. Sorry!

Last Sun after Pentecost-Christ the King Proper 29C

Last Sunday after Pentecost/Christ the King-Proper 29C November 24, 2019 Today is the last Sunday after Pentecost, the last Sunday in our season of ordinary time, and the last Sunday of the church year. In our church, this Sunday is designed to lift up the theme of Christ as King or the Reign of Christ, and then we move next Sunday into a whole new church year and into the season of Advent with its themes of waiting and hope, of expectation and longing. So what does it mean to say that Christ is King on this day? Our readings give us three depictions of kingship that are startling in their differences. For Jeremiah, a true king is one who is responsible for the people and should not allow them to be scattered through ruin and disaster. True kingship is the promise of one who will not only gather up those who are scattered but he will also fulfill the kingly task of bringing all people together and being present with all people. In the hymn to Christ, the writer of Colossians gives us a poetic smattering of images of Christ’s kingship: his glorious power, his inheritance of light, the image of the invisible God, first born of all creation; “he is before all things and in him all things hold together;” in him the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him God reconciled all things to God. It is a high and lofty expression of what it means to see Christ as King as compared to the humble shepherd depicted in Jeremiah, except that both images of king involve bringing people together in and through God. Then suddenly we find ourselves right in the middle of Jesus’s crucifixion from Luke’s gospel, and we see Jesus being mocked by his tormentors and ridiculed in his kingship. We witness his humiliation, and his sublime power as he forgives again and again and again. From the cross he forgives those who crucified him; those who stood by and watched; those who betrayed him; those who mocked him; those who failed him. “Father forgive them [all] for they don’t know what they are doing.” And we see him honor the thief’s request and his confession of faith as he grants him a place in his kingdom. So how do these three different pictures of Christ’s kingship come together to inform us and help us in our relationship with God? My husband used to like to share a quote that I never knew where it came from. I recently learned that the original quote is from a Religious News Journalist named Cathleen Falsani. The quote is “Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. And grace is getting what you absolutely don't deserve. ...... benign good will. unprovoked compassion. the unearnable gift” (read it a 2nd time) The Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes about this topic in his meditation for today, where he talked about the difference between our economy—capitalism, where everything we have is earned—and God’s economy, where nothing that we have is earned; everything that we have is, instead, a free gift from God.i Jesus Christ’s kingship is characterized by mercy, by forgiveness, by 2nd chances. It is in and through mercy that he gathers up all us wayward sheep and restores us together in and through God. As another writer put it, Jesus is the “king of second chances.” Think about something that you would like to have a second chance for. The mercy of Jesus, the kingship of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus means that there will always be room for a 2nd chance in the Kingdom of God. And it means that as citizens of that kingdom, we must also practice mercy and forgiveness. Think of someone you know who may not deserve your mercy, your forgiveness, and think about how, as a citizen of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of mercy and reconciliation, you might begin to offer it. Your invitation this week is two-fold. First, it is to be mindful that you dwell in the realm of Christ the King, where nothing is earned and all is freely given. Second, it is to look for opportunities to both ask for and offer second chances to those whom you find yourself cross-wise with. i. https://cac.org/the-gospel-economy-2019-11-24/

23rd Sun after Pentecost-Proper 28C

23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28C November 17, 2019 Behold, I am doing a new thing, says the Lord God to Israel. Israel, who has been taken into captivity for generations in Babylon, is now being delivered back to their home land, the land promised to their father Abraham and his subsequent generations. They have faced heartbreak and what must have seemed like the end of the world, and God is assuring them that God is doing a new thing for them. Our readings for today are a reminder to us that it is always God who is doing the new thing, even when it is tempting to think that we are the ones doing the new thing. It is God who does the new thing, and God will do it, sometimes with or without us, but what our readings drive home for us today is that always, no matter what, our job is to show up and to try to be faithful. “Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right,” the writer of 2nd Thessalonians exhorts the discouraged community, the community who has expected Jesus’ return and who has been frustrated in that expectation. And who has seen strife in the community as a result of that. And Luke’s Jesus warns his disciples that it’s going to feel like the end of the world for them; they’re going to be persecuted; the temple will be destroyed. And still, they are supposed to show up and be faithful: “By your endurance you will gain your souls” he tells them. I have found in my own life of faith that it is so much easier to show up and continue to be faithful when God’s new creation is clear and evident—like it seems now for us here at St. Thomas. Our pledges are up; we’ve got great energy, are connecting new people to the good news of Jesus Christ through this community, and we are doing interesting, creative ministry together. Life is good here and it is easy for me to see God’s new creation at work in and among us. But there have been times in my life of faith when it has felt like the end of the world, when just showing up and being faithful seems to be more than I have left in me to give. And those are the times when it is most important, to continue to be faithful to the tradition that we have received from the apostles, to join together in prayer and in worship, breaking bread together—showing up and being faithful. Because often, in those darkest times, in our fear and our discouragement and in our heartbreak, it is through our showing up and being faithful that God reveals to us the new thing that God is already at work and doing in our lives, in our churches, in our diocese, in the world. I am just back from the 198th Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia where, among other things, we elected Frank Logue as the 11th bishop of Georgia on the first ballot. Truly God is doing a new thing in the diocese of Georgia as Scott Benhase’s episcopate moves toward an end and Frank’s is beginning. But it is important for all of us to remember that it is God who is doing the new thing, not any of us-from the bishop on down to the people in the pews (and all of us in between). And it is also important to remember that we are called to show up and to be faithful, to not grow weary in doing what is right. I was especially reminded of this truth by the youth of our diocese who wrote prayers for our morning worship this morning. These prayers are all about what it means for each of us to be faithful, and I’ll share them with you in closing, even as I plan to pray them in the coming days. A Prayer in Thanksgiving for Bishop Scott A. Benhase, 10th Bishop of Georgia We thank you God for Bishop Benhase and the many wonderful ways he has served you through the Diocese of Georgia. Bless him as he gets ready for his retirement, with overwhelming joy and great love. May Bishop Benhase know that the impact he has had on the Diocese of Georgia will always be appreciated and honored. We ask that you bless Bishop Benhase with happiness and health for him and his family. May he continue to serve you and show your love through his actions, words, and way of life. Amen. A Prayer for Bishop-Elect Frank Logue, elected to become the 11th Bishop of Georgia Please help our Bishop-Elect, Frank Logue, as he embarks on this new journey that you have set for him. Help his wife, Victoria, and their daughter Griffin adjust to this change. Help him to continue to lead our diocese in your way. Keep Frank safe as he travels from church to church. Help keep him strong in his faith during this transition and keep him in your eye. Amen. A Prayer for the Diocese of Georgia in this Time of Transition Watch over our diocese as we adjust to our new bishop. We pray that our hearts may be open to his new way of leadership. May we not be hasty to criticize his new ways. May we show our Bishop support and offer our work and our guidance that there may be a smooth transition for him and for our whole Diocese. Amen. A Prayer for Our Communities during this Transition This time may be challenging for us and our communities, and so we pray for those communities, asking you to ensure a positive future for us all. We pray that this change does not get the better of us, and that our communities remain intact. We pray that our congregations will remain faithful and free from the sin of resentment. Above all, Lord, we pray that good will come out of this change and that our communities will be blessed with new ideas and ways to bring a positive difference in our world. Lord, we pray that we will all remain good stewards in your name. Amen.

The Sunday after All Saints' 2019

Sunday after All Saints’ Year C November 3, 2019 Years ago, I attended a Stewardship Summit where the speaker asked us a question. He asked us to think about the first memory that we each had about money. He gave us time to think about that, and then we talked about it in table discussions. Think about it for a second. What is the first memory you have about money? Then, after we talked about that, he asked us to think about how that first memory of money is connected to how we understand God? It’s a strange concept, right? What on earth does our first memory of money have to do with our understanding of God? My first memory of money is one that came easily to my mind that first time I heard this question. I was a young child, maybe 5 or 6? and I had started taking piano lessons, but my family did not have a piano. One day, I remember my paternal grandfather, who was a Methodist minister we called “Pop,” telling me that he was going to start saving the quarters from his pocket change every day to help me buy a piano. And not long after that, Pop took me on a little trip. He and I went to the Citizens’ Bank in Columbia, Mississippi, where he lived, and he opened a bank account with his collected quarters, with both of our names on the account. I was given this little blue bank book which he would write all the deposits in, until, one day, we had saved enough to buy me a piano. When I grew older, I never thought to ask my grandfather why he did that—helping me buy a piano and putting my name on the account with his, even though I didn’t contribute a single quarter (although I do remember finding quarters in their house and bringing them to him and telling him I’d found another for our bank account). But I suspect that for him, there were similar themes that we will hear when Bobby Minis speaks in a few moments: the ribbons of gratitude and generosity and love woven throughout. And what this story says about my understanding of God is that God’s love is so abundant and so overflowing that it is God’s very nature to need to give. And God gives joyfully, thankfully, and God invites us to be full partners in giving as well. We, who are created in the image and likeness of God, need to give. Nothing that we have is really ours, but God gives us a full and equal share—the inheritance of the saints (as the writer to the letter to the Ephesians calls it), and we are not truly fulfilled until we also, in turn, give. One of the things that I discovered that day at the stewardship summit was that I was not unique in having a story that involved a family member or loved one or fellow church member in my first memory of money. Everyone who shared around our table learned something from someone else about money and this informed their understanding of God. Today, we celebrate the feast of All Saints’, one of the 7 major feasts in the life of our church. It’s a time when we give thanks for all those who, (as one of our Wednesday service participants put it), “have held our hands along the way”. These are the folks who have lived lives of faithfulness, and whose faith has shaped ours, even if we have not personally known them. And even though they have passed beyond the veil of this life, they are still with us, and we are all connected and united together in the body of Christ, invited by God to be full participants in that life, even though we have earned none of it. The inheritance of the saints includes them and it includes us, even now. This week, I invite you to ponder a number of things. Think about your first memory of money and what that says about your understanding of God. Think about what saints in your life had a hand in teaching you those things. What have the saints in your life taught you about God? About gratitude? About generosity? And then, as we all prepare for our Consecration Sunday commitment next Sunday, where we will gather in worship and turn in our commitment cards for the year and then break bread together at God’s altar and at table for lunch together, think about how you have been created by God to give, and how it is a practice of faithful discipleship of Jesus for us to be intentional in our giving, paying attention to what percentage of our income we give and giving to God through the church of the first fruits of our life and not merely what is left over. In just a minute, you will each be invited forward to light a candle. That candle can represent the one who first taught you about money, about God. It can represent other saints who have held your hand along the way. As you light the candle, think of at least one saint for whom you are grateful, whose life has shown a light in your life and faith, and know, as you light the candle, that you participate in the inheritance of the saints, even now, as your life shines for the light of God’s abundant generosity.

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.

13th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 18C

13th Sunday after Pentecost—Proper 18C September 8, 2019 Sacrifice—it almost has become a dirty word in our culture. Even the definition from Miriam-Webster is kind of scary: “an act or offering to a deity of something precious; especially the killing of a victim on an altar.” Yikes! Our lectionary crafters and the gospel writer of Luke seem to be unrelenting in confronting us with a Jesus whose words are extreme, uncomfortable—words about hating those whom we hold dearest, words about counting the cost, taking up crosses, and yes, that unpopular notion of sacrifice. Even in the church, where we talk about Jesus’s sacrifice every single week, sacrifice has become almost taboo. Feminist and liberation theologians remind us that for a long time the concept of sacrifice was used to subjugate people—especially women and poor people and people of color, and the people who weren’t in power. We were told that it was our Christian duty to sacrifice, and for many, many years the church wielded that notion over people. Now, the church is afraid to talk about sacrifice because 1. It’s not popular, and 2. People have so much competing for their time and attention and resources, and we fear that such an unpopular notion will drive them away, back out into a world that eagerly touts the joys of easy convenience and instant gratification. But you know what? I’m not afraid of talking about sacrifice with you or with others because I see you, and you are already sacrificing. I see you parents who give up almost every weekend you have in order for your children to enjoy the benefits of competitive sports. I see you who work grueling hours at jobs that do not feed your soul so that you may have the money and the resources to do what you need to do. I see you older folks who live on fixed incomes and sometimes have to choose between food and medicines at the end of some months, or those of you who must choose what you are able to do and accomplish within the growing limits of your physical capabilities. I see you who wake up at ungodly early hours of the day to exercise; I see you who are attentive to what you put into your bodies in an effort to lose weight or to be healthy. And of course, being a part of a community such as the church often means choosing between our own ideologies and the needs of others. Yes, you all know much of sacrifice already. And why is it that you are making these difficult choices? It is because certain things, people, relationships are important to you. We sacrifice for what is most important or most valuable to us. Over and over again in the gospels, Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is here now, that eternal life begins now. This means that being a Christian—a follower or disciple of Jesus on the way isn’t about what we think or “believe.” It is about how we live and love and order our priorities, and it is about what we allow to possess us. “You sacrifice according to your priorities. And in today’s [gospel] passage Jesus is saying the Kingdom of God he proclaims and the kingdom life he exemplifies should be a priority, actually be the priority. So maybe we should contemporize Jesus’s parable and ask, ‘What parent wouldn’t count the cost before signing up for the traveling soccer team, and what new employee wouldn’t consider whether she is willing to work every weekend her first year?’ You are already making sacrifices in your lives, and Jesus tells us that Christian discipleship or the Christian life calls for the same.”i Years ago, I heard Bishop Greg Rickel from the Diocese of Olympia speak about stewardship, and I was completely confronted when he talked about the incredible importance of telling the truth in our churches. He said to us, “How often do we say, “We didn’t have enough money, time, resources, energy to do_________(whatever, you fill in the blank). But the truth is really that we didn’t choose to spend our money, time, resources, energy to do that.” And I was caught short, confronted by this important difference because I know this is so very true for my own life. How many times do I say in one week, “I didn’t have enough time to do that.” When really the truth is that I didn’t choose to spend my time that way. So the question that Jesus is inviting all of us to examine this week, with his challenging demanding words is “How do I choose to spend my life?” And the reality of God is that God takes whatever small portion of our lives that we offer to God, and God multiplies it one thousand-fold. God accepts our scarcity and transforms it into abundance because joyful abundance is God’s nature. But deep down we still know that we have chosen to offer God only this tiny bit, when we have so much more that we are choosing to spend elsewhere. And we are ashamed, and that becomes even more of an impediment that we put between us and God. Jesus calls us beyond that. He calls us to examine our lives, the use of our time, the way we spend our money, those priorities and people we hold most dear. He invites us to say honestly—not I didn’t have enough…but rather this is what I chose. But he also invites us to sacrifice more for our relationship with God—because no matter how important these other people and priorities might seem to us now, when all pieces of this life are stripped away, it is only this—your uniquely created self and God. That is the most important thing there is. That is the essence of eternal life. So this day and this week, may we all be unafraid to speak the truth about our lives. To count the cost. To look at our lives, our calendars, our commitments, our titles, our relationships, our material goods, our bank accounts and to really and truly examine how we are spending our lives. And then let us prayerfully consider what God is inviting us to sacrifice in order to grow more deeply and more fully in the knowledge and love of God and in living a life of following Jesus. i.David Lose from his blog http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2726

12th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17C

12th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 17C September 1, 2019 This past week was the anniversary of the death of Emmett Till. Till was a 14 year old African-American boy who was visiting the Mississippi Delta from his home in Chicago when he allegedly whistled at a white woman and was then murdered for it. Historians believe that Till’s lynching and his mother’s insistence upon a public funeral and an open casket sparked the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement and the beginning of the way that America wrestles with racism and the horror our society has inflicted upon people of African descent since the days of slavery. This past week, an article on NPR talked about how Mississippi continues to wrestle with how to tell the Emmet Till story. The headline of the news story was “'Why Don't Y'all Let That Die?' Telling The Emmett Till Story In Mississippi,” and the article talks about how the historical marker that has been placed near where Till’s body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River has been removed from the spot after repeated vandalisms—the most recent being captured in a photo of the sign riddled with bullet holes and three fraternity brothers from Ole Miss posing beside it smiling and holding guns. I was especially struck by commentary from two different men in the article. The first one said, “‘The question of who gets to tell the Emmett Till story is a charged question’ says Dave Tell, a professor at the University of Kansas and author of Remembering Emmett Till. ‘There is way more at stake than simply a history lesson on what happened in 1955," Tell says. "Because it matters morally who gets to tell it, and it matters financially who gets to tell it." Reilly Morse, president of the Mississippi Center for Justice, which is supporting the efforts by others to have “Bryant’s Grocery and other sites associated with Till's lynching protected as part of the National Park Service, says that for decades, there has been a reluctance to draw attention to the building.” " ‘It's just a symptom of America's struggle to come to grips with its history of racial brutality,’ Morse says. ‘And for folks that live here, there's been, over generations I think, a tendency to sweep it all under the rug to the extent possible. And there's shame attached to it.’"i In our Old Testament reading for this week, we see the importance of remembering and telling stories, the power of who gets to tell the story, which shapes how it is told, and the effects of shame on the story. Our reading from Jeremiah continues as a covenant court case that has been brought by Yahweh against Israel, saying that Israel has forsaken the covenant they had with Yahweh and Yahweh is blameless in all that is unfolding. In our reading for today, the prophet speaks on behalf of Yahweh saying, “What wrong did your ancestors find in me/ that they went far from me,/ and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?/ They did not say, "Where is the Lord/ who brought us up from the land of Egypt,/ who led us in the wilderness,/ in a land of deserts and pits,/ in a land of drought and deep darkness,/ in a land that no one passes through,/ where no one lives?"/ I brought you into a plentiful land/ to eat its fruits and its good things./ But when you entered you defiled my land,/ and made my heritage an abomination./ The priests did not say, "Where is the Lord?"/ Those who handle the law did not know me;/ the rulers transgressed against me;/ the prophets prophesied by Baal,/ and went after things that do not profit./ Therefore once more I accuse you, says the Lord,/ and I accuse your children's children./ Yahweh is the one who is telling the story here, and Yahweh is complaining that the all the people of Israel, including the most faithful, have forgotten the story of their salvation and their deliverance by Yahweh’s hand. How we tell stories matters; there’s power in that, and when our stories are colored by shame, then we tend to want to forget them, sweep them under the rug, pretend like they didn’t happen. That is a normal human emotion going all the way back to at least the 600’s BC when this portion of Jeremiah was written. Sociologist Brene Brown has conducted thousands of hours of research on shame, and she writes about it extensively. She writes about how the antidote to shame is actually vulnerability (which is counter-intuitive). And she helps people cultivate shame-resilience through four elements: 1. Recognizing when we feel shame and learning our triggers. 2. Practicing critical awareness. 3. Reaching out and telling our story. 4. Speaking about shame, which shines the light on it and helps it lose its power over us. All of these elements come together to help us become more of our authentic selves and to develop more meaningful relationships with others.ii This is all actually what Jesus is referring to in his party advice in parable form from today’s gospel: don’t think too much of yourself and really, don’t think too little of yourself either. Show up in authenticity, self-awareness, and some humility, and relationships will be strengthened. How we tell our stories matters. There is great power in that, and it informs how we show up—either in shame or in authenticity. Did you know that there are many times that I’ve heard people in this church tell our story with shame? It hurts me to see it because I love this church and I love y’all, and it is not an authentic telling of our story, when we let it be colored by shame. It usually starts with “well, we are just a small church, we couldn’t possibly do….” Or it manifests itself in a longing for more—usually more of who we think we used to be—more people, more young families, more children.” Our true story that is not colored by shame is that God has already given us everything that we need; God has sustained us and will continue to sustain us because God is faithful. Jesus Christ has promised to be present with us whenever we gather, and one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit that is manifest in this place (actually, mentioned in the Hebrews reading for today) is the gift of divine hospitality—where people are welcomed and made to feel at home. This week, this church will kick-off CAST-Co-Op at St. Thomas. It is a boldly courageous and bodacious experiment to create a place of hospitality and authenticity for the community outside our church’s doors. Many people have given many hours of their lives to helping bring this about, and of course, we all want it to succeed. But that’s not the point. The point is that this offering can help us change how we tell our story, to move away from saying “oh, we’re just a small church” to saying “God is with us, and God is faithful, and God has already given and will continue to give us all that we need”. That gives us courage to try new things and to offer the gift of hospitality which has been given us by the Holy Spirit to a world that is in need of just that.” Your invitation this week is to think about how you tell your story. What parts of it do you try to hide because they are colored by shame? How might letting the light of God’s love shine on those be a healing balm to move you toward courage, connection, and greater vulnerability? i.https://www.npr.org/2019/08/28/755024458/why-don-t-y-all-let-that-die-telling-the-emmett-till-story-in-mississippi?utm_term=nprnews&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR14IEeVXXAXcJFzjiTXbDhrBg6JCgy6Llq9PK_lrfJF7GcJiaYjvRvAIMA ii.Synopsis of Brene Brown’s work is paraphrased from https://www.habitsforwellbeing.com/shame-resilience-theory/

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16C

11th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16C August 25, 2019 I read an obituary this week that was unlike any obituary I’ve ever read. Here’s how it begins. “Gary Bean. Knoxville - To the owner of the big skinny dog that disappeared from your North Knoxville front yard where you had chained her to a picnic table: Gary Bean stole her. He was working in your neighborhood and would slow down and look every time he'd drive past your house. He considered talking to you about it, but you were never around, and it didn't take him long to decide that anybody mean enough to treat a dog like that wasn't worth talking to anyway, so he applied bolt cutter to chain, loaded her into his truck and went on the lam. She had a home and a new name by the weekend. Her new people called her Maggie and loved her for the rest of her life, which was doubtless way longer than it would have been if she'd stayed chained to your picnic table. That was many years ago, and the dog stealing statute has long since run, so there's nothing you can do about it now, if you're still around. And even if you are, Gary's out of your reach. He died last Thursday without ever once regretting setting Maggie free. Truth to tell, you probably weren't his only victim. Gary never met a critter he didn't love and wasn't about to let technicalities stop him from acting on his convictions.”i The obituary then goes on in the usual manner. Part of me really admires Gary Bean and his dog-stealing obituary confession and all its bravado. We Americans all have at least a little amount of rebellion in our DNA, so we can appreciate someone who “was not about to let technicalities stop him from acting on his convictions.” But then there’s the other part; the oldest child part of me. There was an image going around a while ago that talks about birth order in families and the ways that siblings deal with or adhere to “the rules.” The image has a picture of three siblings with a caption by each that reads: “I’m the oldest-I make the rules.” “I’m the middle –I’m the reason we had rules.” And “I’m the youngest-the rules don’t apply to me.” The part of me that is still the oldest child reads Gary Beans obituary and is slightly horrified because not only did he break the law and steal someone’s dog, he defiantly confessed it in his obituary! (An oldest child would never, ever brag about breaking the rules in such a public fashion!) So there’s a good part of me that really sympathizes with the leader of the synagogue in today’s gospel reading. (He was most likely an oldest child like me. You can tell this by his emphasis on the rules.) Because, y’all, there is a reason that we have rules or laws. In fact, this particular law that the leader of the synagogue is so upset about—the law about not doing work on the Sabbath—was given to the Israelites after God has freed them from slavery in Egypt. Think about it. Slaves don’t get a day off. God is telling them, “You are no longer slaves, and as a part of that, I am giving you a day of rest so that you may remember the goodness of your creation and that I am God and you are not.” The Sabbath is a gift from God- a day of rest and renewal, and the laws were created to make sure that every person had equal access to the Sabbath and the rest and renewal that is offered through it. God gave the people the law about the Sabbath to give people freedom and to encourage wellness. And while it’s easy for us to judge Jews for the ways they keep Sabbath which may seem overly extravagant to us, we only have to look at the shift in Sabbath keeping culture among Christians over the last generation, to see that we, too, need laws and practices to protect us from ourselves! This is what we oldest children have been saying all along: once you start bending the rules for one person, then it just becomes a willy-nilly free-for-all and society breaks down into a kind of lawlessness where people steal other peoples’ dogs and brag about it in their obituaries. If we are really honest, each of us has a little bit of the oldest sibling, the synagogue leader in us. Each of us has laws that we think are sacrosanct, that can never and should never be broken. And we are prepared to rain down fire on those who would break those laws. But then, in comes Jesus, who doesn’t necessarily break the law but revisions it. He offers grace and mercy to this woman whom he refers to as a daughter of Abraham, and he asks why should she live even one more day bent over and unable to stand up straight after having lived this way for 18 long years. Another preacher has said of this passage: “The law matters because it helps us order our lives and keep the peace. The law matters because it sets needed boundaries that create room in which we can flourish. The law matters because it encourages us -- sometimes even goads us -- to look beyond ourselves so that we might love and care for our neighbor. But as important as law is -- and notice that Jesus doesn’t set aside the law but rather offers a different interpretation of it -- it must always bow to mercy, to life, to freedom. Law helps us live our lives better, but grace creates life itself. Law helps order our world, but grace is what holds the world together. Law pushes us to care for each other, but grace restores us to each other when we’ve failed in the law.” He concludes, “Jesus came preaching the kingdom of God, and while the law helps us make sense of and get more out of life in the kingdom of the world, it must always bend to the grace that constitutes the abundant life Jesus proclaims. For above and beyond all the laws ever received or conceived, the absolute law is love: love God and love your neighbor. Or, perhaps, love God by loving your neighbor.”ii Your invitation this week is to think about laws that you hold to be most sacred. Or think about laws that have been much in our common discourse lately. And then in and through prayer, be in God’s presence with that law and invite God to help you see the grace beyond the law, the ways that law invites or even goads you beyond yourself and your own justification to see how God is calling you to better love and care for your neighbor. i. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/knoxnews/obituary.aspx?n=gary-bean&pid=193629892& ii. David Lose. “The Law of Love.” Sunday, August 18, 2013. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2699