2nd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 4B

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 2nd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 4B June 2, 2024 There’s a story by the Irish priest John O’Donohue in his book Anam Cara that goes like this: “There is a lovely story of a man exploring Africa. He was in a desperate hurry on a journey through the jungle. He had three or four Africans helping him carry his equipment. They raced onward for about three days. At the end of the third day, the Africans sat down and would not move. He urged them to get up, telling them of the pressure he was under to reach his destination before a certain date. They refused to move. He could not understand this; after much persuasion, they still refused to move. Finally, he got one of them to admit the reason. The native said, ‘We have moved too quickly to reach here; now we need to wait to give our spirits a chance to catch up with us.’” i Do you know this feeling of traveling faster than your soul can go? We are a culture that glorifies the art of busy-ness. We fill every spare moment of our day with doing, for ourselves, for others. We rush and hustle and produce and buy and text and scroll. But have you ever stopped and wondered why we do this? Why do I do this? Why do you do this? I suspect that it is because we have been taught that our value lies only in our productivity and because being busy means we don’t have time or energy to face certain truths about ourselves, our families, the world we live in. Busy-ness is a highly effective avoidance tactic. We are so programmed to go, go, go, and it becomes harder and harder to stop. Although, every once in a while, gradually increasing as we age, life does make us stop. But then what do we do? When we finally stop, we have to become reacquainted with ourselves, who have become strangers. Our faith has an antidote to this. It’s called Sabbath. Sabbath is from the Hebrew word shabbat which means “rest,” or literally “to cease,” and it is a concept woven throughout the Old Testament: as a gift from God at creation and as a practice we can employ to imitate God, as a reminder of what it means to be free for the formerly-enslaved Hebrew people being led out of Egypt. Keeping sabbath is so important that it is one of the 10 commandments. In our gospel reading for today, Jesus is disputing the meaning of sabbath with the religious leaders of his day, and he says, “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath…” As another writer puts it, “Jesus presses his opponents — and disciples like us! — to look deeper. The animating objective of the sabbath, Jesus contends, the reason God established and commanded it in the first place, is for the sake of vibrant, healthy life in beloved community.” ii In an unexpected way, keeping sabbath is similar to the difference between speaking and listening. I suspect we all have had experiences in relationships where everyone is speaking and noone is listening. (In fact, I think this is an accurate characterization of our country’s current political climate.) This happens in our relationship with God as well. Many of us spend our time in prayer speaking—interceding for others, petitioning for ourselves and our world, giving thanks or offering confession. But prayers of listening to God are different. We see this in our Old Testament lesson for today, where the old prophet Eli teaches the young student Samuel how to offer to God a listening prayer when God keeps calling Samuel, and Samuel doesn’t understand what is happening. Eli says to Samuel: “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’” Listening is about creating space for relationship. And listening prayer often yields greater space and depth and unexpected creativity and generativity. Keeping sabbath is similar in that it helps create space for us to listen to our lives, to our souls, to our significant relationships. So how do we keep sabbath? What are some ways that we can stop and listen to our lives, to come home to ourselves? I recently came across 10 Core Principles for keeping sabbath that are found on a website called Sabbath Manifesto which is a “creative project designed to slow down lives in an increasingly hectic world.” Much like the biblical concept of sabbath, they encourage people to take one day a week to practice keeping sabbath, and they invite people to interpret and implement 10 core principles that support this work of keeping sabbath. They are: 1. Avoid technology. 2. Connect with loved ones. 3. Nurture your health. 4. Get outside. 5. Avoid commerce. 6. Light candles. 7. Drink wine. 8. Eat bread. 9. Find silence. 10. Give back. iii Your challenge for this week is to pay attention to your normal rhythms of life and find a way to keep sabbath, to stop for a set period of time. Practice keeping sabbath by interpreting and applying one of the 10 principles to your own life. Then talk to someone about how that affected how you kept sabbath. In closing, I’ll share with you a blessing written by John O’Donahue that captures the heart of how sabbath rest can heal us. (You might want to close your eyes as you listen.) A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic, Time takes on the strain until it breaks; Then all the unattended stress falls in On the mind like an endless, increasing weight. The light in the mind becomes dim. Things you could take in your stride before Now become laborsome events of will. Weariness invades your spirit. Gravity begins falling inside you, Dragging down every bone. The tide you never valued has gone out. And you are marooned on unsure ground. Something within you has closed down; And you cannot push yourself back to life. You have been forced to enter empty time. The desire that drove you has relinquished. There is nothing else to do now but rest And patiently learn to receive the self You have forsaken in the race of days. At first your thinking will darken And sadness take over like listless weather. The flow of unwept tears will frighten you. You have traveled too fast over false ground; Now your soul has come to take you back. Take refuge in your senses, open up To all the small miracles you rushed through. Become inclined to watch the way of rain When it falls slow and free. Imitate the habit of twilight, Taking time to open the well of color That fostered the brightness of day. Draw alongside the silence of stone Until its calmness can claim you. Be excessively gentle with yourself. Stay clear of those vexed in spirit. Learn to linger around someone of ease Who feels they have all the time in the world. Gradually, you will return to yourself, Having learned a new respect for your heart And the joy that dwells far within slow time. iv i. O’Donohue, John. Anam Cara: A book of Celtic Wisdom. Cliff Street: 1997, 151. ii. SALT's Lectionary Commentary, Revised Common Lectionary, Proper 4, Year B, Proper 4B (saltproject.org) iii. Sabbath Manifesto iv. O’Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us.

The Day of Pentecost-Year B

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg The Feast of Pentecost-Year B May 19, 2024 When my youngest brother was in preschool, he and his class went on a field trip to the Diocesan camp for a picnic. (It was a short drive from our hometown.) When he came home that evening, all he could talk about was one event out of the long day: when his classmate Noble Mosby had been attacked by a wild goose. I can still see my young brother telling this horror story with his big, round eyes, and how the most chilling part of the tale wasn’t when poor Noble got attacked, but it was when the teacher went to pick Noble up, and the goose went with him because it refused to let go. I’ve been thinking about this story a lot this week; I’ll explain more about that in a moment. Today is a major feast in the life of the church: the Feast Day of Pentecost. (The British refer to it as Whitsunday, so that’s a nod to our Church of England heritage that we include it as part of the name.) Pentecost was originally celebrated as the Jewish Festival of Weeks, also known as Shavuot (pronounced “sha-voo-OAT,”) that occurred 50 days after Passover and represented a sort of homecoming, for Jewish people to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This is why there are “devout Jews from every nation” present in our Acts reading for today. We see the origins of the Christian celebration of Pentecost captured in that same Acts reading today. It’s 50 days after Easter Day, the Day of Resurrection. The disciples are once again all gathered together, and the Holy Spirit descends upon them with the sound “like the rush of a violent wind.” Acts tells us that “divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them”. And that “all of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.” It’s why fire and wind are often associated with the Holy Spirit and why we wear our flame colors today. Throughout the years, other images have been associated with the Holy Spirit. The dove, which descends upon Jesus in his baptism with the gift of the Spirit, is one image often associated with the Holy Spirit. In the gospel reading for today, the word that is translated as Advocate is a Greek word “paraclete” which doesn’t have a direct translation, so along with advocate, it can be translated as helper, comforter, or even counselor. The closest literal translation is “one called alongside.” (Paraclete is only found in John’s gospel and once in the first letter of John.) We see this image of Holy Spirit as comforter lifted up throughout this portion of John as Jesus continues to reassure his disciples that he will not leave them as orphans, and it is lifted up in our collect for today when we pray: “Grant us by the same Spirit to have a right judgment in all things, and evermore to rejoice in his holy comfort…” i It's a nice image, isn’t it? I like to picture how when things get challenging for us, the Holy Spirit might wrap us in a nice, soft throw blanket and bring us a cup of tea for a bit of respite. And while that does happen occasionally, when I talked to people about their experiences with the Holy Spirit, it’s not usually like that at all. They talked about doing things that they didn’t necessarily want to do but felt moved to do, after a sort of relentless insistence from the Holy Spirit. They talked about energy and heat, about creativity out of chaos; others have talked to me about how the Holy Spirit gives them persistent spiritual taps on the shoulder. They talked about how things come together in the most unexpected ways. This week, I read this quote by the writer Jason Byasee: “Another translation of Paraclete is as the ‘Comforter’…The image in English is altogether too placid, restful. Celtic Christians have long imagined the Holy Spirit as a wild goose—loud, demanding, aggressive if necessary, but not at all calm or quiet.” ii (You thought I’d forgotten about the goose, didn’t you?) The Holy Spirit as a wild goose….It’s an image of chaos and disruption, of persistence and insistence. But geese are also fiercely loyal and protective. They look out for each other, and they make good watch animals. (There’s a story in Celtic lore of how a flock of geese helped foil a Celtic invasion of Rome by alerting the Romans of the sneak attack by the invaders.) The Celtic Christians even had a saying about this image of the Holy Spirit: “the goose is on the loose!” (It’s a little bit terrifying!) The goose is on the loose! Today we close the door on the Easter season, and we are aware that this seeming end is only the beginning. The Holy Spirit is even now at work in our lives, in the Church, in the world. The goose is on the loose in ways beyond what we could even ask for or imagine: chaotic, disruptive, creative, insistent. And just like poor Noble Mosby, once that mama goose gets ahold of us, she will not let go! I see it here all the time: how creative endeavors turn out differently (and often better) than planned. How we have been forced to adapt to a changing world and culture, and even when it is hard, there comes a vitality in the wrestling. We see it in how the Holy Spirit continues to send us new people, people looking for a home, and how we continue to be challenged to create space for home for others. We see it in an insistent tug to look outside ourselves, beyond these walls and this property, to dream about how the Holy Spirit is urging us to share our joy with a needy world, to create a space of belonging, a gathering place for this neighborhood, this community. (For those who volunteer with children’s chapel, you see the Holy Spirit very much in that scarcely controlled chaos. It’s why we clergy always come back a bit disheveled from that experience.) The goose is on the loose! Where are the places of chaos or disruption in your life right now? How might the Holy Spirit be insisting that you move into a new direction? Where are you seeing the goose on the loose here in this church, and how are you being called to respond? i.Some information from this section came from the Exegetical Perspective by Paul Hammer on p 21 and 23 of Feasting on the Word Commentary Year B Vol 3 (WKJ: 2009). ii.Haverkamp, Heidi. Everyday Connections: Reflections and Practices for Year B. WJK: Lousiville, 2023, p 513.

The Sixth Sunday of Easter Year B-Meditation on Joy

The Rev. Melanie Dickson Lemburg The Sixth Sunday after Easter-Year B May 6, 2024 In his long-goodbye to his disciples, in this second half of the Easter season where we focus on Jesus’s teachings around what intimacy with God looks like, Jesus says, “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” Part of Jesus’s final blessing or wish for us is joy. So I want us to reflect on joy for a few minutes here. And I’ll give you time to ponder the questions I ask. How do you define joy? When’s the last time you experienced joy? What did joy feel like in your body? Is Jesus’s joy different from ours? How? Our Wednesday healing service community reflected on these questions, and they observed that joy often bubbles up in them through connections with other people, God, or nature. It is often a brief feeling of effervescence, and it is often connected with gratitude in some form or fashion. They spoke about encountering joy in small, mundane ways, and they talked about how one you start paying attention to joy, then it seems to become more readily available. Sociologist Brene Brown writes about joy in her book Atlas of the Heart (after conducting thousands of hours of research around all the human emotions). It’s in her chapter titled Places We Go When Live is Good: “joy is sudden, unexpected, short-lasting, and high-intensity. It’s characterized by connection with others, or with God, nature, or the universe. Joy expands our thinking and attention, and it fills us with a sense of freedom and abandon.” “While experiencing joy, we don’t lose ourselves, we become more truly ourselves.” And finally, she writes about how research shows that joy and gratitude work together in “an intriguing upward spiral.” The two are interconnected and an increase of one leads to an increase of the other.i. So I’ll ask the questions again: How do you define joy? When’s the last time you experienced joy? What did joy feel like in your body? Is Jesus’s joy different from ours? How? This week, I invite you to pay attention to your moments of joy, and to lean into gratitude in those moments. i. Brown, Brene’. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connections and the Language of Human Experience. Random House: New York, 2021, pp 204-205.