I’ve got some good news!
The beginning of some good news at least... as Mark says “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
Starting with what we hear in 2nd Peter:
The day of the Lord will come like a thief
•the heavens will pass away with a loud noise
•the elements will be dissolved with fire
•the earth and everything in it will be disclosed
And in Isaiah
All people are grass
their constancy is like the flower of the field
the grass withers, the flower fades
when the breath of the LORD blows upon it:
The earth is fragile; all people are grass. We learn this as species become extinct, as salt water begins to inundate and swallow small islands in the Pacific, as storms change our coastlines and earthquakes level our buildings. We learn this whenever we're startled by how easy it is for people to die. John F. Kennedy, the astronauts in the Challenger, the people in the Twin Towers, people you've known personally who died. It is always a little startling how fragile life is.
I know that I am like grass. I discovered this undeniably when I went through a medical crisis. I suffered a severe and unexpected complication after a procedure to stabilize a brain aneurysm (the aneurysm procedure went fine), and I came very close to death.
Many of you know that you are like grass. You've had medical scares. You've also seen how fragile the balance of your life is economically, emotionally, relationally. Some of you have been through divorce, family turmoil. Some of you have lost jobs or are experiencing uncertainty about your finances and future employment. You've experienced how things that seemed solid and unchanging can evaporate out from under you.
Nothing is too big to fail, really.
So how is any of this good news?
By itself, the fact that we are all grass is not good news, but there's more to it than that. That’s why it’s just the BEGINNING of the good news.
Let's hear what Mark has to say.
John the Baptist comes preaching baptism for repentance of sins
Message: Repent, Make straight the way of the Lord
"Make straight the way of the Lord" implied the following:
- the king is coming to visit
- literally, you should fix the road so he'll have smooth travel (fill in the potholes, etc)
The beginning of the good news in Mark was a startling voice calling people to acknowledge their failings and go in a different direction, preparing for something better.
John’s message was some difficult news. Road work - literally or figuratively - is hard. Whether you actually fill in potholes and straighten out the road shoulders or you start filling in empty places and smoothing over estrangements and other things we've messed up in our lives, either way, it’s hard work. The types of effort it takes to repair and turn a life around are not easy - repentance, reconciliation, discipline - and a trusting openness to God. A lot of people give up on it after they’ve barely started.
As GK Chesterton said, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it's been found difficult and left untried."
Parts of our culture really don't like difficulty, because it can result in failure, which shows up our weaknesses. We don't want to admit to anyone, least of all ourselves, that we HAVE any weaknesses. Other parts of our culture like to embrace difficulty, though in very controlled environments, for a similar purpose – to showcase strength in order to rebut any charge of weakness. Marathons, triathlons, Iron Man events, multi-day bike races, and all kinds of strenuous and challenging physical feats have become very popular.
But our strength is very relative.
I would not be much of a match for a bear or a shark, for instance, much less an asteroid. Even in relation to other people, it's still not equal. I'm five feet tall, so unless I were playing basketball with second graders, I would not be much of a force to reckon with. And it's not only in external conflicts that our weaknesses appear. Some of the most serious are inside our own bodies. Consider your brain - physiologically. Very powerful - and VERY delicate. Thinking about the aneurysm I had - the weak wall of the artery that had ballooned out was maybe a fraction of a millimeter thick - and if that unimaginably thin tissue were to tear, my brain would react so strongly to coming in contact with the slight acidity of my blood that I would most likely die or become profoundly disabled.
And it's not just our bodies that are weak. Our relationships are fragile and require constant tending and strengthening; our emotions are difficult to understand, much less control; our minds are easily confused and disturbed; our wills are fairly easy to corrupt and require consistent training and scrutiny.
The fact is we are human.
Weakness is our PRIMARY reality, in every area of our lives.
And that's the good news!
Because God's strength is made perfect in weakness.
God's strength perfectly complements our weakness.
Our weakness showcases God's strength.
It's not the type of strength you may be used to - the strength of a predator who takes from the weak to increase its own strength - a lion snatching a sheep. This is the strength of the shepherd who fights off the lion. Trust that kind of strength.
God's strength rises to the challenge of our weakness to make both of us stronger. Think of the kid in the movie The Sandlot, who summons all his skill, more than was usually asked of him, and hits the ball right into Small's glove - so he'll have some confidence and start to get better.
Not only is God good; he's so good, he makes it possible for us to get better.
So when you pray, when you open the door of your weakness to God, and when you come to receive communion and healing, don't just look for comfort; look for strength.
And then, start looking for ways you can rise to the challenge of others' weaknesses, and in God's strength, begin to strengthen them.
The beginning of the good news is that we are weak.
The rest of the good news is that he is strong.
Monday, December 05, 2011
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Talents
Readings for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
Almighty God, whose loving hand has given us all that we possess: Grant us grace that we may honor you with our substance, and, remembering the account which we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of your bounty, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
So the kingdom of heaven will be like this:
a master goes on a journey and entrusts his property to his slaves - he gives the first guy five talents, he gives the second guy two talents, and he gives the third guy one talent... to each according to his abilities
Now, when we say a talent, we mean something you're good at, like singing or playing basketball, or learning other languages, but that's not what it meant back then. Originally, a talent was an amount of money. So the master gave his slaves different amounts of money, based on what he felt they could handle, and then left to go on a trip. Two of them traded the talents and made twice as much; one of them buried the talent, so that the amount was the same when he gave it back. If you want to know basically how much he gave them (and how much they gave back), a talent is roughly 15 years’ wages for a day laborer. You can get a pencil or pull up the calculator on your phone and figure out what that might roughly be.
Assuming current minimum wage, one talent = (approximately)
$7.25/hour x 40 hours/week x 52 weeks/year x 15 years
Write it down; we’ll come back to it later.
So, in the story, the guy with the five talents and the guy with the two talents are smart - they trade for twice as much. It reminds me of this poem by Shel Silverstein...
Another story of trading up, which you may have heard about, involves a guy from Canada named Kyle MacDonald, who wanted to move into a house and started trading up towards that goal by offering one red paperclip on Craigslist. He writes
And that's starting with a paperclip.
What if you started with... a talent?
Remember how much one talent is?
($7.25 x 40 x 52 x 15...)
So the guy with one talent had something like a quarter of a million dollars, and the guy with two had almost half a million, and the guy with five had over a million! That's a lot of somebody else's money to be responsible for; I sure wouldn't want to lose it.
That was the third guy's approach; he played it safe, not wanting to risk losing any of the money. But the first two guys were responsible for handling even more of their master's money, and they weren't scared at all - immediately went out and risked it in trading.
FEAR is one difference between the first two guys and the third guy. As he says when the Master returns,
The first two guys viewed the money their master gave them as an opportunity because they trusted his confidence in their ability to handle it. In taking the money and trading with it, they accepted the responsibility of sharing with their master in the household's business. And when he returned, he invited them to share in his joy.
The third guy feared and distrusted the master. When the master gave him more money than he felt qualified to manage, this guy viewed it as a setup - a test designed to trap him - so he buried the quarter million dollars in the ground. Burying the talent was not to keep the money safe for his master so much as to keep himself safe from the master's invitation into shared responsibility. As he says on returning the money "Here you have what is yours." He never accepted the master's trust in him in the first place. "Here's your stuff - I didn't mess with any of it. I don't even know why you gave it to me in the first place. It's none of my business. I just work here."
The master gets really angry with him. His no-risk = no-failure strategy misses the whole point of the exercise. And he doesn’t account for opportunity loss. It's like taking only classes that are way easy for you so your GPA doesn't go down. Or like going up to bat and never swinging at a pitch because you don't want to run the bases and maybe have to slide...and get dirty, or possibly even hurt.
From this parable, I'm beginning to get the feeling that the point of the life we've been given is to get in the game, not to finish with a clean uniform. While we're here, we should play hard, go all out, even if we get grass-stained and dirty in the process. Even if we get hurt; even if we fail. And EVEN - though this is the scariest of all I think - EVEN if we succeed... and God gives us more responsibility to share with him in the work of his kingdom.
The kingdom of heaven will be like this: a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them...
Don't be scared of how much God has entrusted you with.
Ask yourself (like Kyle MacDonald's dad asked him when he thought of giving up the red paperclip idea)...
Almighty God, whose loving hand has given us all that we possess: Grant us grace that we may honor you with our substance, and, remembering the account which we must one day give, may be faithful stewards of your bounty, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
So the kingdom of heaven will be like this:
a master goes on a journey and entrusts his property to his slaves - he gives the first guy five talents, he gives the second guy two talents, and he gives the third guy one talent... to each according to his abilities
Now, when we say a talent, we mean something you're good at, like singing or playing basketball, or learning other languages, but that's not what it meant back then. Originally, a talent was an amount of money. So the master gave his slaves different amounts of money, based on what he felt they could handle, and then left to go on a trip. Two of them traded the talents and made twice as much; one of them buried the talent, so that the amount was the same when he gave it back. If you want to know basically how much he gave them (and how much they gave back), a talent is roughly 15 years’ wages for a day laborer. You can get a pencil or pull up the calculator on your phone and figure out what that might roughly be.
Assuming current minimum wage, one talent = (approximately)
$7.25/hour x 40 hours/week x 52 weeks/year x 15 years
Write it down; we’ll come back to it later.
So, in the story, the guy with the five talents and the guy with the two talents are smart - they trade for twice as much. It reminds me of this poem by Shel Silverstein...
Another story of trading up, which you may have heard about, involves a guy from Canada named Kyle MacDonald, who wanted to move into a house and started trading up towards that goal by offering one red paperclip on Craigslist. He writes
On July 12, 2005 I posted a picture of a red paperclip on my blog and in the barter section of craigslist and asked if anyone wanted to make a trade for something bigger or better. A few days later I traded the paperclip for a pen shaped like a fish. Then I traded the pen for a doorknob. And so on, each time trading for something bigger or better. Once all the dust settled, I'd made 14 trades and wound up with a house located at 503 Main Street in Kipling Saskatchewan.
And that's starting with a paperclip.
What if you started with... a talent?
Remember how much one talent is?
($7.25 x 40 x 52 x 15...)
So the guy with one talent had something like a quarter of a million dollars, and the guy with two had almost half a million, and the guy with five had over a million! That's a lot of somebody else's money to be responsible for; I sure wouldn't want to lose it.
That was the third guy's approach; he played it safe, not wanting to risk losing any of the money. But the first two guys were responsible for handling even more of their master's money, and they weren't scared at all - immediately went out and risked it in trading.
FEAR is one difference between the first two guys and the third guy. As he says when the Master returns,
Master, I knew you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.Another difference between the guy who buried his master's money and the other two who risked it is TRUST.
The first two guys viewed the money their master gave them as an opportunity because they trusted his confidence in their ability to handle it. In taking the money and trading with it, they accepted the responsibility of sharing with their master in the household's business. And when he returned, he invited them to share in his joy.
The third guy feared and distrusted the master. When the master gave him more money than he felt qualified to manage, this guy viewed it as a setup - a test designed to trap him - so he buried the quarter million dollars in the ground. Burying the talent was not to keep the money safe for his master so much as to keep himself safe from the master's invitation into shared responsibility. As he says on returning the money "Here you have what is yours." He never accepted the master's trust in him in the first place. "Here's your stuff - I didn't mess with any of it. I don't even know why you gave it to me in the first place. It's none of my business. I just work here."
The master gets really angry with him. His no-risk = no-failure strategy misses the whole point of the exercise. And he doesn’t account for opportunity loss. It's like taking only classes that are way easy for you so your GPA doesn't go down. Or like going up to bat and never swinging at a pitch because you don't want to run the bases and maybe have to slide...and get dirty, or possibly even hurt.
From this parable, I'm beginning to get the feeling that the point of the life we've been given is to get in the game, not to finish with a clean uniform. While we're here, we should play hard, go all out, even if we get grass-stained and dirty in the process. Even if we get hurt; even if we fail. And EVEN - though this is the scariest of all I think - EVEN if we succeed... and God gives us more responsibility to share with him in the work of his kingdom.
The kingdom of heaven will be like this: a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them...
Don't be scared of how much God has entrusted you with.
Ask yourself (like Kyle MacDonald's dad asked him when he thought of giving up the red paperclip idea)...
What would you do if you weren't afraid?As those famous theologians, The Goo Goo Dolls, wrote:
The end of fear is where we begin.
Amen
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Transfiguration
This sermon is posted here. It was written for the "Sermons That Work" series and also delivered in a modified form to St. John's in Silsbee.
Sunday, June 05, 2011
To St. Peter's in Brenham, TX
Homily
God, help us to follow Jesus' example and glorify you on earth by doing the work you give us to do.
Just before he's about to be arrested in the garden, Jesus prays to God, his Father, "I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do."
We regularly ask God for the grace to follow this example. Today, after we finish sharing communion, we will pray together, "assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in"
And after that, I'll stand at the back of the church and tell you to do exactly that. I'll say "Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord" And, like a team getting ready to run back on the field, you'll all say "Thanks be to God! Alleluia! Alleluia!"
Then you'll charge out the door to go do all those works that God has prepared for us. At least, that's the idea.
Church is where we come for rest, for encouragement and teaching, and for remembering who we belong to and what we're supposed to be about. It's like half-time - we regroup, catch our breath, take some nourishment, and get some focus and direction from our leaders. Then we go back out. That's a very crucial point. We get back in the game - doing the work God has prepared for us.
What is work is that?
Basically two things: Love God and Love your neighbor.
Priests and deacons help the church with both of those tasks, which are closely related. Though it's a huge simplification, you could say priests specialize in helping us love God, and deacons specialize in helping us love our neighbors.
Deacons often talk to the church about questions like "Who are our neighbors?" I'll warn you, if you get a deacon - and I pray that you do - he or she may start raising this question in directions you find uncomfortable. It's the deacon's job to notice people others don't want to see. Deacon's are charged, at our ordination, to "serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely." We're also charged to "show Christ's people that in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself."
If God sends you a deacon - and I pray that he does - you will likely hear the Gospel focused differently through the deacon's preaching because of the deacon's call to focus on the marginalized.
I'll give you some examples from this morning's scripture readings.
In today's Psalm, we addressed God, not as "Our Father" but "Father of orphans," and "defender of widows." In the next verse, we read that "God gives the solitary a home and brings forth prisoners into freedom."
Just in two verses, already, we have orphans, widows, single people and prisoners. Notice what kinds of work God is doing for them.
God is a father to those without a father. Think about men you know who are mentors, step-fathers, foster parents or adoptive parents. Think about kids you know whose dads aren't around or can't be at home. How are you men at St. Peter's joining God in this work of being a father to the fatherless?
Have you ever thought about the fact that Joseph was essentially Jesus' step-father?
What other work is God doing for people in the Psalm? God is the defender of widows. There are always folks willing to take advantage of someone who seems defenseless - scam artists prey on elderly people and steal their money or property in all kinds of ways. Is there any way you can join God in defending someone who is vulnerable in this way?
What other work can we see God doing in these two verses? "God gives the solitary a home and brings forth prisoners into freedom." Did you know that in Zimbabwe, members of Anglican churches were illegally arrested this week and put in prison - and that other parts of our Anglican communion helped to bail them out? I learned this by reading an email newsletter from the Anglican Communion News Service. Anglicans in Zimbabwe are facing a lot right now at the hands of a vindictive deposed bishop who is friends with the despotic president. And these are folks in the church.
What about other people in prison who aren't members of the church? What do you know about the prison system in general - about issues such as retributive versus restorative justice? Crimes with unequal punishments, like the difference in penalties for possessing crack cocaine versus powder cocaine? Why does a poor kid's drug have a smaller penalty than a rich kid's drug?
Uh oh - this is starting to sound almost political - it's starting to meddle in issues...
Yep, that's what a deacon's likely to do: push the Church back out into the world where there's work to be done, back in the game, not watching from the stands.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave an interview that's posted on YouTube in which he said that as Christians, we should look around to see what God is doing and join in.
When God sends you a deacon - as I pray he soon will - that person will help you to see what kinds of work God's doing out in the world outside these walls - the works he's preparing for you to walk in. And I pray you'll head out these doors and join in.
Thanks be to God!
God, help us to follow Jesus' example and glorify you on earth by doing the work you give us to do.
Just before he's about to be arrested in the garden, Jesus prays to God, his Father, "I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do."
We regularly ask God for the grace to follow this example. Today, after we finish sharing communion, we will pray together, "assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in"
And after that, I'll stand at the back of the church and tell you to do exactly that. I'll say "Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord" And, like a team getting ready to run back on the field, you'll all say "Thanks be to God! Alleluia! Alleluia!"
Then you'll charge out the door to go do all those works that God has prepared for us. At least, that's the idea.
Church is where we come for rest, for encouragement and teaching, and for remembering who we belong to and what we're supposed to be about. It's like half-time - we regroup, catch our breath, take some nourishment, and get some focus and direction from our leaders. Then we go back out. That's a very crucial point. We get back in the game - doing the work God has prepared for us.
What is work is that?
Basically two things: Love God and Love your neighbor.
Priests and deacons help the church with both of those tasks, which are closely related. Though it's a huge simplification, you could say priests specialize in helping us love God, and deacons specialize in helping us love our neighbors.
Deacons often talk to the church about questions like "Who are our neighbors?" I'll warn you, if you get a deacon - and I pray that you do - he or she may start raising this question in directions you find uncomfortable. It's the deacon's job to notice people others don't want to see. Deacon's are charged, at our ordination, to "serve all people, particularly the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely." We're also charged to "show Christ's people that in serving the helpless they are serving Christ himself."
If God sends you a deacon - and I pray that he does - you will likely hear the Gospel focused differently through the deacon's preaching because of the deacon's call to focus on the marginalized.
I'll give you some examples from this morning's scripture readings.
In today's Psalm, we addressed God, not as "Our Father" but "Father of orphans," and "defender of widows." In the next verse, we read that "God gives the solitary a home and brings forth prisoners into freedom."
Just in two verses, already, we have orphans, widows, single people and prisoners. Notice what kinds of work God is doing for them.
God is a father to those without a father. Think about men you know who are mentors, step-fathers, foster parents or adoptive parents. Think about kids you know whose dads aren't around or can't be at home. How are you men at St. Peter's joining God in this work of being a father to the fatherless?
Have you ever thought about the fact that Joseph was essentially Jesus' step-father?
What other work is God doing for people in the Psalm? God is the defender of widows. There are always folks willing to take advantage of someone who seems defenseless - scam artists prey on elderly people and steal their money or property in all kinds of ways. Is there any way you can join God in defending someone who is vulnerable in this way?
What other work can we see God doing in these two verses? "God gives the solitary a home and brings forth prisoners into freedom." Did you know that in Zimbabwe, members of Anglican churches were illegally arrested this week and put in prison - and that other parts of our Anglican communion helped to bail them out? I learned this by reading an email newsletter from the Anglican Communion News Service. Anglicans in Zimbabwe are facing a lot right now at the hands of a vindictive deposed bishop who is friends with the despotic president. And these are folks in the church.
What about other people in prison who aren't members of the church? What do you know about the prison system in general - about issues such as retributive versus restorative justice? Crimes with unequal punishments, like the difference in penalties for possessing crack cocaine versus powder cocaine? Why does a poor kid's drug have a smaller penalty than a rich kid's drug?
Uh oh - this is starting to sound almost political - it's starting to meddle in issues...
Yep, that's what a deacon's likely to do: push the Church back out into the world where there's work to be done, back in the game, not watching from the stands.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave an interview that's posted on YouTube in which he said that as Christians, we should look around to see what God is doing and join in.
When God sends you a deacon - as I pray he soon will - that person will help you to see what kinds of work God's doing out in the world outside these walls - the works he's preparing for you to walk in. And I pray you'll head out these doors and join in.
Thanks be to God!
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Ash Wednesday
Joel 2:1-2,12-17 or Isaiah 58:1-12
Psalm 103 or 103:8-14
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
Today is Ash Wednesday, when we are reminded that we don’t have all the time in the world.
This is an excellent video meditation produced by Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Phoenix, AZ:
Today begins the season of Lent, when the church tries to slow itself down and take a good look around its house and do some spring cleaning. A lot of mess can accumulate over a year. When you’re in a rush, going from one crisis to another, you don’t really notice the papers piling up on the table or the beans growing fungus in the fridge. But just because you’re not paying attention to the mess doesn’t mean it isn’t there. What if company dropped by? As soon as they walked in the door, every dirty sock, every piece of string on the carpet and every smudge of peanut butter on the counter would have a neon sign pointing at it.
Lent is one time in the church year when we remind ourselves that we’re expecting company. Just like we got together before the Bishop’s visit to clean up our house physically – wash, vacuum, throw out, rearrange...., we also need to clean up our “house” spiritually. And it’s not just a one-person job. It takes all of us.
Consider these thoughts on Lent from the Very Rev. Tony Clavier, rector of St. Paul’s in LaPorte, Indiana:
"Too easily our [Lenten commitments] begin to look like holy variations on New Year’s resolutions, and we know how long they last!Here at St. John’s, we’ve been given an opportunity to slow down and take a close look at what we’ve been doing as a parish and consider what we want to do next. During Lent, we need to take that task seriously and clean up around here.
Part of the problem is that we individualize Lent. We begin with me. Because we begin with me, the whole thing slides into another form of personal spirituality, perhaps somewhat ruined by our sly hints to others about just what it is we are sacrificing.
Sacrifice in Christianity, as with our Jewish ancestors, means the offering of life. Its culmination is Jesus’ offering for us on Calvary.
...
Lent’s forty days prepare us for the Cross and the Resurrection, and no good intentions about giving up something gets us to that “Green Hill far away.” True, once our goal for Lent is established, fasting and abstinence is a way to keep us on track, but the goal comes first. The goal is simple but profound. It begins with our parish church. How does our community of the faithful intend to spend Lent together? What extra acts of worship or study will be added to the calendar? In what ways will the parish reach out to the world? We begin there. These extras on the calendar are not for the holy few. They determine how each of us may spend Lent, and guide us to choose individual acts of love that fit into that wider program.
At the same time, we remember that what we do doesn’t earn us God’s love. The question rather is how may I, and we, as a parish, become worthy of Christ’s death and passion? How do we deserve His conquering death for us and giving us eternal life?
On the one hand, we can’t earn and can never deserve God’s love for us in Christ. But we can open ourselves to the gift and seek to rid ourselves of those things that get in the way of God’s redeeming grace. We used to call these impediments the Seven Deadly Sins. Obviously gluttony was among them. Those old sins – do look them up or Google them – were neat ways of reminding us just how “self” gets in the way of service. Now, of course, you may feel you do pretty well in avoiding these failings and fallings. But just ask your partner, your children, your parents, or your best friends. With a little nudging they will come up with examples of bad temper, feeling sorry for yourself, being envious, or angry.
The point isn’t that we dwell on these things, but that we offer them daily to God in our devotions, certain that God forgives and strengthens us.
The gospel today reminds us that the smudge of ashes on our foreheads may either be a boast, or it may be a sign to us and to others that this Lent will be about more than giving up chocolate; it will be a time when God’s redeeming work transforms each of us and our parishes.
So may it be."
We need to fix things that are broken – relationships, models for doing ministry, whatever isn’t working right.
We need to throw some things out – old grievances, rotten attitudes – whatever is cluttering up the place and making it stink.
We may even need to let go of some successes and things that were good at one time if they’re not relevant to what God’s calling us to do now.
Some of the things you’ll come across, you won’t want to throw out because you have fond memories of them, and you hope you can use them again. This will really be a challenge for St. John’s especially. I hear y’all talking a lot about your past. But I think God is envisioning for us a future. We’ll have to let some things go to have an open hand to receive something new. Another thing that can happen when we begin a deep cleaning is that we may find treasures we forgot or didn't know we had, and that's something to look forward to.
Some of the dirt and gunk you’ll come across, you won’t know who put it there – it doesn’t matter; if you see a mess, clean it up. God is constantly having to clean up after us, so one way to express gratitude for that is to graciously clean up after each other when we have an opportunity.
We did a good job cleaning up the building for Bishop Doyle's visit. Now let’s work on cleaning up the rest of our church – inside as well as out - to be a functional home for Christ to live in and work from.
Amen.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Go on, Go back, or Sit still?
God, like Moses and Abraham, may we follow you, even not knowing the way. Amen.
You’ve heard it said... you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not swear falsely
But I say... don’t even stay angry with your brother or sister. If you don’t reconcile with each other, the part of your heart that harbors resentment and animosity will start to abscess and become necrotic, and it will poison you from inside. Cut it out.
Jesus is making a distinction between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.
The letter of the law tries to define the spirit of the law, which can be helpful up to a point, but after that point, the more specific the letter of the law gets, the more it sucks the life out of the spirit. Living your life strictly in accordance with rules (even the Ten Commandments) with no reference to what the law is for is like teaching to the TAKS – it makes the whole system a farce.
Not that basic skills are unnecessary or irrelevant. They’re absolutely foundational. For your spiritual development, keeping the Ten Commandments is like learning plus, minus, times and "guzinta," or like learning nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions – its good to learn them, but knowing those things is not an end in itself. The goal is that we take those materials and start to create new things no one’s ever seen before. You teach kids grammar so the ones who are poets will be able to somewhat translate for us the songs they hear the angels singing. You teach them multiplication so they can chase infinity.
If the letter of the law hands you a paint-by-number kit,
If the letter of the law hands you a paint-by-number kit,
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Create something beautiful.
Yesterday at Council, Bishop Doyle told us that, not only in individual parishes like St. John’s, but all across the Diocese, we’re going to have to rethink our direction and our way of being Church, because we’re realizing that the map we’ve been looking at doesn’t match the terrain we’re moving toward anymore. The Bishop has invited us to start a process of inventing and imagining new things, but his invitation yesterday did not to me sound like a theoretical pathway-- more like a life and death kind of turning point.
He said:
Continuing this church economy, doing the things we have been doing for the last three decades leads only to greater conflict and loss. Continuing to be church, simply tinkering with efficiency and symptoms leads unequivocally to closure. However, at this very same moment we stand on the pass with a second thought not yet fully formed but forming. That thought is that you and I stand on the edge of a new missionary age – a new geography of hope.His words sound like what Moses told the people of Israel as they were standing just outside the Promised Land, ready to cross over. After wandering in the desert 40 years, circling around and around in the same tracks, they were about to walk into a place they’d never seen, trusting God. Moses knew there was still hesitation, so he laid out for them what was at stake.
“See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity... Choose life that you and your descendents may live.”The Egyptian people today are standing at a similar kind of gate. They’ve got the door down and a path open in front of them. Will they walk through it toward a different kind of future? Or will they get cold feet and revert back to the way things were before? It’s up to them.
It seems to me St. John’s is on that kind of a course right now; we’ve got some choices to make about our future and how we’re going to shape it. When the Bishop was here two weeks ago, he set some hopeful, life-giving options in front of us. Some of them are new things that we’ve not previously imagined – that even the diocese has only recently begun imagining. He told us we’ll have the freedom to choose how we’d like to do ministry in this place, even to create new ways of doing it.
We’re at a point where we can walk into a new territory or go back the way we came – or we can stand still and try not to move, waiting for someone who knows more, someone who has more authority, to come and tell us what to do. That would be ridiculous - and also not necessary. The Bishop is the head of this diocese and of this congregation as part of it; Fr. John, as the rector, is acting as the Bishop by extension, filling his shoes in this place when he’s not here. But when the Bishop is here, wearing his own shoes, that’s the most authoritative voice you’re going to get – nobody knows more about where he wants the Church in the Diocese of Texas to be headed than him. And he’s already told us... and given us a project to work on. The scary thing is, it’s not a paint-by-number; it’s a blank canvas. From what I’m coming to learn, this is a different kind of relationship than you’re accustomed to having with your bishop. It’s new for everybody – him too – start enjoying it.
If we choose, we can stop walking around in circles and set off toward a new land that God will show us. It’s not going to be easy to discern this; we have no map for where we may be going. But think of it this way: if we’re willing, we’ll get to help make the map of this new territory the Church is being called to inhabit.
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| Map of America - 1730 by Guillaume Delisle |
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