Another Year of Grace

I wrote this as a blog post for All Saints Episcopal Church in Worcester. It is shared here on my own blog with some very minor edits. Happy New Year! 

I grew up and learned about the love of God in Jesus Christ as a United Methodist. My parents had grown up in Baptist and Lutheran churches, but in the early 1970s our family joined Elm Park United Methodist Church in Scranton, Pennsylvania. When our family moved (back) to Hawley in 1973, we joined The Hawley United Methodist Church. My mother and brother and one of my sisters continue to worship there to this day. That congregation sponsored me for ordination in the United Methodist Church in June 1988. I remain grateful.

As a United Methodist pastor, my first position was to serve as the Protestant Campus Minister at Central Connecticut State University. Campus Ministry allowed me to be free on Sunday mornings and soon Hathy and I were worshipping at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in New Britain. Although I had been flirting with The Episcopal Church for some time (and even worked in an Episcopal congregation during my senior year of seminary) I made it official in 1993 and have never looked back.

I never once felt that I needed to “renounce” the Methodist Church in that long journey, however. I felt grateful that they had formed and shaped me to a point in time. And then, before my 30^th birthday, I became clear that I would have a better chance to “grow into the full stature of Christ” as an Episcopalian. It helped that both John and Charles Wesley are remembered in the Episcopal Church on March 3, as Anglican priests. Neither of them had never renounced Anglicanism; they were just trying to reform it at a time when it needed some reformation. I felt as if I was “coming home.” It helped that I could bring the spirituality of the Wesley boys with me, since it was already there! To this day, every time I sing a Charles Wesley hymn from The Hymnal 1982 my heart is strangely warmed!

I share this piece of my own spiritual autobiography for a reason. One practice I brought with me into The Episcopal Church was the practice of praying John Wesley's Covenant Renewal Service at the beginning of each new year. I have been doing that for my entire adult life, in two denominations. If you click on that hyperlink you can join me in so doing this year. It won’t turn you into a Methodist – don’t worry! But there is some very good theology there, including this invitation:

Let us gathered here before the Lord now in covenant commit ourselves to Christ as his servants. Let us give ourselves to Him so that we may fully belong to Him. Jesus Christ has left us with many services to be done. Some of these services are easy and honorable, but some are difficult and disgraceful. Some line up with our desires and interests, others are contrary to both. In some we please both Christ and ourselves, but then there are other works where we cannot please Christ except by denying ourselves.

What gets me every year is this reminder that the Church’s one foundation really is Jesus Christ, her Lord. That the words “my ministry” should never cross our lips – whether the ministry to which we are called is ordained or lay. It does not belong to us; ministry is all about God. Each of us possess gifts, given by the same Spirit. Sometimes ministry is really fun and energizing and the Spirit empowers and equips us; as Frederick Buechner once put it, “our deep gladness meets the needs of this broken world.” It’s amazing when that happens. But sometimes we are stretched beyond our abilities and must rely on sheer grace to do what needs to be done, as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, at the end of our rope. On those difficult days we do well to remember that the ministry which we share in and through Jesus goes by way of Golgatha. Even now, in the midst of the Twelve Days of Christmas, we know that this child we have come to adore will die on a cross. And that he calls upon each of us to take up our own cross.

The ministry does not belong to us; it is God’s work in the world and we are simply entrusted to be stewards of that work. The late Verna Dozier once wrote these words: 

If I believe that there is a loving God, who has created me and wants me to be a part of a people who will carry the good news of the love of that God to the world, what difference does it make when I go to my office at 9 o'clock Monday morning? What difference does it make in my office that I believe there is a loving God, that God loves me, and that God loves all human beings exactly as God loves me? What different kinds of decisions do I make? What am I called to do in that office? [i]

It’s a good reminder that ministry isn’t only (or even mainly) about what we do in our church buildings. It’s not just about the ministries required for liturgy to work well: being in the choir or on the altar guild or serving on the altar or preaching. All of these ministries matter and they may bring us great joy. But in the end, we are sent into the world. All of us. The worship ends and the service begins in the neighborhood, where we are entrusted to be salt, and light, and yeast. The decisions we make in our homes and in our workplaces need to reflect this commitment, this covenant that knits us together as members of the Body of Christ, so that the world will know we are Christians by our love.

Most years there is some sense of ambiguity when the calendar turns to a new year. But this year I suspect we are all ready to be done with 2020. Even so, in any new year there is some amount of reflection and even of resolutions. I’ve never been that into resolutions, but Wesley’s Covenant Renewal Service shapes my reflections and my commitments as I begin each new year. I pray that it may be helpful to you as well as we begin another year of grace, always with God’s help.

[i] Dozier, V. J. (1988). The Calling of the Laity: Verna Dozier's anthology. Washington, DC: The Alban Institute (p. 16).

 

 

Rejoice Always!

Yesterday, on The Third Sunday of Advent, I preached at St. Andrew's Church in Longmeadow, MA. The service was live-streamed here: 

What follows is the manuscript for the sermon I preached. 

St. Paul was a pastoral theologian. He’s trying to find where God is in the midst of particular places at a particular time around the Mediterranean Sea, where the good news was spreading and taking hold. That happens a little bit differently in Rome than in Corinth or Galatia. He’s not trying to set forth an abstract theology that is true-for-all-time and places. He’s in the weeds with the conflicts and alliances: Apollos and Chloe and others are a part of the narrative. There is therefore more than a little irony that we lean in and listen for a “word of the Lord” when we hear these letters read in our own day.

What I mean to say is simply that context mattered a great deal to Paul. And context continues to matter to us. It matters that we are gathered here at St. Andrew’s virtually because of this pandemic, in this year of our Lord, 2020. We aren’t in Williamstown or Worcester; and it’s not 1954. We are here, now on this third Sunday of Advent as we near the shortest day of the year in this hemisphere, when the darkness seems to envelope us. We are here, in this time and place. And so is the risen Christ, because wherever two or three are gathered, he is in our midst.

St. Paul models something for us, I think, by responding to very specific challenges within those particular faith communities, each with their own gifts and shortcomings. Because while it’s true that wherever two or three are gathered together in Jesus’ name he is in the midst of them, it is also true that wherever two or three are gathered together there will be all of the interesting challenges of our common humanity. He comes to his work and to each letter with some core principles that take shape differently as that congregation seeks and serves Christ and tries, with God’s help, to love God and to love neighbor.

So today’s epistle reading is addressed to those early followers of the Jesus movement in Thessalonica, the capital of the Roman province of Macedonia. The notes in my New Oxford Annotated Bible begin with these words to help frame that context:

First Thessalonians is a friendly, exhortative letter of encouragement. Paul extends affectionate praise for the audience’s steadfast hope and consistent behavior.

Now this kind of praise might have come as quite a surprise to the Corinthian Christians, with whom Paul was far more combative. That’s because they were a very conflicted congregation that has been fighting about just about everything; Paul suggests at one point that they sound like noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. By the time he gets to the thirteenth chapter of that much less friendly and affectionate letter, what’s he’s really saying is: get it together gang! Knowledge puffs up but love builds up! This is what it’s about: faith, hope, and love—but the greatest of these is love.

So let me not put too fine a point on this: being with you, St. Andrew’s, feels a lot more like coming to Thessalonica than Corinth. You are one of our shining lights in this diocese. When I last spent time among you it was during a clergy transition as you said goodbyes to Derek and his family. I vividly remember meeting in this space and hearing your genuine concerns about the future. Would there be life after Derek?

And then an interim period which included lots of good work, and some challenges as well. And then a whole faithful process of exploration, of learning and listening, of writing a truthful profile and then interviewing candidates. And then a call to Charlotte and her family who got here, ready to get to work. Well done!

And then COVID-19.

Through it all, I’ve seen resiliency and adaptability and hard work continue. I see your wardens and your new rector showing up at diocesan town halls. Like Paul and the Thessalonians, I have nothing but affectionate praise for your steadfast hope and consistent behavior.

The letter to the Church in Thessalonica is earlier than Corinthians. In fact, it is almost certain that this letter is the oldest document in the New Testament, about twenty years before the earliest of the gospels, Mark, was written: Yet here, too, Paul is thinking about how faith, hope, and love are the marks of authentic Christian community. They are always his core principles. But here it’s because he notices what happens when communities do put these at the heart of their mission and purpose.

We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before God your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope… (I Thessalonians 1:2-3)

Paul believes that the end of the world is coming soon, that Christ’s return is imminent. So this short letter is dealing with questions about how the community can “keep alert” and be ready for that day. That is why it makes such good reading in Advent. How do we live in a way that is prepared for the end of the world as we know it? Again, the Thessalonians have their act together:  

Now concerning the times and the seasons, you do not need to have anything written to you, for you yourselves know very well that the day of   the Lord will come like a thief in the night. (I Thessalonians 5:1-2)

Paul being Paul, of course, he does have a little bit more to say. But once again it is a word of encouragement. “Because you are children of the light,” he tells them, “you know to put on the breastplate of faith and love and the helmet of hope.” There is that trio again: how do you get ready for the end of days? How do you prepare for the coming of Christ into the world? That answer is the same in good times and in bad times: by living with faith, hope, and love! And then, these incredible words of advice:

• respect one another
• esteem one another
• be at peace with one another  
• admonish the idlers
• encourage the fainthearted
• help the weak
• be patient with everyone
• don’t escalate conflicts by repaying evil with evil; respond to evil by doing good!
  
  
  It’s a short letter. I’ve already gotten to the words we heard today. Let me return to those:
  
  
• rejoice always
• pray without ceasing
• give thanks in all circumstances
• do not quench the Spirit
• do not despise the words of prophets
• test everything
• hold fast to what is good
• abstain from evil

Whether the end of the world as we know it is imminent or thousands of years away, on this third week of Advent in this incredibly difficult year for our nation and the world, I do hear a Word of the Lord here, thanks be to God. And I pray you hear it with me. The world is in tough shape right now on so many fronts. But it is in times like these that it is most clear why we need the Church ourselves even if we must gather virtually, and just as importantly why the world needs for us to be the Church even when our use of the building is limited. We need you to keep on keeping on with faith, hope, and love. As you have been…

Things will get better. I won’t say they will return to normal and that’s not really the goal. But God is definitely doing something new among us and you, St. Andrew’s, have been early adaptors to that new reality. And even with the doors closed you have remembered that Longmeadow Loves. Faith, hope, and love – but especially love.

So this weekend we light the third candle in our wreaths: the rose candle. This third Sunday of Advent is often called Gaudete Sunday – from the Latin word that means “rejoice.” That is our liturgical work, today: to rejoice. It’s in that short epistle reading: rejoice always. That may seem easy for Paul to do with his beloved friends in Thessalonica, but you will remember that in another time and place – a different context – he writes the same words to the followers of Jesus in Philippi: rejoice, again I say, rejoice! And in that letter, he’s writing from a prison cell. I think we practice rejoicing without ceasing, so that whatever may come our way it’s become second nature to us.

The late Joseph Campbell once said, “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.” It’s a reminder to me that joy is not really a synonym for “happy.” We can feel happy or sad and a whole array of emotions. But joy is not an emotion. Joy is a commitment to being fully alive – of knowing God-with-us. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel has come to thee, O Israel! O, Longmeadow!  

It’s been a hard long pandemic and that no doubt shapes this Advent 2020, as we prepare not only to celebrate our dear Savior’s birth but also to get ready for a long, hard winter. But lighting this rose candle- and speaking of joy today is not an act of denial! It is an act of resilience, and a commitment to faith, hope, and love. Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. And give thanks in all circumstances.  

Preparing a Way

The word for this coming Sunday, The Second Sunday of Advent, seems to be prepare. (Since this Sunday falls on December 6, some parishes may opt for the St. Nicholas readings - but that's another post for another time!)

Five hundred years or so before the birth of Jesus, the people of Israel were tired and worn-out. They had laid up their harps by the waters of Babylon, for how could they sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? They cried out to the Lord, sometimes in anger, sometimes with tears, sometimes with seeds of hope in their hearts. But for a long time nothing happened. By a long time I don’t mean hours or days or months. I mean decades. I mean that a whole generation wondered: “What will become of us? Will we ever go home again? Do we have a future?”

And then a voice cries out, the voice of a prophet from Jerusalem:

                   In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD,
                       Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

Prepare the way! That time of preparation marked a new beginning. It still would not be easy or instantaneous, but there is something about taking that first step in a long journey that gives you faith that maybe, just maybe, something new will happen. With Isaiah’s pronouncement a page was turned and the work began. The prophet imagines it (by way of God's imagining it) so that the work can begin. Prepare the way!

More than five hundred years later, in the midst of a different kind of exile, the Jewish people were occupied by the Roman Empire. Another voice in another wilderness place breaks the silence when John the Baptizer appears on the scene. He, too, is all about preparing the way of the Lord and making straight a highway in the desert for our God. His words and his life work remind people of the prophets of old and in particular Isaiah’s preparations in the wilderness all those centuries before. Perhaps once again a new day is about to dawn. Prepare ye the way of the Lord…

In both Greek and English this word literally means to “make ready.” So if the word for the day is to prepare, then the question for the day is what needs to be done to help make us ready for Christmas? And not just any Christmas, but this Christmas 2020 - nine months into a global pandemic?

In more normal times, almost thirty-five years into our marriage, Hathy and I have become pretty good at preparing for parties together. We enjoy having friends over and we each take on different tasks in getting ready that have become more defined over time. We each have our routines. Mostly, I cook and she cleans. It's a kind of parallel play. It is toward one end that we learned early on in our marriage: we don't want to spend all of our time in the kitchen when our guests arrive. We invite them over because we want to visit and enjoy their company. So the preparing that comes first is all towards that goal. Even if there are last minute things to do to prepare a meal it is helpful to have everything chopped and diced and measured and to have the table set and so on and so forth. We do that reasonably well, I think and find enjoyment in the whole process leading up to the time together.

On the other hand, every member of my family will tell you I'm a lousy painter because apparently you are supposed to do some prep work before you just open a can of paint and stir and grab a brush. I tend to skip over the prep work. 

Each of us have positive examples of when our preparations have been mindful and productive and “of a piece” with the whole. And I assume, as well, that we all have also had our “learning experiences” from times when our preparations were neglected or disconnected from the goal we had in mind. One can never prepare for all contingencies or surprises, but if you are ready then you can adapt if necessary as events unfold.

So if Advent is a time for preparing, it helps to know what it is exactly that we are preparing for. It helps if Advent leads us to Christmas! To do that, however, we need to peak to the end of the story. (And that's honestly okay, in spite of what the "liturgical police" like to say: Jesus has already come to be among us - we are not required to pretend we don't know where we are headed!)

A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. The main reason that governments register people is so they can either make them into soldiers or tax them. The world hasn’t changed much on that front. But this is a reminder that the story we tell on Christmas Eve is not a “once upon a time” fairy tale; it’s an event that takes place in human history. It's political. It's cultural. It's economic.

Jesus is born in a very specific time and place. That is at the heart of what the Incarnation is all about. The theologians sometimes call it the “scandal of particularity.” It always amuses me when I hear someone say they don’t believe in Jesus. It’s like saying you don’t believe in Abraham Lincoln or Charles Dickens. Jesus definitely existed. The faith question is about who he was and what his life meant and specifically if he was the One; whether or not he was the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God. That's the theological question. But that a rabbi from Nazareth lived and died: that's historical. It's not fake news; it's good news! 

In these uncertain days of a presidential transition and a global pandemic, we do well to remember that Advent preparation calls on us to be attentive to the world around us—to specific places and events both globally and locally that make up our unique context in this time and this place. We do not prepare for Christmas by escaping from the challenges of the day: we look at those challenges as opportunities for ministry and as places where we will encounter the living God, if only we know how to look. 

The story on Christmas Eve continues…Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn. Jesus is not born among the rich and famous in Rome or Jerusalem, but among the poor. If we want to find Jesus then we should begin our search there. Advent preparations might therefore include putting ourselves in places where the most vulnerable members of our society can be found. This is not to suggest that God loves the poor more than the affluent or that if we are rich we should feel guilty. It is to say that we very often discover courage and perseverance and hope among the those whose lives feel very precarious, and only have God to turn to. 

Usually among the more privileged (among whom I count myself) the great social challenge in December is that we tend to look towards those we feel have more than we do and when we do that it is normal to feel envious. This year, however, we could probably all do with a Blue Christmas celebration. Some are hurting more than others, to be sure. But all of us have suffered from a kind of social dislocation and spiritual disorientation. The death count from COVID alone is now at 276,000 with daily rates soaring.

There were shepherds out keeping watch of their flock, when suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace among those whom he favors. But if we are too loud and too frenetic we will miss their songs. So we prepare ourselves by slowing down and being quiet. Most years that seems like an impossible challenge, when there is so much to do, and so many social events to prepare for. I am already grieving the loss of the Christmas Revels (a decades old tradition in our family) and extended gatherings with family and friends and bringing in the new year with our BFFs. This Advent seems to have fewer distractions and while I am not one to sugar-coat that, perhaps there is learning to be had in the midst of it for us. Perhaps there is invitation to transformation in all of that. To prepare differently.

Advent is a season for new beginnings. When we do stop and listen for the songs of angels we hear them singing about peace on earth. You don’t have to be a news junkie to know that we are a long way off from that: violence around the world and in our neighborhoods threatens to destroy us all. I remember an old Simon and Garfunkle recording of “Silent Night” which was juxtaposed with the seven o’clock news that was reporting all of the troubles of the day. We live, still, within that tension, not so different from the days when that decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world must be registered, when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

Yet peace on earth really does begin with us. Peace on earth begins when men and women and children say, “here I am Lord, make me a channel of your peace.” Governments don’t create peace. They may get us to cease-fires, which represent a start. There may be better leaders who appeal to our better angels and worse ones who fan the flames of hatred and violence. But peace on earth requires that ordinary people do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with God. As Christians we are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation and people who love one another and who work with people of good will from every tribe and language and people and nation to start beating swords into plowshares.  

This is the work of the Church from generation to generation. This is the work of Advent: to prepare ourselves and the world around us. And not just our hearts, but our minds and our bodies. We get ready for Christmas from head to toe. If the Incarnation means anything at all, it means we have to learn to pray with our bodies and begin to heal the body politic, and the Body of Christ. 

When we make time to prepare the way for these things, we can be assured that we will be prepared for Christmas.

Waiting and Longing

Today, I offered the opening prayer at two Zoom meetings. Each time, I shared a prayer from Walter Brueggemann's Prayers for a Privileged People entitled "Waiting and Longing,"  on reading Daniel. 

I guess it works "on reading Daniel." But for my money, it's a pretty solid Advent prayer. Especially in this time of pandemic. I share it here (I hope legally) and include a plug to buy the book for someone you love this Christmas. It's filled with other excellent prayers by a very good pray-er. 

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Waiting and Longing

God of the seasons, 
God of the years, 
God of the eons,
   Alpha and Omega,
   before us and after us. 

You promise and we wait:

we wait with eager longing,
we wait amid doubt and anxiety,
we wait with patience thin
  and then doubt,
  and then we take life into our
                    own hands. 

We wait because you are the one and only one.
We wait for your peace and your mercy,
for your justice and your good rule. 

Give us your Spirit that we may wait
obediently and with discernment,
caringly and without passivity,
trustingly and without cynicism,
honestly and without utopianism.

Grant that our wait may be appropriate to your coming
     soon and very soon,
     soon and not late,
     late but not too late.

We wait while the world groans in eager longing.