The Sound of Sheer Silence

On this Second Sunday after Pentecost, I am serving in the Berkshires at Trinity Church in Lenox. The rector is currently in the midst of a sabbatical; I'm glad to be able to pinch-hit for him. 

The Book of Kings begins with King Solomon on the throne, and then plows along under his varied successors until you get to chapter sixteen. That’s where it begins to get really interesting. That is when Omri (up to that point dubbed the “worst king ever”) dies. He is succeeded by his son, Ahab, who will reign for twenty-two years. (16:25) This comment from the narrator pretty much sums up what Ahab’s two decade reign was like:

Ahab, son of Omri, did what was displeasing to the Lord, more than all who preceded him. Not content to follow the sins of Jereboam, son of Nebat, he took as his wife, Jezebel, daughter of King Ethbaal of the Phoenicians and he went and served Baal and worshiped him. (16:30-31)

You should know that Baal is a god of fresh water, a rain god. So in chapter seventeen when we are introduced to Elijah the Tishbite, he issues a challenge: “As the Lord lives, the God of Israel whom I serve, there will be no dew or rain except at my bidding.”  Elijah is throwing down the gauntlet: Ahab has built an altar to Baal because he wants rain. But Elijah’s response is that it will only rain when YHWH says it will rain!

The problem with droughts is that they affect everybody, not just the bad people. Even Elijah will suffer the consequences of this drought. At one point in the narrative, he shows up at the home of a widow in Sidon who is down to her last little bit of flour and oil and preparing to die. Yet when the prophet invites himself for dinner, she welcomes him to her table. She chooses hospitality and generosity over fear and xenophobia and shares the little bit she has, which as it miraculously turns out, is enough.  

By the time we get to chapter eighteen of First Kings, three years have passed and the famine brought on by this drought is much, much worse. Elijah approaches the people and puts it bluntly, the way prophets are prone to do: How long will you keep limping along between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow God! If Baal, then follow Baal. But make up your minds already! (18:21)

It is at this point that Elijah takes on 450 prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. They get a bull and cut it in half for a sacrifice, and set up two wood piles. No matches allowed; just prayer. Elijah allows the prophets of Baal to go first and to pick their wood pile and bull. From morning until noon they shout: “O Baal, answer us!” Nothing. So then they performed what one translation calls a “hopping dance.” We get to see here that Elijah is a bit of a trash-talker because when nothing happens he chimes in: why don’t you shout louder! Maybe Baal is sleeping and you need to wake him up! Maybe he’s deep in conversation with some other god, or he’s away on vacation. Nada.

Then it’s Elijah’s turn. He decides to make it interesting, filling four jars with water and soaking the whole thing. And then he says: do it a second time. Actually you know what—do it a third time until water is running even around the trench of the altar! Until the whole thing is so sopping wet it would be impossible to light it up. And then he prays:

O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel! Let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and I am your servant, and that I have done these things at your bidding. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people might know who is God…

And then? Woosh. Fire! An all-consuming fire that devours the bull, the wood, the stones, the earth, the water—everything! And everybody falls down on their faces and says, “Wow! The Lord alone is God. The Lord alone is God.” (18:39)

What happens in the next verse, however, is very troubling. Elijah can’t just let it be; he turns the impressed crowd into a mob and tells them to seize the prophets of Baal and “let not a single one of them get away.” So they seized them, and Elijah took them down to the Wadi Kishon and there he slaughtered every last one. (18:40) It is texts like that which make people say they don’t like the Old Testament. And as much as I do totally love the Old Testament, I totally get that.

But this brings us to today’s reading and gives us a much better context to hear what was read a few minutes ago. Ahab has reported to his wife, Jezebel, what happened on Mount Carmel and at the Wadi Kishon. She responds by sending a message to Elijah: "So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow."  She is issuing his death warrant, saying that he will not get away with what he has done.

So Elijah does what most of us would probably do; he runs away. As we heard, he came to Beer-sheba, where he leaves his servant to go on another day’s journey into the wilderness. To say that Elijah is tired and scared is probably an understatement. He wants to die. He asks God to let him die. But an angel comes to him in a dream and tells him to get up and eat, and a little cake and some water are provided. He eats and drinks and falls asleep again and the angel returns and tells him for a second time:

Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you. He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.

Elijah is at a mountain that the narrator calls Horeb, but that earlier generations called Mt. Sinai. He’s back, in other words, at the very same place where the story of God’s people began, back where Moses got the Ten Commandments and encountered God in the midst of thunder and lightning. Elijah declares how lonely he feels – I alone am left and Jezebel wants to kill me. (As if the God who created all the pyrotechnics doesn’t know this already.) And then the wind, so strong it was splitting mountains. But God was not in the wind. And an earthquake and a fire but God is not there either. And then “a sound of sheer silence.”

When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, "What are you doing here, Elijah?" He answered, "I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away." Then the LORD said to him, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus."

Now Episcopalians (including me) love that “sound of sheer silence” (or as the older translations put it, the “still small voice of God.”) We tend to like our worship and our prayer and our spirituality on the quiet side, tending more toward meditation than speaking in tongues or doing any hopping dances around altars. Fair enough.

But the reason I’ve taken the time to tell the larger story on this day is that I’ve heard too many sermons on that “still small voice” that forget this larger socio-political context. The point of the story is not to encourage us to pray daily and include quiet times in our lives—although clearly those are very good and important practices. I’m all for those! Rather, the more important point of the story is that being faithful in dangerous times is risky. And sometimes, it can get you in trouble with the powers-that-be. Eljiah is not the first, nor is he the last. I think of St. Paul and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela all sitting in prison cells. As discouraging and isolating as that must have felt for them, perhaps they took some solace in remembering Elijah. And perhaps, they, too, in the sounds of sheer silence, were comforted by an awareness of God’s presence, so that they could carry on.

I think of what others have gone through (or perhaps even now are going through) what the mystics have called “the dark night of the soul”—when we feel like we are in a cave, lost somewhere in the wilderness, and feeling very afraid. And perhaps we, too, are ministered to by angels in those times. God may not be in the wind, or the earthquake, or the fire. But in the sound of sheer silence we know that we are not alone.

This is the larger point of the story and even when there are parts of it that may trouble us or feel unrelatable (or very “Old Testament”) this much holds true across many centuries. Being faithful to the living God can get us into trouble with the law. It got Jesus, and many others who have followed him through the centuries, killed. Sometimes we will feel very alone. Yet, in the silence, Elijah comes to realize that he is not alone. He knows—not in his head only, but in his heart and in his bones - that God is with him. And that gives him the strength and the courage and the hope to go on. The Word of the Lord that comes to him in that sound of sheer silence reminds him that there is work to be done, and he needs to go back and face that. He realizes anew that what God gives us is strength and courage to do the work God has given him to do; not a get-out-of-ministry-free card.

And then, just like that, Elijah disappears. Next weekend we’ll hear the final chapter of the Elijah story, about how in a whirlwind and a chariot of fire he passes into the heavenly realms, passing the baton to his disciple, Elisha, before he goes so that even after he is gone the work will continue. He will vanish from our sight, at least until three years from now when we return to this cycle of readings again.

But who knows; maybe we’ll catch a glimpse of him from time-to-time before then? Every year at Passover, our Jewish friends set a place at their Seder tables for Elijah, even as they pray for peace “next year in Jerusalem.” Who knows when he might show up at their table? Or perhaps even at ours? And as Christians, we catch a glimpse of Elijah every Advent season when John the Baptist suddenly appears in the wilderness, looking and sounding a lot like our friend as he proclaims that message of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Like Elijah, John points beyond himself to insist that the future belongs to not to the King Ahabs or King Herods of this world,   but to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords: the One who comes to bring peace on earth and good will to all and teaches us to pray, “thy Kingdom come, on earth as in heaven…”

In the meantime, there is work to be done. And no one said that work was easy. Jesus said that discipleship was about taking up a cross. May each of us hear, in the midst of our own journeys (and in particular when the road is difficult) that sound of sheer silence: God’s unique call to each of us to find a little more courage, and a little more hope to keep on keeping on: to not lose heart. And to not be afraid.

At the Priestly Ordination of the Rev. Ann Scannell

Tonight it is my privilege to preach at the ordination of a priest. And not just any priest - but the ordination of the Rev. Ann Scannell, who was a parishioner of mine at St. Francis, Holden when I was their rector. Sharing in this holy night with her and the people of Good Shepherd in Clinton is a great gift, for which I am profoundly grateful. Below is my sermon manuscript. 

Every time I am in this worship space, I get hooked by these two pieces of art to my right and to my left. They are iconic for me, even though I know that they are technically not icons. Since we are next to the Museum of Russian Icons, I will assume that you all know that the word eikōn literally means image, and that they are typically painted on a small wooden panel. (Actually, to be precise, you pray an icon, not paint it.) Theologically, it’s an image through which one glimpses something of the divine. In this sense, these two images are iconic for me, because they draw me in and point me to the living God. And so I want to begin there on this celebratory night. 

I realize that you can’t all see them from where you are, but I hope if you are a member here at the Church of the Good Shepherd you know them well, and notice them regularly. And if you are a guest here, you might peak up on your way to or back from Holy Communion tonight. And if you are going to be ordained a priest in a few minutes, I hope you will be reminded each time you preside at the Eucharist of the vows you take this night and your call to serve this people at this time and in this place and of Jesus, the Good Shepherd who has called you by name.

To my left is a painting of some shepherds and their sheep-dog keeping watch by night. There’s a particularly bright star which is technically part of the magi story, but I think it works here, too. They are out doing their jobs when the world changes. Not just their worlds. Our world, too. All worlds. The whole cosmos, as the fourth gospel writer might put it. Every Christmas when we put out our crèches in congregations like this one or in our homes, these shepherds appear. After Mary and Joseph and the babe there is no one more important than these shepherds (and their sheep) in that story. When we hear that “in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered” even the most nominal of Christians knows what comes next.

Shepherds are all through the Bible because there are sheep all through the Holy Land. One of this congregation’s former priests, Darrell Huddleston, used to tell me from time to time, “Rich, sheep are so dumb and they smell. Jesus wasn’t complimenting us when he compared us to sheep.”  If sheep smell, so do shepherds. Unlike the magi who will bring expensive gifts, the shepherds (poor as they are) just bring themselves to the manger. Maybe a little feta. But they are the first to come and adore Jesus. In this world that God so loves, it is to the poor that God is revealed first. The ones working the night-shift.   

To my right, a window with the familiar image of the good shepherd carrying that one lost sheep home. You may remember that the story of the lost sheep is actually the first in a three-part series of lost-and-found stories, found only in Luke. There is this one, where the shepherd leaves 99 sheep to go out and find the one. And then there is the woman who loses one of ten coins and turns the whole house upside down to find the one. When she does find it, she throws a neighborhood block party. And then there is that poor man who lost his son, a son who left home too early and then fell on hard times. But finally, one day by the grace of God he “came to himself” and made his way back home only to find the old man running toward him with open outstretched arms:  “My son, you were lost and now you are found…” Kill the fatted calf! Veal piccata for everyone!

Amazing stories. Amazing grace. Through these stories, including the one depicted in this window, we are reminded that sometimes we, too, get lost. The Church is called to be like that father so that we always know we can “come to ourselves” and have a place to come home to. This isn’t an icon in the technical sense. But it tells a story about God, right up here by this Table where all are welcome.

An ordination to the priesthood is a tricky thing. Some will tell you tonight, Ann, that you are about to go through an ontological change. Don’t tell the bishop this, but I’ve always been a little bit suspicious of that kind of language. Maybe it’s right; it’s just not my experience. More accurately, I am not sure what it’s supposed to mean or how it helps the mission of the Church. When I was ordained a priest, I didn’t really feel all that different the next morning.

If anything, I wonder if what happens tonight is more deontological. That is to say that the work of ministry, the sharing of ministry, the actions of following Jesus and the choices we make in a particular place and time--all of these things, over time, form a priest. At least for me, it has been more like that. What has happened and is still happening, over time, is that the particular places where I have served have formed and shaped me and gotten into my soul and body. My work in campus ministry, and then in parishes in Westport, Connecticut and Holden, Massachusetts, and now in diocesan ministry continue to make me the priest I am. Which is different from the way that you will live out your priestly ministry as you serve here, among this faithful people.

No doubt this night will be a touchstone for you, Ann, in much the same way that we remember our Baptism regularly. And I hope that you will continue – especially on the challenging days – to remember this night for the rest of your life, even if not this sermon. And that you will remember the faces of those here who proudly affirm this call. And that above all else you will remember and strive to live into the vows you take before us and before God tonight.

But I also think what will make you a priest are those pastoral calls to the ER in the middle of the night. And those contentious late night vestry meetings that always seem to happen on a hot summer night. And the baptisms. And the weddings. And the funerals. And through the ordinary work of standing at this table and remembering with God’s people that they are in fact the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ. The Body of Christ…

Ann, you have spent a lot of years as a baptized person. So you’ve spent a lot of years, already, in ministry. You have been a faithful lawyer, helping all of us to know and see that this need not be an oxymoron. The practice of law is noble work and like all work it can be done faithfully or unfaithfully. You have served well as a layperson and in your varied ministries, including as mother and as friend and neighbor. Six months ago, you arrived here as pastor and preacher and deacon. It’s been a bit of a logistical challenge, I know, to find “holy hands” each week to stand with you and we should say tonight how grateful we are to Meredyth in particular for the time that she has spent with you and this congregation.

Tonight is the culmination of a lot of things, too many to number. It has included a lot of prayer and discernment and an Ivy League theological education and CPE and GOEs and the BEC and the COM and a whole lot of other letters that make up an alphabet soup. It’s a big deal. You will be ordained in a few minutes to the priesthood. You won’t need me or Meredyth or Pam to show up on Sunday morning. You will have holy hands yourself!

But toward what purpose? Our being here tonight with you raises the question: what is ordination for? Why is this night different from all other nights? Why do we even need priests?

It doesn’t help us that for a long time, we got off track. I blame Constantine. We thought we paid priests to be better Christians than the rest of us. To be “the professional” Christians. That work came with some benefits. And it also came with some sacrifices. But it wasn’t right, I don’t think. We truncated the laity to raise up the priesthood. It seems, thankfully, that we are entering a new time and have been for a while.

While it is true that you will be ordained shortly to Christ’s one, holy catholic and apostolic church, which is to say into an order of ministry that is larger than this place, it is still, nevertheless this place that will continue to get inside of you: this choir and this altar guild and this vestry and these faithful people. And some days, these lost people. And some days, you feeling lost and needing to be found. The Church of the Good Shepherd is going to leave a mark on you, Ann. The people who think you are so amazing and those who will, some days, drive you nuts. (And some days that may be the same person in the span of an hour.) And it works in reverse, too. You will leave a mark on them. The work you are called to is a shared ministry, because ministry is a team sport; more like playing basketball than running a marathon. So pay attention to all of that – stay curious and stay open. Always with God’s help.

We are rediscovering, with God’s help, that priestly ministry cannot be understood apart from the ministry of the baptized. You are therefore being raised up not to lord it over anyone, but to serve. That’s what your vows are about, as I understand them. And if I’m wrong on anything else I’ve said, it’s ok. (Really, if you are a seminary graduate and you are still worried that I said I don’t know what an ontological change looks like, it’s ok. Let it go…)

The liturgy holds us all tonight and always. The promises made and reaffirmed show us the way forward. We Episcopalians are what we pray; not what the preacher says! Lex orandi, lex credendi.

Paul writes to the first-century church in Ephesus – let’s call it the Church of the Good Shepherd just for kicks – from prison. In the lines immediately preceding those that were read tonight, he urges them to live a life worthy of the calling they have received. He urges them to be humble and gentle and patient, and to bear with one another in love. He urges them to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit, through the bond of peace. He reminds them (as he reminds every congregation he served) that there is one body and one Spirit and one Lord; one faith, one Baptism, one God and Parent of all.

And then he reminds them, as we heard tonight, that they have all the gifts they need to do the work of ministry. They serve the risen Christ – the Good Shepherd of the sheep, the I AM: I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life, I am the vine, I am the bread of life, I am the gate, I am the good shepherd.

Paul understood that congregations are supposed to be more like a body than a pyramid. And the head is Jesus Christ; not the rector or priest-in-charge. Everyone – bishops, priests, deacons and lay people – has gifts. The work is “to equip the saints for ministry, for building up the body of Christ.” For how long? To what end?

Until all of us come to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

In other words, for a really long time. So it helps to take the long view.

I think most of us are more gifted than we realize and the Church needs to be a place where we feel safe enough to keep rediscovering and then using those gifts. And there are enough. There are more than enough. Sometimes we need to stretch though, and take some risks.

But I also think priestly ministry is about daily rediscovering our vulnerabilities as well. Discovering and rediscovering the limits of our competency. The job of being the Good Shepherd is taken. At best, we clergy are called to be faithful sheep dogs who know whom we serve and why we serve.

And if we really are the beloved community (and I trust that we are) and if we really are so loved by God that the Good Shepherd will leave the ninety-nine to find the one and bring her home – then we need to bear witness to that love in worship, and at vestry meetings, and in pastoral visits, and in the neighborhood beyond these walls.  Humility is a job requirement. And as talented as you are, I celebrate tonight that you are one of the most humble people I know. Continue to grow as a servant, with a servant’s heart. And members of this Church of the Good Shepherd, help Ann to keep at that. Not by tearing her down but by sharing with her the work that God has given you to do. Together. 

Ann: you and this parish have already been changed for good. It’s palpable. Already this relationship of mutual ministry is well under way. I pray it will continue to be a ministry that leaves a mark on you. This is not the year that King Uzziah died. Nor is it the year that a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. Nor is it the middle of the Eisenhower administration. And we are not in Ephesus. We aren’t in Holden, anymore, either.

This is the year that Ann Scannell was, by the grace of God and with the consent of the people, ordained to serve as a priest and through that vocation to help God’s faithful people here in Clinton to learn and to remember how to be the Church together. In this time. In this place. Speak the truth in love, so that this congregation continues to grow up and into the head of the Body, into Christ who knits the whole body together and equips us to do the work that we have been given to do, by following the way of love. With God's help. 

Stretching the Imagination

With my friend, Chris Owen and my
step-father, Marty Cox at Ein Karem, 2010

I wrote this post for yesterday, May 31, but then forgot to publish it. So a day late and a few edits to correct my timing...

Today marks the beginning of my seventh year doing the work of a Canon to the Ordinary. I love this ministry and feel called to the opportunities and challenges it represents. But when I am asked what I miss the most about being a parish priest the answer always comes easily to me: baptisms and funerals. The work at the beginning and end of life mark the breadth and depth and intimacy of the work of a parish priest. Diocesan ministry includes a lot more vestry meetings, and almost no baptisms or funerals.

That is always my answer. But there is another thing I sometimes miss, and that is the rhythm of marking the saints days at weekday Eucharists. I am in congregations across our diocese almost every Sunday, so I get plenty of opportunities to preach and enough opportunities to preside throughout the seasons of the liturgical year. But the Episcopal Church has a rhythm of what, when I was first ordained, were called "lesser feasts and fasts" and then came to be called "holy women, holy men." It is now called "a great cloud of witnesses," but by whatever name, these midweek commemorations offer opportunities to bear witness to those who have been faithful in their generations. One recent week alone included opportunities to remember saints like the Venerable Bede from the eighth century, Copernicus and Kepler and Calvin from the sixteenth, and Jackson Kemper from the nineteenth. 

Yesterday, we remembered The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which you can read about in the first chapter of Luke's Gospel. You can also visit the traditional site of the visitation at Ein Karem, which I have had the opportunity to do twice previously, although not on my most recent visit to the Holy Land.

In a sermon he preached fifteen years ago on this topic, Brother Curtis Almquist, SSJE, began like this:

In the calendar of the church we remember today an unlikely visitation of two women: Mary and Elizabeth. The mere fact that they are visiting one another is not unlikely. To the contrary. They are relatives, and they live within a long walk between each others’ homes. The “unlikely” element is the reason that occasions this particular visit, and that is, they are both pregnant. Within months they will bear sons who will ultimately usher in enormous changes, both theological and sociological changes. Elizabeth bearing a son John, whom we will call “John the Baptist”: he would prepare the way (the way, at least for some people) to recognize his cousin, Jesus, reportedly the long-awaited Messiah. And Jesus would be born of Mary. These two pregnancies more than stretch the imagination. (Emphasis mine; to read the full sermon, check it out here.) 

That phrase about "stretching the imagination" is a helpful one to me. So, too, the Magnificat (which is set in this same context and can be found in Luke 1:46-55.) Mary sings that her soul magnifies the Lord, and her spirit rejoices in God, her savior. She sings what her son, Jesus, will one day preach - that the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. Now if that doesn't "stretch the imagination!"

I read two posts recently on this topic, in addition to Curtis' sermon, that also stretched my own imagination. One is by one of my favorite Biblical scholars, Ched Myers. It can be found here. And then I read Heidi Neumark's reflection in The Christian Century. Extraordinarily good. I commend them all to you.

The visitation matters for many reasons, but perhaps in some small measure it is a kind of "case study" for why Scripture needs to be read, learned, marked, and inwardly digested. Slowly. It's not ultimately a primer for doctrine, but a way to cultivate theological imagination, and then to stretch that theological imagination as we turn the story over and over again and find ourselves in the midst of it.

It may also remind us that the "visitations" of our own lives - those intimate encounters with others - are both life-changing and life-giving.