Wisdom and Courage for Living These Days

Many singers and church musicians are fond of quoting the phrase, "the one who sings, prays twice." It's good theology. 

A corollary to this truth, however, is that hymns are in fact prayers set to music. Sometimes the music gets in the way of the text, or distracts from it, or even overtakes it. The goal, it seems to me, is for the tune to enhance the prayer and breathe deeper meaning into the words. When that happens we use all our senses to pray, and indeed pray twice or maybe even more than that.

Harry Emerson Fosdick wrote the words to God of Grace and God of Glory in 1930 for the dedication of The Riverside Church in New York City. There is an excellent reflection on this hymn that I commend that can be found here. 

I do hope you will read it, like now. When you do (but even if you don't) I want to highlight two points the writer makes. First, Fosdick wrote the hymn for the tune, Regent Square. When the Methodists paired his words with CWM Rhondda in 1935, however, it stuck. (I love it that Fosdick was not amused; noting that "the Methodists have always been a bunch of wise guys!") I find myself wondering what he would have said about Episcopalians who felt the need to offer a third tune in The Hymnal 1982, Mannheim, which I've never heard sung before and that's fine by me. By the way, since I'm already well down this rabbit hole, I'll add that I tried for longer than I care to admit to find a version of some choir or church singing this prayer the way the poet intended it to be sung, paired with Regent Square (which is a lovely tune by the way AND familiar) but no one seems to have done that or at least has not recorded doing so. I am tempted to revise my funeral plans to request that Fosdick's preferred tune be used when I die. I should add that I have nothing against CWM Rhondda, although I can't say that about Mannheim. I just find it odd that if we are going to have two choices in the Episcopal Church we didn't offer the one the poet preferred... 

OK, moving on! The second point that Dr. Hawn makes in the Discipleship Ministries reflection linked above (please do read it!) is the more important one to this post: Fosdick wrote these words in the throes of the Great Depression and between two world wars. "Cure us from this warring madness," indeed...

The prayer that I have been praying lately is like a litany that repeats at the end of each verse: "grant us wisdom, grant us courage..."

• for the facing of this hour
• for the living of these days
• lest we miss thy kingdom's goal
• serving thee whom we adore

The words seem to have "worn well" even nine decades later. I commend the entire poem/prayer to you and maybe someone serving a parish or singing in a choir will humor me and sing it to Regent Square one of these days and then let me know how it goes and send me the recording...

But for this post, in facing this hour and living these days (so that we do not miss the kingdom's goal and more faithfully serve the One who has created us in love) I'm struck by this plea for wisdom and courage. I'm struck now, as I have been for many years, that these two need to go together. Wisdom without courage can become something sheltered in an ivory tower. Courage without wisdom - well that can be just dangerous. But wisdom and courage together? That combination can change the world. It seems to me this is a worthy prayer not just for individuals but for faith communities. It seems to me worth remembering that it was written to dedicate a church, a great church at that, one that continues to serve the neighborhood committed to social justice.   

I have a love-hate relationship with congregations as I think most clergy do. They can be petty and myopic and forget that they are a manifestation of the Body of Christ on a weekly basis. Vestry meetings can be places where wisdom and courage are in short supply. And yet...I remember traveling to Alabama on the fiftieth anniversary of Jonathan Daniels' martyrdom and hearing a vestry member who kept bringing up integration in his parish until he wore them down. He showed wisdom and courage for the living of those days. 

While it may be possible to follow Jesus on our own and it may indeed be true that God can be at work in the neighborhood whether or not the church shows up, I still have not figured out how we share the love of God in the neighborhood without gathering a people committed to that purpose. When people gather to tell the old old stories and break the bread and say the prayers they form community; it seems to me that wherever this happens, it is going to look something like a congregation. And it also seems to me this week after celebrating All Saints Day is as good a time as any to remember that we are called to serve on governing boards and to preach from pulpits and serve at altars and greet newcomers as people who are trying, with God's help, to be saints of God. 

To say this another way, when congregations fulfill their purpose and live with wisdom and courage, they can be light and salt and yeast in the neighborhood. And the world so desperately needs congregations to live this way now as perhaps never before, or at least now as "not since the 1930s." The world needs for the Church to be the Church. Grant us wisdom. Grant us courage. For the living of these days. 

Gratitude

Last Sunday I was the preacher at St. Mark's in East Longmeadow, one of our congregations in the midst of a clergy transition. I usually try to post sermon manuscripts here early in the week but here it is, Friday, and I'm getting to it. Fortunately, I think both transition and gratitude are themes for at least the month if not the whole year! 

Meister Eckhardt was a German mystic and theologian who lived through the end of the thirteenth century and then well into the fourteenth. That’s a long time ago, I know. The world has changed. But I’m not so sure people have changed. So see if this isn’t right. Eckhardt said this: “if the only prayer you ever said is thank you, it would be enough.”

Much closer to our own time, Anne Lammott wrote a little book a few years back on prayer called Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers. Think about it. Think about your own prayer life. Sometimes we need God’s help, or maybe a friend’s help. We need to learn how to ask for that help, knowing we do not go it alone. And we can cultivate our capacity for wonder and curiosity – all part of wow which I pray a lot of in October.

But it seems to me that for Lamott, thank you prayers are the link. We thank God because when we need help, God hears us and is a very present help in time of trouble. If we don’t cultivate thanks, the alternative to counting our blessings is to collect grievances. We become resentful rather than thankful people, and so we literally can become blind to all that wow stuff.

So today’s sermon is about cultivating the practice of gratitude. As you come here today, what are you grateful for? It may be the single most important practice for healing the soul.

I am going to do something today I don’t do nearly enough as a preacher: I’m going to be silent for just thirty seconds. What I want you to do in that thirty seconds is to count your blessings. Think of all that you are thankful for in your life, right now. If you have a pen or pencil you can write some of them down. Maybe later today you can take a little longer and try to come up with 100 things – I bet it won’t take you very long. Let me prime the pump. I’m thankful for work that challenges me and gives me hope. I’m thankful for my health. I’m thankful for my spouse and two amazing young men we’ve raised together. I’m thankful that even though the Red Sox didn’t make it all the way to the World Series this year they exceeded expectations and gave us October baseball. I’m thankful for the beauty of the earth, especially in October and especially here in Massachusetts.

So what are you thankful for today? We’ll do it silently. Go…

“If the only prayer you ever say is thank you, it will be enough.” Thank you, God! Help us to be people who take time every day to count our blessings and not our grievances. Amen.

Gratitude is the theological foundation of what it means to be stewards of this good earth: caretakers of all that God has given us. It’s all gift, to be received and enjoyed. But as we try to teach our children and grandchildren, when someone gives you something, remember to say “thank you.”

One of the things I am so very thankful for in my life is the work I’ve been called to as a member of Bishop Fisher’s staff. On many days it is difficult and challenging work and as with any job that deals with people, there are plenty of opportunities to be annoyed. But on all days there is joy and a sense of purpose. I began my ordained ministry in 1989 on a college campus. I thought of my vocation as something like a “Protestant Jesuit.” It turned out, though, that I fell in love with parish ministry when I served two parishes: Christ and Holy Trinity in Westport Connecticut as their associate rector and then as the rector at St. Francis, Holden for fifteen years.

I was content and grateful there with work that I found meaningful. When Bishop Fisher was elected as our ninth bishop, however, he asked me to come and work for him. It was hard to leave Holden and I didn’t really know much about what it would take to be Canon to the Ordinary. It also meant, at 50 years old, that my wife and I needed to buy our first home since we’d lived up to that point in church-owned housing. (I do miss having a property committee to take care of repairs!)

Even so, well into my ninth year of this work, I find there is so much to be grateful for. Among other things, you get to walk through times of transition with congregations like this one. Last weekend I was in Great Barrington where they celebrated a new ministry with their new rector, Tina Rathbone. Two weeks before that I was in Northampton where they celebrated a new ministry with their new rector, Anna Woofenden. I get to see how the story continues and get a glimpse of what the next chapter will look like. I’m very grateful for that.

I know there was a lot of emotion when Peter left. It’s possible to have more than one feeling at once, of course. It’s possible to be happy for the Swarrs, but worried about the future of the parish. It’s possible to be glad for them to return to Maine and wish they’d stayed here through the challenges of the pandemic. I spend a lot of my time with congregations sorting through these sorts of things, and I find it’s easier to navigate a retirement than a relocation. But even so, these moments are again opportunities to give thanks and to cultivate gratitude. To have loved and lost is always better than to have never loved at all. Much good work was done here in the last chapter of your history; thanks be to God.

It helps to begin to move forward when there are faithful lay folks and a capable pastor available to serve as interim. Today I want to say that among my long list of things I’m thankful for is Sandi Albom and for your wardens, vestry, profile committee members, and search committee members. You are blessed, St. Mark’s. To use a sports metaphor, you have a deep bench. People are finding and claiming and using their gifts. Thanks be to God!

I cannot tell you for sure when your next rector will arrive. The short answer is, in God’s time. I can tell you that I’ve passed some qualified names along to your search committee. We will see if there is a match in there. What I can tell you for sure is that Peter Swarr is not one of those names and neither is Paul Briggs. Each had their turn. Whoever leads you next will help you to write the next chapter, not re-write the last one. I encourage you, therefore, to let God do a new thing here, among you and make  your hearts ready to step into that with courage and wisdom and faith.

Now I know that some people think that preachers should never talk about money; that clergy should stick to matters of faith. But I want to remind you that Jesus talked about money a lot, and I’m a follower of Jesus. He talked about it more than anything else except the Kingdom of God. He knew that people cannot serve God and money. As Bob Dylan paraphrased it many years later: you’re gonna have to serve somebody. Let it be the living God, not money.

There is so much in this congregation for which to be so incredibly grateful. Families, a sense of purpose, a commitment to the neighborhood, a deep bench. One of the things though that adds stress here is money. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But here’s the thing: just as in families, getting into debt can cause tensions and stress and anxiety. So, too, in congregations. When a parish has enough resources to do what God has called them to do, they can focus on that instead on how to meet payroll. In times of clergy transition there are some who say they will “wait and see.” I encourage you, in gratitude for what has been and what will be, to ignore that temptation and step up your game. As you have already been doing.

One of the real struggles in some congregations – maybe here – is that a deficit of thousands of dollars seems insurmountable. In the old days sometimes there were benefactors in congregations who could write out a big check. But now, in most places, we all need to do a little. We all need to share our widow’s mite. We all are invited to go a little beyond and if we all do that, we find there is enough. Even a $10,000 deficit in a congregation with 100 pledges is just $2/week more per person. Let me say that again because you probably didn’t expect math this early in the morning: if any one of us had credit card debt of $10,000 we would be rightly worried. But that kind of debt should not scare a vestry. Because if 100 people all kick in $2/week more over the course of 52 weeks, that deficit is erased in a congregation and that allows the community to focus on the work God gives us to do.

What is that work? We heard it again in today's gospel reading from Mark. It really is simple. Simple to understand, at least. Much harder to live it, one day at a time. We are called to love God and to love our neighbor. Jesus didn’t make that up as some new thing as is made clear in today’s reading from Deuteronomy and in the exchange  with the scribe. Everyone agrees that this goes to the very heart of Biblical faith – of Old Testament faith. Love God. Love neighbor. All of them.

We’ve been through a lot in the past two years in this diocese, and even in congregations that did not have to say goodbye to a much-loved rector, it has been a challenging time. Many are feeling weary.

Yet I believe that the purpose and need for the Church has never been greater, at least in my lifetime. We live in polarized times. I’m told you are a diverse group here politically and theologically. Good for you. You are learning, with God’s help, in a polarized world – to love one another. And when you do that, you bear witness to your neighbors of another way to be in the world, a way that leads to abundant life.

Don’t “wait and see” what happens when a new rector comes. It’ll happen. I don’t know when, but it will happen. In the meantime, the world is too small and too dangerous for anything but love right now. Go “all in” as followers of Jesus so that St. Mark’s can continue to bear witness to the love of God in Jesus Christ – and then go out and love your neighbors. All of them. No exceptions.