Presence

Just over a decade ago, I was serving as the rector of St. Francis Church in Holden. Our youngest was about to head off for college. I was asked by the Standing Committee of our Diocese if I'd be willing to chair the Profile and Search portion of a process that would ultimately lead to the election of a new bishop. I was glad to say yes, and the vestry at St. Francis was supportive of me taking on this volunteer role on behalf of our diocese.  

There were two main parts to that work. First, was to listen across the diocese to lay and ordained leaders toward the goal of putting together a "profile" that would tell potential candidates who we were, and where we believed we were headed as a diocese, and what help we needed from a bishop to follow God's lead in that direction. And second, to come up with a "slate" of candidates who had responded to that profile by applying to serve. We did the initial screening work; once the slate became public we turned the process over to a second committee, called the Transition Committee, who managed the rest. Previously, I had been involved at the diocesan level as a parish priest primarily in two ways. I had served on Diocesan Council and I had chaired the Commission on Ministry, responsible for discerning calls to holy orders. But this was a leap for me, one I was happy to take on. 

There was lots to tell in that Profile, but one portion was to let candidates know that we have a lot of college campuses across our diocese. We wanted some images to show that, so I scrambled into my car and headed six miles down the road from Holden to the campus of Worcester Polytechnic Institute to snap a photo. 

Fast forward: we elected a new bishop at a special electing Convention in June 2012, and  then that new bishop asked me to serve on his staff as Canon to the Ordinary, ordinary being a fancy Latin-derived word for bishop. I left parochial ministry after twenty years for diocesan work.

My family and I had lived in parish-owned housing to that point, but now we would need to enter the housing market and buy our first home at the age of fifty. We found one in the city of Worcester, near WPI. As mentioned above it was just a little more than six miles from where we had raised our sons in Holden. Out for my morning walk yesterday, and walking past that sign almost at the end of a three-month renewal leave (sabbatical) I had one of those almost mystical experiences. I felt fully present and the past nine years rushed over me. I felt like I was, and am, where I need to be. I paused to take that picture again, this time on my "smart phone." I reflected on the interior journey I've been on for almost a quarter of a century now in central Massachusetts, remembering that line from T. S. Eliot: "we shall not cease from exploration / And the end of our exploring / Will be arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time." ("Little Gidding") 

Continuing my journey toward Elm Park, I felt that same overwhelming sense of purpose - of being where I need to be. Not just on that walk. And not just in my work, but in my life itself. I'll turn sixty on my next birthday. With a father who died at 37, it's an occasion I truly never thought I'd reach and, since we only get life one-day-at-a-time I'm not counting on that until it happens. But it's now within sight...

There is a quote from Barbara Brown Taylor, in An Altar in the World, that I really love. It goes like this: 

No one longs for what he or she already has, and yet the accumulated insight of those wise about the spiritual life suggests that the reason so many of us cannot see the red X that marks the spot is because we are standing on it. The treasure we seek requires no lengthy expedition, no expensive equipment, no superior aptitude or special company. All we lack is the willingness to imagine that we already have everything we need. The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are. 

The only thing missing is our consent to be where we are. When we do consent, when we are fully present, when we know where we are, it can be a mystical kind of experience. It's not so much "out of body" as fully in body. A kind of awakening to purpose, and meaning, and joy. 

Sipping my morning coffee on this hot summer day and getting ready to go out for this day's walk, I find myself reflecting on what has happened during this time set apart, this time of renewal. I am fully aware that the world is spinning out of control, that the pandemic is not over, that our institutions are a mess.

...and also that life is still good. And that God is still present in the midst of our days. We don't have to go far to see that. We just need eyes that see and ears that hear. 

Cuttyhunk Church, July 10, 2022

This past Sunday night I was the preacher at the Cuttyhunk Church. What a beautiful place and congregation. Below is my sermon manuscript, on the text from Jeremiah 32

It is a great joy to be with you all again this summer, my third time to this beautiful island to be with this faith community. 

I recently read an article that perhaps some of you saw in The Boston Globe that talked about the joys and challenges of life on this island and it's future. Someone (I think an islander) said that this was kind of "an island of misfit toys." I think it was meant with great affection as a term of endearment; at least I took it that way. Besides, in the world we are living in, I’m so glad to be in such a place, a little out of step in all the right ways, all of the ways that perhaps make it easier for us to listen for the voice of God and return to our own true selves. For Hathy and me, this night is the culmination of a lovely week among you and we will be heading back to Worcester tomorrow. I know I speak for both of us in thanking you, again, for your generous hospitality and for welcoming us to this holy ground.

I have chosen a difficult and very strange reading from Jeremiah on purpose tonight. I hope it left you scratching your heads and wondering if this guy should ever be invited back again after tonight. Please bear with me…

I have never before preached a sermon on this text and my guess is that you have never before heard a sermon preached on it. I went back and forth between peaching on the story of the Good Samaritan (which came up today for those denominations that use the Revised Common Lectionary) but in the end it was this text that called to my heart, and it’s a rare treat for an Episcopalian to get to choose our own readings outside of the lectionary. It's good to go rogue every now and again!

I also do believe that there is a word of the Lord here for us, a word we very much need this summer and beyond. But it will require a little patience and some digging. So I want to do three things tonight. First, I want to remind you about what Jeremiah’s ministry was all about. And then, I’ll get to this text and try to say why this real estate deal at Anathoth that we just heard about was so important. And then, lastly, I want to reflect a bit on where we are as a nation and a planet and why I think there really is a word of hope here for us as well as a challenge.  

First, Jeremiah was a prophet who lived roughly six centuries before the birth of Jesus. There are basically two prophetic tasks that in a sense are two sides to one coin. Sometimes the prophets comfort the afflicted. And sometimes they afflict the comfortable. Prophets are not fortune-tellers looking into a crystal ball to predict the future. Rather, they are close cousins to social critics: they see the present through God’s eyes and know where that is heading if things don’t change. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote that the prophets take us by the hand and lead us to the other side of the tracks, asking us to see what we’d rather not see. The prophets are not fooled by spin.

In particular, Jeremiah had a very difficult task of trying to wake comfortable people up. He was more in that “afflict the comfortable” camp. He knew that if God’s people didn’t get their act together there would be serious trouble ahead; it ended up coming in the form of the Babylonian exile. So when God calls Jeremiah, God says, “I formed you in the womb – even before then I knew you and I have called you” - Jeremiah is scared and intuitive. I’m just a boy, he says. Might you be able to find someone else?

And God says, “oh, stop saying you are just a boy already!” I’ll be with you.

Pay attention to the verbs in the Bible; if there is one hint I can give you in interpretation and personal devotion it is that one. Where is the action? In the case of Jeremiah his work can be summed up by six verbs which are a kind of mission statement for the work God gives him to do. His job will be to pluck up and pull down and to destroy and overthrow – all verbs of deconstruction that need to happen before the last two can happen: to build and to plant.

Oh, and God adds this: no one is going to listen to you. You’ll talk about all that plucking up and pulling down and destroying and overthrowing but no one will want to hear it because they’d rather skip to the building and planting without doing that first part and that’s not how it works.

In a nutshell that is Jeremiah’s long ministry. His work was to afflict comfortable people with warnings that the world was coming unglued. But denial is not just a river in Egypt. When it finally did come apart and only then did Jeremiah say, “all will be well but it’s going to be a very long time from now…”

We all have been though some tough times ourselves in the past few years – and you don’t need the preacher to tell you that you can lose hope when it begins to sink in. You lose hope that the sun will come out tomorrow, to quote Annie. Jeremiah is speaking initially to people in denial: so there is a lot of plucking up, pulling down, destroying, and overthrowing. But because he has a long ministry, after the exile happens, the work shifts toward building and planting.

And that brings us to this strange real estate deal. It’s a risky move. The temple has been destroyed and the leaders have laid up their harps on the willows of Babylon. They don’t know what to sing anymore, other than the blues. Their hope is gone. It’s dried up. This little real estate deal is contemporaneous with that more famous prophet vision of Ezekiel, of the dry bones. Can all these bones live? Do we have a future?

If this is the end of God’s people and they will never come home again, then this real estate deal isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. What Jeremiah is therefore doing is choosing not to give up hope. The future is unclear and distant but it’s an act of defiance and trust in the living God. And that my dear friends is why I wanted to put it before you tonight.

So let’s move from a little history lesson in a little closer to see if we can hear a word of good news addressed to us tonight…

Let me first tell you a personal story. Hathy and I did not become homeowners until the ripe old age of fifty. In my work as a priest and in all of our married life up to that point, we lived in parish-owned housing. We call them rectories in the Episcopal Church, but parsonage works fine too. It was nice in so many ways. When the roof was leaking, we just called the property chair. The vestry paid the bills.

When I was asked to join the Bishop’s staff in 2013, however, we bought our first home. The home we found was ready to move into, which was good since neither of us are handy and we needed to move in quickly. But things come up as I’m sure most of you can appreciate. Roots had grown into a sewer pipe and the roof needed to be replaced and there was some moisture in the attic and basement that needed to be addressed. Over the past nine years we’ve been on a steep learning curve on how to be homeowners. All of you who have done this before and perhaps with multiple places know that it’s expensive and never-ending. Some of the work is exciting and you get to enjoy it but other stuff is just maintenance.

A couple of years ago we had to remove two big old dead oak trees. It’s important but after the tree guys leave you get a rather large bill and it seems like that’s a lot of money to pluck up and tear down. We decided to plant one new tree and did a lot of research and settled on a tri-colored beech. I love that little tree, but it’s still little. In fact I’ve realized that I’ll never see it fully grown. We are investing in that tree, not ultimately for us – but for whoever owns the home after us.

We had to take down trees that were both much older than we, planted by someone else who has long since returned to the dust. And now we are getting a new tree started that someone else will enjoy, and eventually will have to remove. We are stewards and someday someone will have to cut that tree down and pay good money to do that. But I trust that is a long ways off. Are you with me?  I think that tree is a little bit like the real estate deal we read about tonight. We are called, I think, to take the long view.

Since preaching isn’t about learning history but proclaiming good news, I’ll just say this: it’s been a very challenging season in the life of our country. Whatever your own politics may be it’s been exhausting and scary for all of us, I think. We are divided and hurting, and you don’t need me to recite the litany of all that has been happening in our nation and in our world. A lot of tearing down and plucking up and destruction. I, for one, am ready for some building and planting. Our institutions – including even the church that we thought we could count on – are changing so rapidly as to be unrecognizable.  

All of this can make us passive and isolated and maybe even depressed. It can also make us angry and I can tell you that when I drive on the Mass Pike I see some of the rage coming out every day. We feel powerless and that is discouraging, in the literal meaning of that word: dis-courage. Remember that the word “courage” comes from the old French word: corage. We still have the word “coer” in modern French. It’s about heart.

So here’s my question and let me admit I can only point in a direction tonight, as I have no easy formula to offer. What might unleash courage in us, so that we do not lose heart just from reading the morning newspaper? How do we en-courage one another in the name of the living God?

I take great comfort these days in poetry and I have a couple of go-tos that include Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry. It was one of Berry’s poems that I selected as our second reading tonight.

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.  

That little poem makes me feel a little less crazy, and gives me hope and courage to live life one day at a time. There is another one of his we didn’t read but some of you may know:

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

The Talmud states, "Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

Well, that is what I have for you tonight, my friends. Do not lose heart. Trust God. Find ways to plant seeds of reconciliation, healing, and hope and then find ways to water those and nurture those. We won’t get there fast, but we need to find ways to do what we can – and trust God with the rest. We need to be the Church, here on this island of misfit toys and in those places where you worship when you aren’t here. God is not done with us yet.

So yes, there are signs of endings all around us. But together and with God’s help we will find the courage – the heart – to buy some real estate and plant some trees and invest in a future that we won’t fully realize. We can refuse to let fear dictate our actions and dare to see in signs of endings the possibility of new beginnings: those seeds of new resurrected life.

I leave you with a question we will sing momentarily, as a response to this sermon. Questions are good. (Do you know that Jesus asked way more questions than he answered in the Bible? And he often answered questions with questions. They leave us space to work on the hard stuff that doesn’t have easy answers.)

So here is the question:

Can it be that from our endings
new beginnings You create?
Life from death, and from our rendings
realms of wholeness generate?

It's an Advent Hymn and I admit that feels out of time. But right now everything is a little mixed up. So we’ll sing it anyway, as an act of affirmation and as a song of hope: can it be? Can it be that from our endings, God is already creating new beginnings? Life from death?

Yes. I don’t know when, or how, but yes, because God is trustworthy. So let’s sing it like we believe it because the one who sings, prays twice. (A link to the hymn can be found here.)

Let us pray it as a response to this sermon, as a defiant act of hope. 

Take our fears, then, Lord, and turn them
Into hopes for life anew
Fading light and dying season
Sing their Glorias to You. 

Make America again!

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)   
                                 - Langston Hughes (1901-1967)

If you do not already know the full poem quoted above, then I commend it to you in it's entirety. It can be found here. Spending some time with it will be way more fruitful than this post could ever hope to be.

Hughes' poem has become important to me over the years, and right now more than ever. This is how it concludes, and where the title of this post comes from (please note that not having the word "great" in there is very much on purpose):

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

At the end of my freshman year at Wallenpaupack Area High School, I won the Wayne County Loyalty Day Essay Contest sponsored by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, on the theme "What Loyalty to the United States Means to Me." I was a straight white boy growing up in small-town America. Although I referenced "problems like inflation, unemployment, and energy" in my essay, I boldly concluded (as only a fifteen-year old can) that they were "minor when compared to the problems other countries face." I went on to talk about our freedoms: freedom to run our government, to work in a career of our choice, to succeed, to follow the religion of our choice... America was America to me, a middle-class white kid who bought it all. God bless America! 

By the way, the reason I know what I wrote is not because I have a photographic memory; it's because my mother clipped that article (and I think every other one I was named in during high school) and then put them all in a scrapbook that she passed along many years later. This particular article appeared on May 20, 1978 in The Wayne Independent. In addition to sharing kind words about me they also included the essay in it's entirety. 

I find myself wondering: if Langston Hughes had been in my grade and submitted his poem then on this topic, who would have won that contest sponsored by the VFW in Wayne County, Pennsylvania? I'm guessing it would have been me, sadly. 

My mind has changed, in part from listening to voices like Hughes and others over the past four plus decades for whom America was never America either. There have been places along the way too many to mention when I've been discouraged. But the election of Donald Trump and those four years culminating in the events of January 6 and now the recent decisions of what is clearly the Trump Court (and not the Roberts Court) have been more than discouraging. I feel heart-broken this Fourth of July 2022, and fear for my nation. 

I consider myself a pragmatic optimist. One of my former parishioners used to joke that in every sermon I would talk about hope. And I still do, but it's become far more challenging and nuanced of late. I'm glad not to be preaching this weekend. To paraphrase Hughes, America is no longer America to me, and I could not win a Loyalty Day Essay Contest anymore. Most days my emotions run from rage to shame about what my country has become.

And yet...

I ask myself every day: what can I do? Since I'm a priest, I usually ask, "how can I help shape the Church I am a part of to be salt and light and yeast in this time and place?" I am not interested in theocracy for both political and theological reasons, although it seems that is on the table right now as the wall of separation between church and state is being eroded. Lord, have mercy. 

After 9/11, a well-intentioned member of the altar guild in the parish I was serving suggested we move the American flag to the front and center of the church. I said no. I said we needed to be focused on Font and Table on that Sunday more than ever. She meant no harm, but her question is one with which most clergy are familiar and the pull toward civil religion is greatest on weekends like the one upon us. Pity the pastor who decides to skip the patriotic hymns! 

My favorite prayer in The Book of Common Prayer for national days including Independence Day is a "Thanksgiving for National Life" that is found on page 838. It is really as much a confession as it is thanksgiving, and it is the prayer I need right now, and perhaps others do also. It goes like this: 

Almighty God, giver of all good things: 

We thank you for the natural majesty and beauty of this land.
They restore us, though we often destroy them. 
Heal us. 

We thank you for the great resources of this nation. They 
make us rich, though we often exploit them.
Forgive us. 

We thank you for the men and women who have made this

country strong. They are models for us, though we often fall
short of them.
Inspire us.

We thank you for the torch of liberty which has been lit in 
this land. It has drawn people from every nation, though we
have often hidden from its light. 
Enlighten us.

We thank you for the faith we have inherited in all its rich
variety. It sustains our life, though we have been faithless
again and again. 
Renew us. 

Help us, O Lord, to finish the good work here begun. 
Strengthen our efforts to blot out ignorance and prejudice, 
and to abolish poverty and crime. And hasten the day when 
all our people, with many voices in one united chorus, will
glorify your holy Name. Amen. 

Please consider joining me in this prayer in the days ahead, and if that's too many words maybe we can all just pray: Heal us. Forgive us. Inspire us. Enlighten us. Renew us. Help us.

In so praying, perhaps (with God's help) we can make America again.