Joseph and His Brothers

The sordid saga of Joseph and his brothers began back in the 37^th chapter of Genesis. There we see Joseph as a seventeen-year-old spoiled brat whose most favorite thing in the world is to report back to daddy whenever his older brothers mess up!

Suffice it to say that his brothers are not all that fond of him. In fact, the Bible uses a word that most of us called to the vocation of parenting forbid our children to use. It says his brothers hated him. In fact, they hated him enough to want to kill him. In the end, they settle for throwing him into a pit and then selling him off as a slave to some foreigners. If it happened today an Amber Alert would be issued within a few hours and it’d be all over social media. We know as readers that Joseph isn’t dead. But the chances of ever seeing him alive again are very slim. This is no fairy tale; it is every parent’s worst nightmare.

So in Chapter 37, the 28^th verse, Joseph is sold to some Midianite traders for twenty pieces of silver. Briefly let me fill you in on what happens in the eight chapters between that event and today’s Old Testament reading. The brothers return home and they tell their father that a wild animal has killed their brother. As evidence of Joseph’s death, in a world before DNA testing, they offer Jacob that “amazing technicolor dreamcoat” smeared in animal blood. Jacob is a mess, as any parent who loses a child naturally would be.

Except that in this case, it is all an elaborate and horrible lie.

The narrator then takes us back to Egypt, where Joseph has been sold to a man named Potiphar, a captain in Pharoah’s guard. The two get along quite well. The narrator tells us that Joseph was “handsome and good-looking.” (Genesis 39:6b) To be honest I am not certain what the difference is between “handsome” and “good looking”—it sounds kind of redundant to me! But maybe that’s the point.

Apparently, things aren’t going very well between Mr. and Mrs. Potiphar. So that’s not exactly the right time to have a young handsome and good-looking assistant move into your home. One day after Joseph comes out of the shower, Mrs. Potiphar chases him around the house. He has nothing on but a towel, but he insists that he isn’t interested in her. Furious, she grabs the towel. Which leaves him…well, are you awake yet, St. Michael’s?

He runs outside and she accuses him of sexually assaulting her. As readers we know what has really happened. Or at least we know what the narrator believes happened…

You didn’t know this sermon would be rated PG-13 when you came in this morning, did you? While we cannot know “objectively” what transpired between Mrs. Potiphar and Joseph, what we can say for sure is that the narrator sees him as the innocent party. Either way, this is a he said/she said case and he’s a foreigner without a green card and she is, well, she’s Mrs. Potiphar. Joseph ends up in jail for a crime he apparently didn’t commit.

His cellmates turn out to be the cupbearer and baker of the Pharaoh. They got put in jail because one night Pharaoh got drunk and angry with them. As with Joseph, the suggestion implicit in these stories is that justice is not always served, and especially when the powerful and the powerless cross paths and bad stuff happens it is the powerless who get an overworked public defender while the powerful hire the best advocate money can buy. Story as old as time.

Anyway, both of these other prisoners have these strange dreams. And Joseph, the dreamer, interprets them. The meaning of the dreams is that the baker will get the death penalty and the cupbearer will get out of jail free. Sure enough those two things happen and Joe says to the cupbearer, when he is paroled: “hey, if you ever get the chance, put in a good word for me with Pharaoh if he’s ever looking for someone who can interpret dreams.” But unfortunately the cupbearer completely forgets Joseph.

Two whole years pass and Joe is still in jail when the Pharaoh has this strange dream about seven fat cows and seven skinny cows and another one about seven full ears of corn and then seven skinny ears. No one seems to be able to understand what it all means. And that is when the cupbearer says, “oh yeah, I remember this guy I did time with. Maybe he can be of some help here.”

This dream interpretation stuff is easy for Joseph. And, to be honest it’s more about sound economic policy than Jung anyway: seven years of good crops will be followed by seven years of an economic downturn. So if Egypt is smart they will save up during the good years in order to be prepared for the lean ones. Joseph is promoted to become Secretary of Agriculture under Pharaoh to oversee that process.

Isn’t this great stuff? Someone really should turn these chapters into a script and set them to music so we could see it all on Broadway!

In the meantime, Jacob and Sons have moved on with their lives. But they have hit upon tough times back in Canaan, because they weren’t prepared for that economic downturn.  So Jacob sends his sons to Egypt looking for some relief, wondering if there is an economic stimulus package in the works coming out of Cairo.

And that brings us to where we are today.

Joseph recognizes his brothers immediately. But remember that when they last saw him he was just a kid. Now he is a successful and powerful political appointee and they simply do not recognize the man before them as their brother. If he has harbored bitter resentments toward them for all these years, now is his chance to get his pound of flesh. Now is his opportunity to have them thrown into a dark pit and left for dead and see how they like it.

But Joseph doesn’t do that, as we heard. And I think the main reason he doesn’t do that is that he’s been able to see God at work in the events of his life, even (and especially) during the hard stretches. One of two things can happen after someone spends some time in a hole in the ground or in jail. If you let your nightmares win you come out embittered and blaming the world.

But if you can praise God in the midst of it all, then you can begin the process of claiming new life. Or as Andy Dufrasne puts it in The Shawshank Redemption, “you can get busy living or get busy dying.” Truly, then, I think this Joseph story is an Easter story. It is about redemption and healing and new life and just as importantly it is about trusting that God is with us even through the valley of the shadow of death.

Walter Brueggemann says this story is about the challenge to live our lives “between the hint of the dream and the doxology of disclosure.” That’s just a fancy way of saying, “get busy living!” You can cover the entire Joseph story in two weekends and Andrew Lloyd Weber put it all on stage and in two hours. You reach resolution and the happy ending of this tearful reunion we heard about today.

But the truth is that life lived one day at a time is much more complicated. Joseph spent two years in prison. I wonder what the ratio over those 730 days and nights was of dreams to nightmares. It is easy to come unglued, to be undone by the real pain and struggle and fear of our lives. The text isn’t precise but it’s something like at least twelve or more years that passes between that awful day in the pit and the reunion we heard about this morning. It’s hard to keep faith when you aren’t sure how the story will end. It’s hard to live toward doxology by trusting in our dreams when fear and our nightmares threaten to undo us.

It is hard to praise God in all things. Most of us suffer from a kind of amnesia from time to time even on bright sunny days when there is good food on the table and everyone has their health. Even then we sometimes forget to say, “thank you God.” But it’s even harder when the clouds come rolling in or when we are in real pain, whether physical or emotional or spiritual. It’s hard in the pit or in a prison cell to give thanks.

Yet it goes to the heart of our shared faith. We do have witnesses who help us to imagine what it would be like to live our lives like that. Do you remember St. Paul, sitting in a prison cell nearly two thousand years ago, hardly able to contain himself?

I thank God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now…I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel… (Philippians 1:3,4,12)

From prison he writes that! Or, in more recent memory, I think of Dietrich Bonhoffer’s Letters and Papers from Prison or Martin Luther King, Jr. writing from Birmingham jail. Or Nelson Mandela imprisoned for twenty-seven years in South Africa. Each faced that same choice Joseph must have faced: to get busy living or to get busy dying. They chose life. They chose to see God at work in their lives, as present with them even in those prison cells. They chose doxology. You and I are invited to follow their example.

What is the “good news” we are invited to embrace this day? I think it is that God is with us, always, sometimes hidden from view, but always with us – not far away in heaven. And no matter what life brings, in all the winding roads of our lives, we can still praise God, from whom all blessings flow.

I think that the Church exists to embody that, to proclaim that, to live that. We do so in order to create community that changes us. That is what we pray for today for Wade. He has a great family that loves him. But we insist today that he also has a church family that will love him. That we are a people who are trying, with God’s help, to live between the hint of the dream and the doxology of disclosure. We insist hat broken relationships are never the end of the story: we are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation and healing.

And we dare to believe that this still matters in a world that can be pretty tough. As Wade grows up we cannot shield him from the pains of this world no matter how hard we pray. What we can do, what we promise to do, is to be there through it all, as God is there through it all. We promise to love him, as God does.

A Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

The Gospel reading appointed comes from the sixth chapter of Luke's Gospel; it can be found here. (The psalm for the day is psalm 1, also referenced below.)

So, just to be clear: is Jesus really saying in today’s gospel reading that it is better to be poor, hungry, grieving, and hated than it is to be rich, overfed, laughing, and popular?

And if he is saying that, then who’s in? Who is ready to trade in on the relative privilege that most of us in this room enjoy for the opposites?

In Matthew’s Gospel these beatitudes mark the beginning of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is portrayed as Moses of old who went up Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. Jesus offers a new teaching, yet one firmly rooted in the old. The list of blessings is longer and there are no woes in Matthew’s remembering of it.

But today we get Luke, not Matthew. And let me just pause briefly here. We misunderstand, I think, if we imagine Matthew or Luke with a clipboard taking notes on one sermon preached by Jesus. Like great teachers and preachers throughout history, he did it again and again and again. He preached on the mount and on the plain, by the lake and in the desert. He kept teaching, hoping that someone with ears to hear would listen and then when they got it that they’d act accordingly. The core values of the beatitudes are at the very heart of Jesus’  teaching ministry.

So it shouldn’t concern us that Luke sets the scene for us in a different way than Matthew. As we heard today, Jesus and the twelve come down to a level place, not up on a mountain. In Luke this is the “Sermon on the Plain.” Jesus is speaking to the twelve—that is to the Church—but a whole crowd of people from Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal regions are also gathered around. They are listening in; eavesdropping even. (Sometimes that is when people do their very best listening!)

Did you notice that today’s psalm uses the same format Jesus uses. The word we read as “happy” in English is the same word as “blessed” in the Gospel. So the psalmist says:

Happy (or blessed) are those who follow the rules.
            Happy are those who delight in God’s Torah and say their prayers…

This, the psalmist says, is the path to prosperity. Conversely:

             Cursed are those who ignore the rules.
             Cursed are those who hang out with the wrong kind of people.

Jesus’ words make no sense to us if we don’t first get it that this is how conventional religions function. All of them, so far as I can tell. It’s not that the psalms are Jewish and Jesus is a Christian. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists all try to teach their kids to obey the sacred texts and to follow the ways of God. And as far as it all goes, it is right. It’s what we learn in Sunday School, to try to be better people. There is nothing wrong with that.

But there is also a shadow side to this, and every religious tradition has to wrestle with this. It is tempting to think that the more we flourish, the more successful we are, the more blessed we are, right? Clearly that must be because we are so well behaved and so deserving and just so wonderful in every way. God has blessed us! Thanks be to God. In a nutshell that is what some have called “the prosperity gospel.” But it’s a false narrative. It’s not what Jesus teaches.

While we may not want to say it out loud, there is a part of us (once we travel down this road) that is prone to add that if people are suffering or hurting or sick or unemployed that they clearly didn’t pray hard enough, or work hard enough, or they were not obedient enough, or they didn’t trust God enough. They aren’t blessed because their faith isn’t strong enough.

This kind of theology reinforces the status quo. Whatever is, is best. And it works as long as we are in the “happy group.” It works as long as all goes well for us and we see our lives as blessed. But if we wake up one morning feeling like Job, then it’s all up for grabs!

I am admittedly caricaturing this a bit, but I want to insist only a bit. We may not want to articulate it this way because as soon as you say it out loud you know it’s not quite right. But I think there is at least a part of all of us that buys into this way of thinking. It’s a kind of piety that runs deep in American culture, and I’ll admit that you can find texts to prove that it is a legitimate way to see the world. Like today’s psalm.

But Jesus pushes us, challenges us, to take another look. So, is he really saying that it is better to be poor, hungry, grieving, and hated than it is to be rich, overfed, laughing, and popular? Does he mean that, literally?

I think that what is happening here is that Jesus wants us to see the world from a different perspective and to be precise, from the bottom up. I don’t think he is romanticizing poverty. That is a temptation we face sometimes in the first world. I’ve been on mission trips to the third world and it is dangerous I think to look at the poor and hungry and grieving and hated and say, “well clearly they have so much more than we do since they are so much more spiritual.”

Our faith is incarnational; not dualistic. I don’t think Jesus is suggesting that we further defend the status quo by denying injustice, which is what happens when we romanticize poverty. No child should go to bed on an empty stomach. Full stop. And yet, the fact is that every 3.6 seconds a person dies of starvation—and usually it is a child under the age of 5. (See http://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html) Blessed are the hungry?

I think what Jesus is in fact doing is directly relevant to us and to our privileged lifestyles. In an upwardly mobile society, Jesus is challenging us to be downwardly mobile. I think that in a society where we can never have enough, he is asking us to choose gratitude for what we have, and generosity by sharing from that abundance. I think that what Jesus is saying is that we must choose to live simply so that others may simply live.

Whatever you may think about the devil or however you understand the ways that evil works, surely we can agree that there are demonic forces at work in the world that destroy the creatures of God. There are powers and principalities at work that dehumanize and destroy community. Evil isn’t simply about the bad choices we sometimes make as individuals. It’s more insidious than that.

I sometimes here people say, “if we just kept the ten commandments the world would be a better place.” Well, yes, of course it would be. But most of the time people are congratulating themselves as they say this because they haven’t killed anyone this week or robbed a bank. But what about the other eight?

The first three commandments deal with our relationship with God. It’s about the fact that God is a jealous God and demands our all. The fourth commandment is where the rubber meets the road—about making Sabbath time in our lives—about making time to be with God. But really, lets be honest—there are lots of other gods competing for our time and money and energy and worship not just on Sunday mornings but 24/7.

But I think the greatest struggle we face has to do with the last two, the two that it is most easy to forget. And I think they are connected. We are not to bear false witness. That doesn’t just mean we can’t lie about one another although it does mean that. It means we have to constantly try to put ourselves into one another’s shoes, because until we stand there ,we don’t know what makes the other tick. It is so easy to see ourselves in the best light and the one who has hurt us in the worst light, and then to tell our story to anyone who will listen. That’s not just gossip. It is bearing false witness when we speak ill of another who isn’t there to defend herself.

We are told not to covet, and I think that one of the main reasons we bear false witness is related to the fact that we feel jealous. Even among our friends, it is tempting to want the biggest gas grill on our deck, the biggest television in our homes, the biggest rock on our engagement rings, the biggest car in our garage, the biggest umbrella in our rum drink on a Caribbean Island in February. It becomes insidious because only one person can have the biggest. If mine is sufficient, but I covet what my neighbor has, then community is already in the process of being destroyed. Having a neighborhood is not possible when everyone wants the best and biggest toys.

So is Jesus really saying that it is better to be poor, hungry, grieving, and hated than it is to be rich, overfed, laughing, and popular?

I don’t think so, especially when it’s not by choice. But I think what he is saying is that to be part of the counter-cultural community he seeks to build, we do need to choose downward mobility. The problem with our striving to be rich is that we can always find someone who is richer, and we will want to be richest. The problem with being popular is that we can always find someone who is more popular, and we will want to be most popular. Jesus turns that all upside down and inside out. He asks us, I think, to look toward those who are poorer than we are. To face the reality that so many people in this nation of abundance really are being left behind.

I think Jesus is saying that our work as the Church is to make a neighborhood possible by loving our neighbor, rather than coveting our neighbor’s stuff. I think we come to Church to learn and then to remember again and again and again. Are the teachings of Jesus hard to follow? Absolutely. But with God’s help, all things are possible.

Unpreached Sermon Manuscript for Fifth Epiphany

Tomorrow there will be a parking ban in Bristol due to the snowstorm. We will NOT gather for worship. But I wrote a sermon already. I'm especially bummed NOT to be baptizing this weekend but we will get that rescheduled soon enough. Here is what I would have preached...

All of today’s readings invite us to reflect on the nature of what it means to be in ministry together. All of them invite us to reflect on what it means to be the Church in this time and place.

In truth, that is what all of the readings every Sunday are about, and that’s especially true in these weeks of the Epiphany season. Not only has the Light come into the world but that Light yearns to shine through us. We are called to illuminate the darkness wherever we may be: as parents and grandparents, as citizens of this country, as good neighbors. A lot of our readings in Epiphany focus on the call to us, by name, to be followers of Jesus. But this theme is particularly focused in today’s readings. And on top of that we get to baptize Wade and renew our own Baptismal Covenant, which reinforces all of these things.

By ministry I don’t mean the work of the clergy. I mean the ministry of all baptized persons. I don’t mean just what we do as individuals, but what we are called to do as a faith community, as members of Christ’s Body, as St. Michael’s Church. When I was the rector of St. Francis Church in Holden, Massachusetts where I served from 1998 to 2013 we printed, at the top of our bulletins every single week of the nearly 800 Sundays, I worked there;     

          Rector: The Rev. Richard M. Simpson
          Ministers: All the People

This sermon is about what it means to live as if we truly believe that claim. As if the ministers of St. Michael’s Church are truly all of you, the people of God.

Isaiah’s call sounds glamorous at first. But the ministry to which he is called is far from enviable. Isaiah has a mystical encounter with the living God, in all of God’s holiness and tremendous mystery. In that encounter, Isaiah feels keenly aware that he is but flesh and blood; a sinner. Who can stand in the presence of the holy God and not feel unworthy? But that is the beginning of his call, not the end. His sense of unworthiness (and ours!) is of little use to the God who has created us in love to shine forth as light to the world. So God sends the seraphs to Isaiah holding a live burning coal and the seraph tells Isaiah that his guilt has departed and his sin is blotted out.

This is a powerful image and these are powerful words. But in truth it is no different than the absolution we are given each week, even if there aren’t any apparent seraphs or burning coals to reinforce the message: we are forgiven. Our guilt has departed. Our sin is blotted out.  Sometimes it is easier to keep wallowing in guilt and to remain stuck in sin. Sometimes others cannot yet forgive us of the hurt we have caused and sometimes we cannot yet forgive them, or ourselves. But the God who has created and redeemed us in love is a forgiving God, a God who has put away our sins and freed us from bondage. As a forgiven and much loved people, we can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. We can stand in the presence of the living God and say, “here I am, Lord…send me.”

Poor Isaiah was called to a very difficult ministry, though. He will speak, but people will not comprehend; they will look but no one will understand. Isaiah’s task is to put the hard demands of God before a people who are not yet ready to let go of their comfortable lives. And there is nothing Isaiah can do about that except to hold the vision of the Holy God before them. That is a frustrating, to say the least. But that is the work that God calls Isaiah to do. It is a reminder that ministry is about being faithful, not successful. It is a reminder that the message is what is important and it cannot be compromised to make it more palatable to a hard-hearted people living in a hard-hearted time.

The teacher who dares to teach, in spite of the obstacles the educational system puts before him, or the doctor who dares to practice medicine in spite of the obstacles that our health care system puts before her; or the junior officer who tells the truth to their commanding officer;  or the parent who says no to their child even when all the other parents have said “ok”—all of them know what it is like to be in Isaiah’s shoes. All are to be commended for their willingness to be faithful in untenable circumstances, with God’s help. That takes courage, and trust in God.

In today’s gospel reading we find a familiar metaphor, maybe too familiar. What exactly does it mean to “catch people?” I think I know pretty much what it means to catch fish, although I am not much of a fisherman and in my lifetime I’ve not caught too many. I’ve cooked lots of them but that’s a different sermon. Most of my actual literal fishing has been sitting and feeling bored because nothing seems to be happening. So I identify with that part of the story in today’s gospel, these fishermen washing their nets after a long night with nothing to show for it.

Insanity is sometimes defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So maybe that is what Peter is thinking when he tells Jesus that they have been fishing all night and the fish simply are not biting. Or perhaps, if the disciples are anything like church people, then what Peter is saying is “Lord, we tried it that way a few years back and it didn’t work. Therefore we should never ever consider trying something like that again.”

But for whatever reason (and maybe it’s simply because he is just too tired to argue with Jesus) Peter lets down the nets one more time and they catch so many fish the nets start to break. Now it is Peter’s turn to recognize as Isaiah did so many centuries before that he is in the presence of holiness, and in the presence of holiness he realizes his own humanity: “Get away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”

This Gospel reading gives us another perspective on ministry: it’s about when ministry is going well and the nets are overflowing and quite frankly it’s fun and energizing. It’s about when we find ourselves hitting our stride in our chosen professions and life is good. I think we are meant to see this not as a contrast between Old and New Testaments, but rather to notice that ministry has different seasons and times. Both Isaiah’s experience and Peter’s experience are part of the ebb and flow of ministry. In both cases there is a constant: the message is bigger than us. We cannot control whether people will be “caught” or whether they will look and not understand. All we can do is be faithful.

So what is that message exactly, that we are entrusted to proclaim? St. Paul is a pretty good person to turn to if we need to clarify that. Today’s epistle reading was written to a difficult congregation in Corinth, and it’s about as good a summary of what St. Paul was up to as anything he wrote. After reminding the baptized community there that it’s not about him (nor is it about Peter or any of the twelve) he says simply that the message that they (and we) are entrusted to proclaim is about Jesus Christ, the one who “…died for our sins and was buried and on the third day was raised from the dead, in accordance with the scriptures.”  

That is the work we have been given to do. That doesn’t mean that we need to stand on the corner of Church and Hope passing out tracts. But we can learn to live as if we truly believe that we are a forgiven people. We can live as if we know that through Holy Baptism we share in Christ’s death, and his resurrection. We are an Easter people. We won’t always get it right. Sometimes we will speak and act in all the right ways and yet it falls on deaf ears. Other times we will almost reluctantly, almost in desperation, give it one last shot and somehow the timing will be just right, and infinitely more than we could ask or imagine starts to unfold. People get caught and there is new energy and new joy and all things seem possible. The results are not in our control.

I was born and then baptized in 1963 and have been a servant of Christ ever since. I take my baptismal vows very seriously as I pray you all do. In June 1988, I was ordained in the United Methodist Church. Five years later I was ordained a second time, as a deacon in the Episcopal Church at Christ Church Cathedral in Hartford, Connecticut. And then six months after that, on February 5, 1994, I was ordained to the priesthood at Christ and Holy Trinity Church in Westport, Connecticut. This past Wednesday, on the Feast of the Martyrs of Japan, I celebrated thirty-one years as a priest in The Episcopal Church.

You may or may not know the story about those martyrs of Japan, but it is a story worth recalling, so let me do so very briefly before I sit down. The Christian faith was first introduced to Japan in the sixteenth century by Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries. By the end of that century, there were probably about 300,000 baptized believers in Japan. Unfortunately, this promising beginning met reverses brought about by politics, both church politics and international politics. Rivalries between different groups of missionaries and conflicts between Spanish, Portuguese, and Japanese governments become untenable. So on February 5, 1597, six Franciscan friars, three Japanese Jesuits and seventeen Japanese laypersons were crucified in Nagasaki, Japan. Many other Christians were arrested, imprisoned for life, or tortured and killed. By 1630 the Church had been totally driven underground.

So I ask you: were these martyrs “successful?” Not by any of the modern standards of church growth they weren’t! They went from 300,000 Christians to almost zero, at least who would confess their faith openly. But I’ve been thinking about those missionaries for over three decades now and I think we need to say that their ministry was faithful, even if not successful. They did bear witness to Christ, literally to death on a cross. That’s why we still remember them.

Let me summarize and then let’s baptize Wade.

1.    We are all called to share in the work of ministry, not just the ordained. There are a variety of gifts but one body. It’s a team sport; not a spectator sport.

2.    We are called to be faithful regardless of whether or not the world defines our work as successful.

3.    Through it all, God is God. The work God has given us to do, is not about us. So even our failures and our disappointments can be occasions for us to say “thank you,” because they remind us that we are dependent not on our own efforts or results, but upon God’s abundant mercy.

4.    In all things, we are witnesses who point to Jesus, who even now is in our midst. That is what holds us together. That is what makes us the Church.

Candlemas

Today we gather for the 307th Annual Meeting of this parish. Ponder the weight of that history for a moment, will you?

In his history of St. Michael’s, Canon Tildesley wonders about the name of this parish. Why St. Michael’s? He says (and I take him at his word) that there are no records to give the reason. And then writes:

Some believe it was named after the parish church of St. Michael the Archangel in Bristol, England. Others think it was so named because St. Michael is the patron saint of fishermen.

Both seem plausible and there’s no way to go back and know for sure. Perhaps someone said at that initial meeting, “hey we should go with St. Michael’s in Bristol since there is already a St. Michael’s in Bristol, England. And someone else chimed in and said, “yeah, and here we are by the water and St. Michael is the patron saint of fishermen.” All in favor say “aye!” Easiest. Annual. Meeting. Ever! Canon Tildesley goes on to write:

Whatever the reason for the name, and at this late date it seems unlikely that we will ever know the exact reason, St. Michael’s in Bristol, beginning in a small and humble way in the early eighteenth century, has continued down to the present. Over the centuries it has continued to be a Christian presence in the town of Bristol, to say nothing of the tremendous influence it has had from time to time in the history of the Episcopal Church in the State of Rhode Island and in this country.

And here is what I want to add to those words: God is not finished with us yet, St. Michael’s.

I’ve only been with you now for a little over four months. I’ve been warmly welcomed and I’ve witnessed firsthand your faithfulness and your resilience. Our time together, this chapter that we share in your long and amazing history, is about the work of finding your next rector. I’ve been hearing your stories and I’m so grateful that you’ve opened your lives to me. We’ve had several funerals for longtime members, and we’ve had several baptisms that call on us to be the Church as we look to the future. We had a wonderful Christmas celebration and a full house of members and families and guests and even some folks who’d been away but are wanting to find their way back.

Good things are happening here. Today we will commission the folks who will be working on telling the story of St. Michael’s through a parish profile. Their work will be to create several documents that will tell potential clergy what you are looking for, what your hopes and dreams are, as well as your fears and disappointments. To tell the truth in love, which will give you the best possible opportunity to find a priest who is called to share this work with you.

Looking ahead: in less than two weeks we will interpret the Congregational Assessment Tool, the CAT. I hope everyone will take the time to weigh in on that. It’s very rare in any congregation to get a snapshot that includes everyone, not just vestry or the most opinionated extroverted members. The CAT allows every single person to speak their truth and that is invaluable data right now. Don’t squander that invitation! It will give us reliable insights into where we are right now, and you have to know where you are now before you chart a course to where you are going.

Most of us have been taught that Christmas lasts twelve days and ends when the wise guys arrive with their gifts. But some Christian traditions say Christmas goes for forty days and today is the culmination. We don’t need to solve that great mystery today. The point is that we have had the opportunity once more to light candles, as we did on Christmas Eve when we lit our candles and sang silent night. We have this candle mass, which reminds us once more of our calling to be lights in our own generation. And I think that goes very well with the business we are about today at our Annual Meeting.

"And when the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought Jesus up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord." (Luke 2:22) Luke is the only one who tells us of the holy family’s pilgrimages to the Temple in Jerusalem: first when Jesus is eight-days old for his bris, and then again at forty-days old for the purification of his mother, Mary. And finally when Jesus is a teen-ager and gets separated from the family. Luke makes it clear that this family were devout, practicing Jews.

We sometimes call this day the presentation of Jesus in the temple, but more accurately it’s the purification of Mary. My Jewish Study Bible insists that first-century Jews didn't think of a new mother as "dirty" but as ritually impure and those are not synonyms! The discharge of blood does not make one unclean because blood was seen as "bad;" it was not. Blood is good and essential to life; it represents the source and flow of life itself. But in the priestly view of the world, everything has its place and the messiness of birth required ritual cleansing and sacrifice in order to welcome a new mother back into the community. Until that time she is considered “unclean.”

Now I don't pretend to grasp that completely or even agree completely with what I do grasp. I’m uncomfortable with a theology that labels people as clean or unclean. But I do try to seek understanding. And how I have come to understand the theology of the priestly writer is the insistence that God is wholly “other” – God is mysterium tremendum. We are not. We humans are not bad, but we are dust, creatures of the earth. We are born and we die. In between, to stand in the presence of God is to become more fully aware of God’s holiness and our humanity. So I think that’s the historical context for what’s going on in today’s Gospel reading. After this, this holy family will make their way back home, where Jesus will "grow in wisdom and grace.”

But regardless of that theology which undergirds this day, here is what I do get and love: Jesus is the light of the world, light that has shined in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. But the meaning of the Incarnation is that we are invited to share that same light with the world, these little lights of ours. The world needs for us to do that, and to be the Church in this time and place.

I love you all – truly. When people ask me if I miss diocesan ministry I tell them I’ve been there and done that for almost a dozen years, but now I am so very grateful that you have given me the opportunity to return to my first love: parish ministry. At first that was a generic desire but now it’s about real people. It’s about Loretta and Alexander and Steve and Betty. It’s about Allison and Mary Ann and Geoff and Deb, and a faithful vestry. It's about Candace and Lilliana.  It’s about a growing community on Thursday mornings at 8 am, a service I love for its intimacy. It’s about all of the outreach this parish does to show the love of Jesus to our neighbors. It’s about this choir and this altar guild and those who serve on our committees and show up for Bible Studies and take time for retreats and then still make it back for Annual Meeting.

I love you all enough to want us to keep our eyes on the prize. A year from now I am hoping to retire. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop being a priest. But it will mean that I’ll start drawing a pension and I will be able to say yes to smaller and different invitations to serve, closer to Worcester.  It means I will focus on my baptismal ministries as spouse to Hathy and dad to Graham and James and father-in-law to Cara and Lindsay and as grandfather to Julian David. I am not a candidate to be your next rector; not because I don’t love you but because I do love you and because I want to leave you in good hands with the next rector. Quite frankly, I’m not willing to work quite this hard for the next 5-10 years to do what is needed here.

In the meantime though, we have work to do: to run the race with endurance and faithfulness and stay focused, so that together we will get to a place where you will make a wise and discerning call of a priest who can give you her all. Or his all. I feel energized and hopeful about the future and I hope you do, too.

On my first day here, on the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, I quoted from Thomas Merton:

You do not need to know precisely what is happening or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by this present moment and then embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.

That’s what I still hope for you as we look to the future. Let’s recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by this present moment, and then let’s embrace those with courage, faith, and hope. God will be with us.

We are called to be the Church from generation to generation. The world desperately needs for us to the Church, right now, to be lights in our generation and to let others see that we are a people who recognize the possibilities and challenges that are before us in this present moment and that we are embracing them with courage, faith, and hope.

I promised you more Bruce Springsteen when I arrived here than I’ve delivered on so far. That will change in 2025, starting today. When life is hard, dream of light. When you feel wearied by the chances and changes of this life, dream of light. When you feel threatened by despair for our planet and our nation, and the neighborhood, dream of light. When you are grieving, dream of light. When you aren’t sure what to do, dream of light.

And then come on up for the rising.

Living in the midst of disorientation

Many years ago, when I was taking classes for my DMin degree from Columbia Theological Seminary, I took a class called "Earthy Spirituality" with Walter Brueggemann. The Biblical text was the Psalter and basically it was the same course as what Brueggemann presents in The Message of the Psalms. 

In that class (and in that book) Brueggemann suggests one way to organize the psalms is into one of three categories: psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of new orientation. The former is what we learn in order to orient ourselves to the world: Torah Psalms and Psalms that celebrate Creation fall into this category. (See Psalm 1, for example.) 

But life is not always that way. Sometimes we feel like we are in a pit, like we are isolated and alone. Sometimes we have no idea which way is up or where to turn next. These are the psalms of disorientation. (See Psalm 88, for example.)

Usually we don't move through disorienting life experiences quickly or in a straight line. The world is changed for good when that happens, and we cannot return to the "simplicity" of the orientation psalms; they just don't work any more. The only way forward is to a new place - a new orientation. Psalms of new orientation can look back to a time when things were not good, but now things are better. There has been growth and learning and renewed trust in God. (See Psalm 23 as a famous example.) No longer is one afraid of the valley of the shadow of death as a first timer; because the poet knows that God is even there, and will comfort and prepare a way forward. 

Brueggemann's argument is that we, as individuals and as faith communities, need to learn this repertoire of prayers for a more earthy and real spirituality that goes deeper than cliché. 

What might this mean for preachers and those who listen to preachers in this time and place? I'm now back in a place every week rather than the itinerant ministry of a diocesan canon. I'm developing relationships with the people at St. Michael's and I know not only the larger social context we are living in but their own stories along the way. Generally speaking though, and regardless of political leanings, it feels like we are living in a very disorienting time. A lot is happening at once and a lot of this scares people, including me. We are used to theologies of orientation - I think historically this is what the Church has done best. We give people the foundations of faith. We teach them the Lord's Prayer and the Creed and how to open a Bible. But rarely do we know what to do or say in disorienting times and preaching follows this pattern.

On a personal note, I find the great temptation of these days very great to try to return to a familiar place of orientation. But it seems to me the work that lies ahead is a two-step process., however. Not only can we not go back but we won't move forward quickly. First we have to be honest about the disorientation, and all of the emotions that accompany it: fear and anger and loss and confusion as a start. We might use this time to re-engage the parts of the Bible that engage these difficult and disorienting times: in addition to those disorienting psalms there is Lamentations and Job and Ecclesiastes and even John's Revelation, to name a few.

You can't tell a person still in the pit that "though I walk through the shadow of death  I will fear no evil..." I mean, you can, but it's pastorally cruel and usually does not resonate well. We NEED those psalms of disorientation for a season so we know we are not losing our minds. We need to move through a time of grief and loss and learn or re-learn a language for doing so. 

But never is that the last word. We are an Easter people who embrace the Paschal Mystery. Our story includes Good Friday but it doesn't end there. New life is possible and promised. 

So we need to do two things at once, I think: tell the truth and hold out hope. Hope is not wishful thinking or cockeyed optimism. If we are telling the truth about where we are right now, those responses are hollow. Rather, the new orientation psalms and prayers and sermons will be those that acknowledge the truth but also insist the story is not over. Since we cannot go back to "old" orientation there is only forward, to new joys and new possibilities. 

But that may take some time...