Saturday Waiting

You are the God who remains with us during our Saturdays of waiting and wondering, marked by the memory of Friday and the hope of Sunday. Forbid us too-easy exits out of the darkness. May we wait until we are at last interrupted by your life-giving grace. Amen. (Walter Brueggemann)

We are a people shaped by the Paschal Mystery: Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Those familiar words flow easily off our tongues. The challenge is for them to become not only what we profess with our lips, but how we live our lives, in our vocation to become an Easter people.

For many years now, I’ve been fascinated by Holy Saturday. As a parish priest, there are so many liturgies to plan for that by Easter morning, when we proclaim that Christ is risen, often the clergy need a nap. Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil are all complicated liturgies. And often more than one each day. And then Easter morning and then the next forty- nine days as well, since Easter is a season and not just one morning.

But tucked in the Prayerbook between Good Friday and the Easter Vigil is a little one-page liturgy that I used to use with the altar guild and those who would be participating in the Easter Vigil later on this day. I’d plan to take a few minutes for us all to catch our breaths and then the altar guild would decorate and we’d do a run-through of the Vigil on Saturday morning. You can find the liturgy on page 283 of The Book of Common Prayer. Check it out if you don’t already know it.

It is small, but mighty. It’s totally unpretentious. In fact it’s surely the most humble little liturgy in the entire BCP: the "little engine that could" service. The rubric at the top of the page reminds us that there is no celebration of the Eucharist on this day between the observance of the crucifixion and the Vigil.

Holy Saturday is about waiting. A simple collect asks God that “we may await with him the coming of the third day and rise with him to newness of life.” Readings, a brief homily, and then “in place of the Prayers of the People, the Anthem, “In the midst of life.” Then the Lord’s Prayer and the Grace. That’s it. The Anthem comes from the Burial Office – you’ve got to turn the page to 492 to get there: 

            In the midst of life we are in death;
            from whom can we seek help?
           From you alone, O Lord…

Saturday waiting. On the Sabbath day. We know about death. We see too much of it in our lives. Yet we live in hope for new life, for the promise of the empty tomb. We are shaped by the good news of Easter and called to live toward that love that never fails.

But so much of our lives is in-between. Waiting for the school bus. Waiting to hear the results of a lab test. Waiting.

Waiting can raise our anxiety and make us fearful. Yet we can also wait in hope. In the midst of life, we are in death. But we know where to look for help. And so we wait for the coming of the third day, so that we might rise with him to newness of life. We can practice waiting toward Easter. We can practice waiting in ways that open our hearts to the new thing God is calling us toward, rather than the old thing which allows us to return to “normal.”

Holy Saturday waiting. 

We are not God. That job is taken. We are not masters of even our own lives. We preachers have some sense of what to say in our congregations on Good Friday. And we have some sense of what to say on Easter morning. But right now we are living in-between. We are waiting.

May that short, simple liturgy point us toward waiting in hope, and with courage, and with love, trusting that all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Just not usually on our timetable. 

A Conspiracy of Goodness

The word conspiracy comes from the Latin, conspirare, literally "to breathe together.”

This word has captured my imagination as a way to reflect upon what it means to be Church in these dangerous times. In modern parlance, conspiracy has taken on negative connotations. We speak of conspiracy theories and people who conspire together are often making secret plans to break the law. We speak of co-conspirators of a crime.

But the early followers of Jesus conspired together for good. In the midst of Roman occupied Palestine, they imagined a world of peace with justice that Jesus called the Basilea (Kingdom) of God. The Scriptures themselves, both Old and New Testaments, bear witness to communities that breathe together and that is especially true in the Book of Acts, where the Holy Spirit takes center stage.

Too often, the institutional Church has taken on a life of its own, separate and apart from its vocation to serve God and the world as the Body of Christ. But throughout Church History we have seen glimpses of communities that conspire in love. One such community was in Le Chambon-sur-Lyon in 1940s Nazi-occupied France. Many years ago, when I was still a young campus minister, I came across the extraordinary documentary by Pierre Sauvage, entitled Weapons of the Spirit.  I believe that a new edition is currently in process and it could not be more timely, some thirty years later. But take a moment to watch this clip and you’ll get at least a taste for right now: https://vimeo.com/964775998?fl=pl&fe=sh

It is from their experience of being faithful in dangerous times that I first encountered the phrase, “a conspiracy of goodness." I remember being in Amsterdam and walking through the Anne Frank House and asking myself: would I have had the courage to make my house a sanctuary to such a family? If I were the pastor of a congregation in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the 1940s, would I have had the courage to risk preaching a sermon which might lead a parishioner to walk out because I had gotten too "political?" Even more scary, what if they were walking out not only with their pledge but to report me to the authorities?

These questions seem more timely today than ever before in my ministry, in my own context. They have been real questions throughout the twentieth-century in places like Central America and South Africa and Uganda. And they have been real questions much closer to home for people less privileged than I have been. But we have come to a time, I think, when we need all hands on deck.

In 2015, I attended the Jonathan Daniels Pilgrimage in Hayneville, Alabama, fifty years after Jonathan’s martyrdom. It was a powerful experience that I will never forget. During that time, I sat at a table at St. Paul’s Church in Selma, eating lunch with a man  who was a member of the vestry who conspired with Jonathan Daniels and others to integrate that church at a time when 11 a.m on Sunday morning was the most segregated hour in America. He kept bringing it up at vestry meetings and it was voted down but he kept at it, month after month, until (like the persistent widow in Jesus' parable) he wore that vestry down and they finally voted yes.

I can't remember how many months it took, but I found myself wondering as I heard this story about if I had been the rector at that time, in that place. Would I have persisted with this vestry member, or tried to "keep the peace" with those who counseled, "these things take time?"  Would I have had the stamina as each month passed, and my spouse politely asked, "how was work?" to not lose heart when the honest answer would have been, "well, we had the same vestry meeting, again, but we're still nowhere!" Or after it did finally pass and then the biggest pledger walked out, taking his pledge with him and creating a budget deficit: what then?  These things happen as anyone who has ever led a congregation, ordained or lay, know all too well. Doing the right thing rarely leads to everyone cheering us on for having.

We do not start from scratch. We need to begin (again) to claim that great cloud of witnesses: those who resisted in Nazi Germany and those who resisted in the Jim Crowe south and those who resisted apartheid and those who resisted in Nicaragua and El Salvador and Uganda, often with their lives. It seems to me that we have some un-learning to do in many of our congregations in order to re-learn what it means to be part of a conspiracy of goodness. 

Focusing in on those questions as we, once again, walk the way of the cross, is perhaps the most important invitation in the three holy days that now enfold us. To become an Easter people is to become witnesses to a conspiracy of goodness. The foot-washing and the last supper and the events that lead to death on a cross and the empty tomb all require that we become more than passive bystanders, but active witnesses who conspire with God and with one another to become an Easter people. Ultimately we will again be in that Upper Room when the risen Christ comes to be among a frightened group of disciples, and to breathe new life into them. And us. 

Breathe on us, Breath of God! Fill us with life anew. Breathe on us and show us how to conspire together for good and for love of this world that you so love. 

It's a Protest March. Not a Parade.

From time to time, The Christian Century has published a series of essays by "big league theologians" under the rubric, "How My Mind Has Changed." It's a great series that has been around now for decades. 

No one has yet invited me to participate but if they did, I'd focus on how my mind has changed about the Liturgy of the Palms that leads Christians into Holy Week, and how this unlocks a theology of resistance to the powers-that-be. 

I was raised to believe that the liturgy of the palms was festive, like a parade. This was actually reinforced by my theological education in the mid 1980s. The confusion that preachers and parishioners experienced on this day was about how the "fickle" crowd turns on Jesus after welcoming him to Jerusalem just a few days earlier. Who crucified him? We did - because we turned against him when he was not the kind of messiah we expected. 

It's not that there is no truth at all in this assumption. But having walked this route in the Holy Land, and having read John Crossan and Marcus Borg's The Last Week nearly twenty years ago, I've fully embraced the notion that this day is not about a parade with a John Philip Sousa marching band. (That's happening on the other side of Jerusalem with a full-throated display of Roman Imperial Power!) Rather, this is a counter-testimony from the rabble rousers that Jesus has been collecting "on the way" to Jerusalem from Galilee. This is about people who refuse to bow down to the emperor, who claims to be almost divine. This is about people who insist: we have no king but Jesus. 

Yesterday I participated in a No Kings march in Worcester, as millions of people did across this country. I did so because I believe that we are on the wrong track and we need to turn around. We need to repent as a nation, not pray (as the so-called Secretary of War recently did) for God to take our side in an armed conflict. That has nothing to do with following Jesus. We pray for peace on earth and good will to all. We pray even for our enemies. That is at the core of our purpose as followers of Jesus in every generation.

This is not simply a "spiritual" matter. Jesus may indeed be a king who is "not from this world" but his reign of justice and mercy has profound implications for this world and challenges all pretenders to his throne of glory. Jesus was political. The Church has always been political, as well. But for far too long, including at least the first forty years or so of my life, we stood with the status quo, especially in the Episcopal Church. We were proud chaplains to the empire. 

So my mind has not changed because of revisionist history. It has been changed (over the past two decades or so) because I came to believe that where I was standing was keeping me and those among whom I served from seeing and hearing and proclaiming the powerful truth about this day. Walking in Jerusalem and reading Crossan and Borg allowed me to stand in a different place, in solidarity with all who know that the Church is called to resist imperial power in order to follow the One who kneels and washes the feet of even his betrayers, deniers, and those who have fallen asleep. 

Jesus organizes a protest march against Herod and Caesar and the occupiers of first-century Roman Palestine. We don't wave the palms as if waving a flag on the Fourth of July. We wave the palms to say, "blessed is the only one who is worthy to  be called king." We're with him. 

Sobremesa

 

Graham, Cara and their parents sharing a meal in Granada, Spain

I learned the Spanish word, sobremesa, at a meal in Granada a couple of days before Graham and Cara's wedding. I feel like it's a word I knew in my heart and had experienced throughout my life, but it became real on that day as we lingered for hours over a delicious meal. It gave me language to express the experience. 

Literally it means “over the table.” It refers to that time after the meal has been served when there is maybe some dessert or some more wine and a lot of ongoing conversation and storytelling. You don’t want the meal to end! You don’t want your guests to leave.  You don't want to ask for the check or if at home, start the dishes. Not yet. You want to enjoy and savor this particular time and linger over it. I realized that it's more than a vocabulary word: it's a socio-cultural commitment and it's hard to do in North American culture which is always ready to move on to the next thing.

Tomorrow marks the Feast of the Annunciation in the Church's liturgical calendar. No one else was there, of course, when the Archangel Gabriel came to visit Mary and she consented to be the Christ-bearer. But through Church history, after making the assumption that Jesus would (of course) be born right on time, the liturgists assigned March 25 as this feast day, which is exactly nine months before Christmas. 

The Annunciation is on my mind in the reverse direction today, however. My last worship service was on Christmas Day at St. Michael's  Church in Bristol, so, precisely three months ago. That is how long I have now been retired. Three months. 

I have not been bored, and especially since we have welcomed our second grandson, Daniel Darcy, into the world. I have been considering these words, from Evelyn Underhill, as I am finding my way into this new chapter of my life: 

We mostly spend [our] lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing, on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual—even on the religious—plane, we are kept in perpetual unrest: forgetting that none of these verbs have any ultimate significance, except so far as they are transcended by and included in, the fundamental verb, to Be: and that Being, not wanting, having and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.

We get a lot of practice during our working lives on wanting and having and doing. What I am trying to work on in retirement is being. So far, so good. 

I think sobremesa is a good word to learn toward this end: it's about being, not doing. It's about accepting, not controlling. It's about savoring and listening and embracing the sacramentality of the present moment. The invitation is always there, but it's harder to embrace when your inbox is full and you have meetings to fill your days. 

Just holding a week-old child who is sound asleep is also a good practice for being, and not doing. Parents are busy nursing and changing diapers and making sure older brothers still feel loved, but a grandparent can simply savor the time. 

In April, which is just around the corner, I have accepted some work commitments. I'll be covering a sabbatical for a priest who is taking a few months away after Easter. I'll be leading a CREDO conference and helping out on a few other things as well. I'm ready for these things, but I want to avoid falling back into wanting and having and doing too much. I want to be able to do these things while still taking time to simply be. I'm not anxious about it but I want to keep first things first, because I'm really enjoying this stage of my life. 

Resurrection and Life

During this Lenten season, the Gospel readings have been coming from the Fourth Gospel. I've not been preaching this Lent but I've been posting some reflections here for preachers and those who listen to sermons over the course of these past five weeks. The reading for the Fifth Sunday in Lent is John 11:1-45.

Going all the way back to the seventh century, these readings from John's Gospel, sometimes called the “scrutiny gospels, were chosen to help form and shape converts to the faith during the forty days of Lent. These catechumens would then be baptized at the Easter Vigil. In our own time, these same gospel readings continue to form and shape us, helping us to take the next steps in our faith journeys by embracing the living Christ who gives us the new birth offered to Nicodemus, the living water offered to the Samaritan woman at the well; the one who helps us to see what we previously were too blind to notice in the same way he healed the man blind from birth. These gospel readings have layers upon layers of nuance and depth.

In today’s reading we get a fourth encounter, but in some ways it is even more complex than those that have preceded it.  It may be harder as a preacher to know which way to go with it.) At first glance it might seem obvious to say this is an encounter between Jesus and Lazarus: after all Lazarus was dead at the beginning of our narrative and walking around in a daze by the end. But here’s the thing: Lazarus speaks not a single word in this text.

We could come at this from the perspective of Jesus’ encounter with the disciples, and in particular, Thomas. Jesus has only a few days earlier “slipped away” from Judea where he was almost stoned to death. The disciples are completely aware of that and therefore are pretty anxious about going back but Thomas bravely speaks up: “Let us go with him so that we may die with him.” This is one of those great disciple ironies that all the gospel writers love—disciples never seem to get it. So Thomas is willing to go back to Judea with Jesus to face death, but the joke here is that in they are returning to see life. Clever, eh?

Or we could see this as an encounter between Jesus and “the Jews.” I need to say a word here before we go any further, and that is to just notice that this translation “the Jews” is unfortunate on so many levels. It is clearly not referring to all Jewish people then or now. That is obvious, since Mary and Martha and Thomas and Jesus and Lazarus are all Jewish in that sense. What the phrase really means is “the temple leadership” in Jerusalem. They are nervous about Jesus, a northerner who doesn’t conform to their expectations about what the messiah is supposed to do (or even what a good rabbi is supposed to do for that matter.) Jesus is in conflict with the religious leaders. Yet there is nuance here, too, that we do well to notice. When Jesus comes back to pay his respects to Mary and Martha we discover that they are already there to sit Shiva and that they have brought along casseroles for the family to eat. These temple leaders, as it turns out, are pretty good at pastoral care; they are there for Mary and Martha in their hour of need. They are not bad people; but simply (as religious people are prone towards) a bit narrow-minded and perhaps judgmental in their theological perspectives. No faith tradition has a monopoly on that, or is immune from it.

The second thing, however, to notice is that they are blown away by Jesus in this encounter and we are told that some of them did believe in him because of this sign.

So we could look at Jesus and Lazarus, or Jesus and Thomas, or Jesus and the Jews.

But for me the energy in this encounter is in the exchanges between Jesus and his two friends, Mary and Martha. We know from other texts about how they are pretty different (as sisters can be.) Mary is reflective and interested in just sitting and talking while Martha always seems to be running around the kitchen. (Although we do well even to take that with a grain of salt and read with a hermeneutic of suspicion!) But in this text we see that they are also similar (as sisters can also be.) Both confront Jesus with the same words, words that carry with them the hint at least of an accusation: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Those words have energy for me because at some level they are words that many of us think (even if we do not utter them) when we lose someone we love, especially someone in the prime of their life. The text isn’t clear, but if all these friends are roughly contemporaries then that would mean that Lazarus is a young man in his early thirties when he dies. We know (as people a week away from Holy Week and as readers of John’s Gospel) that Jesus is not too far himself from meeting an untimely death. But in this moment, in this encounter, it is Lazarus who is dead. We aren’t privy to the coroner’s report. We only have these words of these two grieving sisters that if Jesus had been present, then this tragedy would not have happened.

Our Lenten journeys always begin the same way, on Ash Wednesday, with the reminder that we are dust and to dust we shall return. Whether we have had a lot of experience with death or only a little to this point in our lives, it is the one certainty even more real than taxes for all of us. Yet very often death still catches us off-guard, It can sneak up on us, even if we have lived a good, long, and happy life; death still seems unfair and unreal. That is only magnified when somebody dies before their prime. But if all of us have some experience with death, I suspect it is also equally fair to say that most of us don’t have as much first-hand experience with resurrection. 

There is at least some part of all of us that wants God to give us lives free from pain, free from those moments in the funeral home or standing at the grave of a loved one. We want God to just make death evaporate and disappear so that we don’t have to face it, so that it won’t happen to people we love and care about. We wish that we wouldn’t have to feel that much hurt and grief and sadness.

But that isn’t the God we get; not on the fifth Sunday of Lent and not even on Easter Sunday. We believe in the resurrection of the dead, not the absence of death. All created things are born and die; that is what it means to be created and not the Creator. There is no “get out of death free” card! Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

But that isn’t the end of the story. Next weekend is Palm/Passion Sunday. We will remember the story of the how Jesus was betrayed and denied by his friends and put to death on a cross by his enemies. Jesus himself wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane about whether or not it needed to unfold this way. And as he was dying, some people taunted him because they thought that if he really was the Son of God, then maybe he should now would be a good time to pull out that “get out of death free” card. But it doesn’t work that way. Not even for him.

“I am resurrection and life,” Jesus says. Not I will be or I once was, but I AM. Christ is alive, and that is our song not just at the empty tomb on Easter morning but it is our song whenever we encounter loss and grief and pain in our lives. It is our song by the gravesides of those whom we love but see no longer; when life is changed, not ended. When we dare to make our song, even if we sing those alleluias in a minor key.

But that song doesn’t immunize us from death. Rather, it allows us to not be so afraid of death (with God’s help) and then to see our way past death to new and abundant life. It allows us to trust that death will ever get the last word.

Mary and Martha mistakenly thought that somehow Jesus’ presence would remove death—that Lazarus wouldn’t have died if Jesus had been there. It’s an understandable feeling, but it doesn’t work that way. Jesus’ presence doesn’t negate death. Rather, it gives us hope that when we die life really is changed, not ended. It gives us faith that our dying and our grief and our confusion are never the end of the story, because we believe that hope is stronger than fear. We believe that Jesus is resurrection, and life. And that love is stronger than death. 

I once was blind but now I see

I've been trying something new this Lent. I'm not preaching, but I'm offering some thoughts here that may help those who are preaching and those who will be listening to sermons this Sunday to preview the "thick" texts we've been getting from the fourth gospel. For the fourth Sunday in Lent, that gospel is John 9:1-41. 

Rabbi, who sinned here? This man or his parents? In one form or another, human beings have been asking this question throughout history. We yearn for simple cause-and-effect answers to the very difficult question of human suffering. And so inquiring minds want to know, and particularly, people of faith want to know. 

Notice that the question doesn’t come from the crowds or from the scribes and Pharisees. The question is posed by Jesus’ disciples. It's asked by those who have left all things behind to follow him. Like Job before them, they are committed people of faith yearning to understand the problem of human suffering.

Why was this man born blind? Or why was that woman down the street cured of her cancer, but my father was not? Why was my child diagnosed with cystic fibrosis? Why did that tsunami strike where and when it did? Is this all some kind of punishment?

I adore John's Gospel but I find it the most challenging of the four to preach on because it is so mystical. There is more packed in there than a fifteen-minute homily can tackle. But it seems to me that this is the great theological question and it cannot be ignored on this day, whatever else the preacher may say. We should notice that although Jesus almost always answers questions with a question, he doesn't do that here. He leaves no doubt. He responds clearly and directly: neither this man, nor his parents sinned. Jesus rejects the notion that disease is some kind of punishment for sin. 

Why was this man born blind? We don’t know. All that we can say with any amount of certainty is that in this man’s healing, God’s glory is revealed—if only we have eyes to see.

The healing itself occurs in a fairly straightforward matter: Jesus spits on the ground, makes a little mud pie from the sand and his saliva, spreads that mud on the guy’s eyes, and then tells him to go wash it off. The man does so. God’s grace is so amazing that this man, who once was blind, now sees.

But the healing story quickly is left behind, and instead what we have to unpack is this conflict over the practice of keeping the Sabbath holy. In this case we’re talking about the accepted societal practices around keeping the Sabbath holy. The poor guy who was blind, and now sees, finds himself at the center of a media storm and ultimately a criminal investigation. One can only imagine if CNN and Fox News had been around how this scandal would have unfolded with a twenty-four hour news cycle. As it is, we get to see that even without modern technology, Middle Eastern villages in the first-century do just fine at passing along the big story of the day.

No one wants to believe this guy who now sees is the one they’ve all known to be blind from birth. “I’m the man,” he insists. And they keep asking him, “but how did this happen?” Notice his frustration, and notice how in the midst of all the shouting, his voice gets lost. Notice how his parents get dragged in and interviewed by the media. It’s a real frenzy, and the guy’s whole life is disrupted as Jesus becomes the real story. Jesus is pushing their buttons, and it seems to be apparent that he wants to rock that boat. He is saying that doing the work of the Kingdom takes precedence over everything else. Jesus is reminding people that the Sabbath is given for humans, in order to make life more abundant, not so that humans can become slaves to it.

In today’s gospel reading there are a whole lot of competing agendas. While it’s easy for Christians to caricature and scapegoat the Pharisees, the truth is that they are sincere people trying to keep the faith. Their sin, however, may be in their certitude that they know and see all that there is to see. And in their vigilant desire to keep Sabbath holy, they are blind to the transformation that is unfolding before their very eyes.

This gospel reading is only initially about the healing of a blind man. In fact, it is about exposing certitude—especially religious certitude—for what it is: a form of idolatry and pride. When we are absolutely certain that we have it all down and that we grasp the whole truth and that we have a clear command of all the right information and that our perspective is “pure”—it is precisely then that we may be most blind to what is unfolding right before our very eyes.

 

The Wesley Boys

Lord God, you inspired your servants John and Charles Wesley with burning zeal for the sanctification of souls and endowed them with eloquence of speech and song: kindle such fervor in your Church, we entreat you, that those whose faith has cooled may be warmed, and those who have not known Christ may turn to him and be saved; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen. 

+     +     +

Every year on this day, my heart feels strangely warmed as my chosen denomination (The Episcopal Church) remembers and gives thanks for the life and witness of John and Charles Wesley, who loomed large in the denomination that formed me. 

John is considered to be the founder of the Methodists. Charles was a prolific poet who composed more than 6,500 hymns, many of which can be found in the Episcopal Church's hymnal. Their parents were Anglican rector, Samuel Wesley, and his wife, Susanna, who had strong Pietist leanings, but remained Anglican.

Neither John nor Charles had any intention of ever leaving the Anglican Church to start a new denomination. At Oxford University, the two were founding members of a small reform group. In 1728, they were ordained as priests of the Church of England, and they faithfully kept their holy orders throughout their lives.

When I left the United Methodist Church, in which I served as an ordained minister from 1988-1993, no one ever asked me to "renounce" my former denomination. In fact, just the opposite: Bishop Geoffrey Rowthorn, who was Suffragan Bishop in Connecticut when I made the move to the Episcopal Church, urged me to bring my Wesleyanism with me. "We still need what they were trying to do in the Episcopal Church," he told me. 

Why did I make this move if I love these brothers so much? The United Methodist Church was founded when I was five years old, in 1968, the result of a merger between the Methodist-Episcopal Church and the Evangelical United Brethren. At the risk of over-simplifying, the Methodist-Episcopal Church was more liturgical and probably more progressive, generally, than the EUB. When I went to Drew Theological School I learned liturgy that was Eucharistic-centered and actually very close to the Episcopal Church. But there remained a lot of freedom for pastors to draw on their own creativity in congregations, at least into the 1980s. I not only felt drawn to the more Eucharistic-centered liturgy of The Episcopal Church as the place for me to grow into the full stature of Christ, but I came to believe that I'd be a more faithful "Wesleyan" in the tradition that had formed them. It was the right move for me, but I've always tried to heed Bishop Rowthorn's wise counsel and because of my seminary education and my commitment to ecumenism (not to mention most of my family of origin!) I still love the United Methodist Church. 

The Wesleys were committed to prayer and to social justice. It's hard in these days to verify quotes attributed to famous people but John is reported to have said: "the church changes the world not by making converts, but by making disciples."  That's what those groups at Oxford were all about and it's at the heart of what I learned in the Hawley United Methodist Church. However one comes to understand Wesley's doctrine of "sanctifying grace," it was important to him that people recognize that there is always room for growth. God is not finished with any of us yet.

As for Charles, it's hard for me to pick a favorite of his many wonderful hymns but one that makes the list for me and that I love to sing in Advent begins like this: 

Come, thou long expected Jesus,

born to set thy people free;

from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our rest in thee.

Israel's strength and consolation,

hope of all the earth thou art;

dear desire of every nation,

joy of every longing heart.

Blessed John and Charles Wesley, whom we remember today. 

The Woman at the Well

Below, some notes and reflections for those who will be preaching sermons or hearing sermons preached on the Third Sunday in Lent. 

Last weekend's gospel reading focused on an encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus from the third chapter of John’s Gospel. I shared some thoughts about that one-on-one encounter here.

Today, in the fourth chapter of that same gospel, we see Jesus with an unnamed Samaritan woman. John has juxtaposed these two encounters in a way that is meant to get our attention, in a way that makes it clear that God really does so love the world. We are meant to notice the polarities: male and female, Jew and Samaritan, community leader and socially marginalized. Nicodemus came to Jesus in the middle of the night; this Samaritan woman comes to the well in the middle of the day

And yet even as we notice these differences, I think that John means for us to see that Jesus meets each of them where they are, and takes their questions seriously and engages each of them in serious theological conversation. This is obviously not surprising with Nicodemus, a man of some social status and privilege. But it's just plain wild that Jesus treats this unnamed woman with the same dignity and respect. The disciples’ astonishment is a clue to us of just how shocking it was for Jesus to be talking to a divorced, Samaritan woman in the middle of the day. “Jews do not (even) share cups with Samaritans," we are told...

If one follows Barth's advice of holding the Bible in one hand and the news in the other it's hard not to think about the recent news about the U.S. Hockey Teams' gold medals: one earned by the women's team and one earned by the men's team and how each team has been treated by the sitting president of the United States. 

I know - church and politics and all of that. But the key, as I see it, to the Baptismal Covenant is about respecting the dignity of every person and striving for justice among all people. And although sometimes the Church has contributed to sexism (and racism and homophobia) we need to be clear that's on the Church, not Jesus. Jesus is willing to challenge the social conventions of his day to model authentic encounters with all kinds of people - which will ultimately lead the pastoral theologian, Paul, to insist that "in "Christ there is neither male nor female." I don't know how to thread that needle but we should notice that Jesus sits and talks to everyone, and treats them with dignity and respect and kindness. If we mean to be his followers and his friends we must do the same. 

It’s interesting to me that this encounter at Jacob’s well begins with Jesus asking the woman for a drink of water.  I can’t help but to hear those words from Matthew’s Gospel about the sheep and the goats echoing in my head whenever I hear this gospel reading: when did we see you Lord? When did we not see you? Jesus responds by saying that whenever you visited those in prison, or clothed the naked, or fed the hungry, or gave a drink of water to one of these little ones in my name, you did it to me. And whenever you didn’t do those things, you didn’t do it to me.

So before the conversation gets deep and turns to theological discussion about “living water” that quenches a thirsty soul, Jesus is just a stranger in a foreign land asking for a drink of water. And while it’s true that Jews and Samaritans don’t share cups in common, and while it’s true that men aren’t supposed to be talking to women they aren’t related to in public, it is also true that this stranger is thirsty and far from home and this local woman has access to the well. Whatever deep theological insights emerge beyond this we should not miss the way it all begins: with an act of human kindness. 

I think of that verse from Brian Wren’s great Eucharistic hymn, “I Come With Joy,” that says, “as Christ breaks bread and bids us share, each proud division ends/ That love that made us, makes us one, and strangers now are friends.” Someone needs to take a risk for a stranger to become a friend. Before we get to profound metaphysical interpretations, I think we are invited to simply watch Jesus and this woman sitting at Jacob’s well, having a normal conversation in a world where that isn't supposed to happen. The energy that is released when strangers become friends invites transformation and healing and encourages us to imagine the world as otherwise.  

This encounter between Jesus and this Samaritan woman has everything to do with us, because I think Jesus keeps seeking us out too: all of us—male and female, young and old, rich and poor, gay and straight. Jesus cares about our stories, about our lives, about the stuff everyone in town or our church or our families "know" about us, even if it is never said out loud.

Jesus keeps finding people like us in the middle of Lent, in the middle of the day or in the middle of the night. Sometimes at our favorite watering hole. He cuts through all the shame and fear and guilt to tell us everything about ourselves, especially the truth that we are loved. When he offers us living water to quench our souls, we do well to drink as deeply as we can.  

Nicodemus

Although I’m not yet ready to make a commitment to this every week, I’ve been thinking that since I’m doing a lot less preaching these days I might offer some thoughts during the week on the upcoming readings for Sunday. The world doesn’t need another Biblical commentary and surely not one from me. But maybe some homiletical ruminations can be of help to those preparing sermons and to those preparing to hear sermons. With this in mind, I’ve been thinking about Nicodemus, who makes an appearance in this Sunday’s Gospel Reading in John 3:1-17

I want to say three things about the encounter between Nicodemus and Jesus. But there is a larger point before doing that, which comes at the end. Even sports fans with no Biblical literacy know what John 3:16 says. But together with John 3:17 it is worth pondering in these shrill and polarized times: we are told that God so loved the world. We are told that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save the world.

The world in Greek is a familiar word to us in English as well: it’s cosmos. God doesn’t only love all the people of this world. God loves the planet. God loves all creatures, great and small. God loves the whole creation. The sun and moon and stars that God created in the beginning. God loves the whole cosmos and the incarnation is not about condemnation but salvation. 

When a church preaches condemnation, it’s not focused on Jesus anymore. Full stop. If God does not condemn the world, then who do preachers think that they are when we do it? As former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry put it, if it’s now about love it’s not about God. If it’s not about saving the world, healing the world, repairing the breaches in this world, it’s not about God either. If it’s about condemning God’s world, then it’s not of God.

Three details to notice about this encounter between Nicodemus and this upstart rabbi from the northern hills of Galilee.

First: notice that it’s nighttime when he comes to Jesus. It’s quite possible that Nicodemus doesn’t want his respectable neighbors to know the company he’s keeping, so he avoids coming to Jesus during the daytime when he is likely to be seen. He chooses the cover of darkness for this meeting. He comes nevertheless, apparently because he is drawn to Jesus, seeing that the signs Jesus does are clearly of God. But he is tentative.

Second: Jesus tells Nicodemus that if you want to grasp all of this you must be born from above. At least that’s how the NRSV puts it. But the Greek is ambiguous; it’s anothen And anothen has three perfectly valid interpretations.

If you look this verse up in an NRSV Bible (and not just on a Scripture insert) you will see a little notation after “born from above” that offers an alternative: “you must be born anew.” If you are an NIV Bible-type, then you’ll read, “you’ve got to be born again.” But there, too, you’ll find a little note from the editors that says, in tiny little letters, “you’ve got to be born from above.”

So which is it: born from above, born anew, or born again? Yes!

Now I point this out because perhaps some of you have been approached on a street corner (or maybe even at Thanksgiving Dinner) by someone who only reads the NIV translation and then asks you if you have been “born again?” And sometimes when that question is asked it feels like there is a specific way we are supposed to respond. It means you are supposed to have a datable moment in time when you became a Christian. It can sometimes seem as if the answer, “I was raised in the Church and have always known Jesus and I have had many moments of little conversions along the way rather than one big one” is not the right answer.

But if you listen to this text I think you will see that that aspect of a particular kind of Christian ideology has very little to do with this encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus.

That’s American evangelicalism, not what the far more nuanced Jesus says.

Nick initially misses the point—he hears “anothen” in a literal way and connects it only to a literal return to the womb, to being literally born again. Which Jesus says is silly. Jesus then clarifies by saying that what he is really talking about is being “born by water and the spirit.”  That is Baptismal language, which is one reason that the lectionary puts this reading into the context of Lent. Because Lent is all about Baptism.

In the early church, Baptism only happened at the Easter Vigil, after a long period of preparation. Lent was that season for final preparation before being buried with Christ, in order to be raised with him into a new resurrected life. So this is liturgical/sacramental language—and I think it’s way past time that Episcopalians and other liturgical Christians re-claim it as such. We don’t need to pick a fight or insist we have the whole truth, only that there is indeed sacramental language here, in this text. And that Jesus seems to be saying that if you are baptized by water and the spirit then you are born anothen—regardless of what some may tell you about that. By water and the spirit we are born anothen—dying with him in order to be raised again to the new life of grace. And then the journey of faith is living into that reality, one day at a time.

Third: this isn’t the last time that we see of Nicodemus. On Good Friday, in John’s telling of that day’s events, he comes with Joseph of Arimathea to claim to corpse of Jesus. The text says that Joseph, a member of the Council, “was a disciple of Jesus.” It doesn’t make that claim of Nicodemus, only that he came with Joseph and that he brings “a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds of weight.” (John 19:39) Together, Nicodemus and Joseph take Jesus’ body and bind it with linen cloths and with the spices, following the burial customs of the day. In broad daylight. That suggests to me that Nicodemus was listening and that he was changed for good by this nighttime encounter.

Be Salty! Stay Lit!

As some of you already know, I grew up in this  congregation. Others may be wondering, who is this guy and  why is he here this morning? Or, I didn't even know   Jimmy Simpson had an older brother... 

My name is Rich Simpson. My wife and I live in Worcester, Massachusetts. My mother, Peg Cox, turned eighty on Thursday, and her family all gathered to celebrate her last night: four kids, our spouses, the grandchildren and their partners, and six great-grandchildren. I was baptized across the street at St. Paul’s Lutheran, where my mom actually grew up. My dad grew up further down Church Street at Cole Memorial Baptist Church. In 1968, my family moved to the south side of Scranton for my dad’s work, selling insurance for New York Life. My parents went looking for a church and eventually landed at Elm Park United Methodist Church.

And that is how the Simpsons became Methodists. What is interesting to me in this story is not that a young couple went church shopping when they moved to a new community. That happens all the time. What’s interesting to me is that five years later, when my parents moved back to Hawley (now with four kids) and we moved in just across the street at 404 Church, which had an office in the back for my dad’s work, they remained Methodists. It would have been easy enough to return to either St. Paul’s or Cole Memorial and perhaps there was even a little family pressure to do so. I don’t know. But my parents had become Methodists and back in Hawley they remained Methodists. By my calculation, my mom has been here now for over fifty years, many of those in the choir.

Gail Wintermute was the pastor when I was growing up here. His wife Milly was my piano teacher. It was she who first said (probably realizing concert pianist was not in my future) “Richie, have you ever thought about becoming a pastor?” I emphatically told her that I had not. Yet after college I applied to Drew and this congregation sponsored me and it was here that I preached my very first sermon, which I’m sure those of you who were here then remember word-for-word. After graduating from Drew I was ordained at Elm Park in Scranton, where my parents’ journey had begun.

I want to get to today’s sermon, so I’ll spare you the rest except to say that a point came for me when I felt more at home in the Episcopal Church. I had nothing against the Methodists who had done right by me and certainly nothing against this wonderful congregation. I took inspiration then, and still, from John and Charles Wesley, whom I would remind you were both Anglican priests. But I felt, for various reasons, that I’d grow more into the full stature of Christ as an Episcopal priest than as a United Methodist pastor, and so I made that move in 1993. At the end of December, I retired after 32 years ordained as an Episcopal priest with 5 years prior as a United Methodist past. 

Let's talk about the Sermon on the Mount. It’s hard to know for sure exactly which hill Jesus and his disciples climbed that day. The Sea of Galilee is surrounded by hills, and it could have been any one of them. More likely, it wasn’t just in one place on one day. Matthew, after all, is reconstructing what we call “the Sermon on the Mount” some fifty years or so after these events took place and Jesus probably went away with his disciples to escape the crowds more than once. So maybe they went to various places around the lake, or maybe they did have one favorite spot. Either way, he taught them over time, and they remembered what he said. Eventually the disciples passed those teachings on to the second-generation disciples and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote it all down.

Since the fourth century, however, pilgrims who have traveled to the Holy Land have claimed one particular place as the Mount of the Beatitudes. Whether or not it was originally the holy place, it has without a doubt become a holy place as pilgrims from north, south, east and west have gone there to pray for at least sixteen hundred years now. It is what is sometimes called in the Celtic spiritual tradition, a “thin place” where the hills are alive and Jesus’ words echo down through the centuries.

The current church on that site was built in 1938 and is run by the Franciscans. It’s a quiet and peaceful place that overlooks the lake, and as you look down the hill you can see so many of the places prominent in Jesus’ ministry, including Capernaum, where he made his home. The gardens at that Church of the Beatitudes are meticulously kept and you can walk and think and pray.  It’s quite conducive to “considering the lilies of the field” and the “birds of the air.” So whether or not it is the place, I can attest to you that it is holy ground. I’ve been there ten or so times now, including once with your former pastor, my step-father, Marty Cox. 

On that warm afternoon I spent there with Marty there nearly twenty years ago, there was a large group of Chinese Christians who beat us there. Their spirituality was not nearly as contemplative as our group’s. In fact they seemed downright boisterous! But as I watched them posing for a group photo, I was profoundly conscious of the fact that it cannot be easy being a Christian in China, and clearly being able to come as a group to the Holy Land made their hearts glad; and that made my heart glad too. It made me aware that in Christ there is no east or west, and that the one holy catholic and apostolic faith we confess isn’t just about our own personal spiritualities.

Blessed are the poor. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… Today’s reading is a continuation of that time apart, as Jesus continues to deliver the Sermon on the Mount to his disciples. As Matthew tells the story, Jesus saw the crowds and was trying to get away…so he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. It is to them—and by extension to us—that Jesus goes on to say the words we heard today:

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lamp stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

“You are salt. You are light.” Pastor Andy asked me if I had a sermon title for today and I did not. But Facebook has mostly got me down with their analytics and I got an ad a couple of days ago based on this gospel passage for a tee-shirt. It said, “Be salty! Stay lit!” Matthew 5. So there’s my sermon title – to help you remember this sermon. Be salty. Stay lit!

Elsewhere, Jesus uses the image of yeast as well. The Church is like leaven that makes the whole loaf rise. All of these are little metaphors, metaphors of smallness. If you want to make a loaf of bread you don’t just start opening up cakes of yeast. It doesn’t take that much. A little bit of yeast is all it takes.

Ditto with the salt. The late, great Lutheran Bishop, Krister Stendahl was fond of saying that Jesus told the church to be the salt of the earth, not to make the whole world into a salt mine! His humorous words suggest that our mission is not to make every person on the planet a Christian. Rather, Jesus challenges those of us who claim him as Lord to act like Christians. Because “if salt loses its taste, then what good is it?” Be salty!

Perhaps the most powerful of these metaphors, at least for me personally, is the call to be light. The Church is called to be a light that shines in the darkness, a beacon. You don’t need me to come here from Massachusetts to tell you about the darkness of the world. This world is God’s world and it is filled with beauty. But it can also be a pretty scary place: a place or wars and rumors of wars, of violence and degradation. Sometimes it can feel like someone has shut out the lights. Even darker still is the dark night of the soul. There are times in our lives when the darkness seems too overwhelming; and it’s not that external darkness, but the internal kind, that we most fear.

And yet: here are Jesus’ words, echoing down through the centuries from that Galilean hillside to this time and place. We have two choices when the world is dark: we can curse the darkness or we can let our little lights shine. And even though we are prone to forget it sometimes, one little candle in a darkened room really does change the whole space. What was scary and dark can, in an instant, become a holy and luminous place. One tiny little flickering candle can guide us on our way and it helps others find their way as well.

As I said, these metaphors for being the Church are about small things: yeast, light, and salt. And I think that is truly good news. Even in that first setting, Jesus is away from the crowds and with just the twelve. Jesus doesn’t start a mega-church; he forms a dozen disciples. Don’t ever doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. The fact that you and I are here today is proof that it can be done, and it isn’t done with smoke and mirrors. It’s done one little step at a time, one day at a time. With God’s help.

When my brother and I used to show up for youth group here, led by Pastor Wintermute, sometimes it was just the two of us. Occasionally we’d invite a friend or two along so it wasn’t just the two of us. But you know what? It was enough. It took hold in our long lives. I know you’ve heard my brother share his story. Like me and my sisters we are all indebted to the faith we learned in this little church and that extends to our children and our grandchildren.

From day one of his public ministry around that Sea of Galilee, from the moment he called Peter and Andrew and James and John, Jesus was asking a small group of ordinary people to do extraordinary things, with God’s help. He called them apart to teach them how to be light and salt and yeast by loving God and loving neighbor. By respecting the dignity of every person, regardless of social status. By doing justice, and loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.

And of course that work continues to unfold, here and now, in this place, among us. That is the message, the “good news,” that we are entrusted as members of Christ’s Body to pass along to the next generation. To be witnesses to the wonder and promise of abundant life in Jesus Christ. We are called to be faithful, one day at a time, in small ways.

You and I are not called to do great things. Let me say that again because I think sometimes that is what paralyzes us as followers of Jesus. If you can’t preach like Peter it’s ok. If you can’t pray like Paul, it’s ok. You can tell the love of Jesus, sometimes with words but always by doing small things well, the things that are right before us.

These are hard days to be a follower of Jesus but let me quickly add this: there are no good old days when it comes to that. Be salty. Stay lit. Don’t underestimate that when we act like Christians we are changed, our congregation becomes alive, and our neighbors notice.

What we discover, or at least what I have discovered over almost four decades as an ordained minister, is that when we focus on the small things then together we can accomplish even greater things than we had imagined. This is why the Church doesn’t need superheroes. Just saints—the kind you meet in shops and in lanes and at tea, the kind who are fishermen, and doctors and teachers, classmates, snow plowers and secretaries and insurance salesmen. If you can’t preach like Peter that’s not a problem. If you can’t pray like Paul, not to worry. Just be you, and tell the love of Jesus.

You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. Don’t worry about doing big things. Just pay attention. Just keep listening to Jesus, and doing the work that God gives you to do today; wherever you may find yourself.  God will take care of the rest.

And Go Pats!

 

 

Do Not Be Afraid

It has been claimed that the Biblical imperative, "fear not" or "do not be afraid" comes up 365 times in the Bible. The pastoral advice that grows out of this reality is that we are encouraged every day to be strong, to be brave, to be loving in a world that is often frightening. 

It's not true, however, at least not literally true. (See this helpful article if you don't believe me.) It does come up a lot, however, and that is the larger point to be made. 

The antidote to fear, which leads to dis-couragement, is to be en-couraged to love. This takes us to the heart of the Biblical promise, that to love God and to love neighbor leads to full and abundant life. Fear, on the other hand, leads to death. 

It's helpful to reflect on two Greek words, I think: paranoia and metanoia. Metanoia is usually translated into English as repent - it's also a big Biblical word. It's about a change of mind. Paranoia is when we are out of our minds - when we revert to our reptilian brains and response to danger in a binary way: fight or flight. 

Fear is a part of life. We teach our children and our children's children to be careful in a world that can be quite dangerous. We try also to teach them to face their fears, whether or not we happen to be people of faith shaped by the Biblical narrative. We want to en-courage them; not dis-courage them. 

But I've come to believe that keeping people afraid is a path to gaining and keeping power. This is the way of fascism, rather than liberal democracy. You can sow fear to gain control of people. And I think this is where we are as a nation right now. Perhaps the only thing right now that people on the right and left have in common is that we are afraid, and acting out of that place of fear. We are, surely, afraid of different things. But in our fear we become reactive and polarizing and binary. We lose our capacity to think creatively, and to love our neighbor as self, 

I've stopped watching cable news almost completely over the past year. I don't know if this is the right thing to do for anyone else. But I came to believe that I was not more informed in doing so, only more frightened on a daily basis. I now receive my news via print journalism almost exclusively. 

When I was watching cable news I watched CNN primarily. I felt it was the best of three bad choices. The worst, without a doubt, is FOX, the official propaganda tool for the far-right. Truth is not a concern; only sticking to a false narrative and repeating it over and over again. Friends should not let friends watch FOX - it leads to brain decay. 

But since I've already insulted those who watch the most "popular" source of news, I'll add that I gave up on MSNBC years ago, because even though I thought they were more "accurate" they were not reporting news; they were (and I think mean to be) the counterbalance to FOX. So I settled "in the middle" with CNN. But every single day they had this "breaking news" that wasn't breaking news at all but it ratcheted up the angst. They, too, are in the fear-mongering business. 

I want to repeat that I don't know if I've made the right call and I'm not advocating that others make the same choice. I also am aware that giving up on cable news but doom scrolling on Facebook may not be the way forward. But what I have observed in my own body  is that I could feel "worked up" just by trying to be informed, and so I have made a conscious choice to be informed by various print resources. I don't even know if it's helped, but I think it has. I feel I can think more clearly; I can explore things on my own time and in more detail. I don't want to be simply "reactive" to propaganda; I want to find the truth. Amazingly, with all the information out there, this is not an easy thing to do. 

And yet, I admit to being still very afraid for our country. I look back at what I know of history and I think of what a great tool it is for those who want to hold onto power. AND, also, even more importantly, that it never works in the long run. It's the tool of tyrants but there eventually love wins, every tiime. 

So even if it doesn't come up 365 times, I think of Abraham and Sarah, asked to leave home and find a new place that God would show them in due time: do not be afraid; trust me.

I think of Moses, asked to confront Pharaoh and tell him to let God's people go. The fundamentalists of his day said he should stick to spirituality and not get into politics. But God called him at that burning bush to stand up, to get involved, to lead a liberating movement. And God said, "don't be afraid, I'll be with you." 

I think of Mary, visited by Gabriel and told that she would bear a son who would turn the world upside down. She was a teenager, and a girl in a patriarchal society. Of course she was afraid. And the angel said, "do not be afraid..."

We are afraid of different things but we will never move forward until we confront our fears and put our whole trust in God, because faith casts out fear. For me this means moving from "paying attention" to what's happening to action. We get there by way of finding courage, and hope, and an ability to seek the truth. Fear keeps us from all of these charisms. Fear leads to despair. Fear leads to death.

I have not preached since Christmas morning. But when I was preaching I realize that this was my guiding principle. I was not (and am not) afraid to speak up in a prophetic way. This blog could have been about Minneapolis and what I see happening there. I am so grateful for those who are finding their voices and also showing up there to stand together. What is happening is real, and scary. The lies being told by the administration add fuel to the fire. This needs to be said, with clarity. I give thanks for those who are doing so; they inspire me. 

But as I understand discernment, fear blocks it. Fear makes us reactive, not proactive. We need clarity, and hope, and courage, and love. I have come to believe that this was Dr. King's greatest legacy. It was also Ghandi's and many others as well, including Desmond Tutu. We will one day have to get to truth and reconciliation in this country. Those who are causing such turmoil will have to answer for their crimes against humanity, for sure. But beyond that we must find a way to reconciliation and healing. 

For me, the main thing - the first thing - is confronting our fears and then listening for the voice of God that often comes through God's messengers: do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid. Regardless of how many times that appears in Scripture we need to hear it every day. 

Checking In: Finding a New Normal

Technically, my retirement from active ministry began on January 1. But I had a little vacation time coming at St. Michael's and so my last service (and last post to this blog) was on Christmas Day. For three weeks now, I've been finding my way into a new chapter of life. 

People kept asking me what I'd do in retirement and I kept trying to find the right, short, elevator speech. I said I was at a stage in life where being is more important to me than doing. I said that my vocation has always been bigger than priestly ministry: I'm a husband and father and father-in-law and grandfather and son and brother and neighbor. Having more time for these several callings definitely lured me toward this new chapter. I said that I wanted to cook more like an old European lady, by which I meant that I've never liked grocery shopping for a week or more, but rather going to see what looks good and shopping that afternoon as part of the meal prep itself. 

I didn't really say, but had in mind two other things as well...

First, commuting is hard on one's physical health. As Canon to the Ordinary from 2013-2024 my commute to Springfield was just about an hour but I also drove all across and up and down the diocese regularly. As interim rector in Bristol my commute was about an hour and ten minutes or so, depending on traffic in Providence. During the pandemic and again for these past three weeks without a commute, my days begin by walking. I've been averaging just about six miles a day since Christmas. I've also added in weight training on a more focused basis, since I keep reading and hearing about how as people age they lose muscle. It's cold and icy right now in New England so I'm doing all of this at the Greendale YMCA where I've been a member since we moved to Holden in 1998. But never have I had a consistent run like I've had these past three weeks. I had to get to work! I am usually there for about two and a half hours and since I'm an early riser, still home by 9 am or so. 

The second thing I wanted to do was more writing and reading on my own, not related to sermon preparation. I've been finding time most days to do both but I'm also still figuring out how to continue on the path of life-long learning without the discipline of preparing a sermon every week as my focus. Freedom is good, but one still needs a purpose. So I'm working on that. 

I've been busy, but not frenetic which is what I was looking for. I've been happy, which to some extent I've been for a long time; my life is very blessed. But I'm finding myself more fully present to the sacramentality of the present moment; to this Now. I'm anxious about the state of the world, to be sure. But not about my own life, at least not right now. 

And so I'm grateful. I have found in pastoral ministry that even thinking about retirement brings up all kinds of emotions for folks, lay and ordained. If you love your work, as I have, in some ways that seems harder. People who hold down a miserable job to put bread on the table feel freedom when they finally can lay that burden aside. But for many people I know, they find meaning in their work. They see it as vocational. I certainly have. But here has been the big surprise: those opportunities don't need to be tied to a full-time job. In the two weeks of January, I've been an interfaith panelist at UMass Medical School with fourth year Med students. Alongside Jewish and Muslim colleagues we have a chance to talk about big questions of meaning, of life and death, of ethics and the dialogue between faith and medicine. I've done this for almost a decade now but it felt different this year, and I felt grateful to still be doing it and I hope to continue doing it. 

I got a call from a funeral home to ask if I'd do a graveside service for a lapsed Episcopalian who had grown up in the Church but no longer had a congregation. Graveside services can be perfunctory but for whatever reason I found this one to be meaningful and I think the family did also. I also got a call from a contractor who did work on our home some time ago: his wife was nearing the end of her life and he asked if I'd be willing to visit her. I did - multiple times as she navigated from hospital to hospice and then took her last breath. I'll be officiating at her funeral this Friday. 

Honestly, as much as I love to preach, I find itinerant preaching a bit of a challenge. I'll do some of it, I'm sure - there's a need. But I'd much rather do a funeral, actually. Or a wedding. Or a baptism. 

The late Bishop of Newark, Jack Spong, coined a powerful phrase to refer to people who had grown up in the faith but then "moved on." He called it the Church Alumni Association. Members of the CAA aren't necessarily angry at the Church - they just got out of practice. They "graduated." But they do have faith, and sometimes faith seeking understanding. 

I remembered this anew in my "Tuesdays with Morrie" visits recently and I remembered it at UMass Medical School, where nearly every student in the room said they grew up with some kind of faith (not just Methodist and Lutheran and Roman Catholic but Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim...) but that it was not currently a part of their adult lives. 

I have long believed there is a deep spiritual hunger out there that churches are not meeting. I realize my last 37 years have been focused on "building up the church" and I'm wondering if this next chapter is more about connecting with people who are seeking, and have some faith foundation, but need to find ways to connect the faith they once had to the lives they are now living. Christian nationalism makes this harder, but also more and more necessary, I think. I'll keep you posted!