Friday, July 10, 2015
Trinity Sunday Sermon: Is the Church dying? May 31, 2015
Rev. Jenny Shultz
Trinity Sunday, Year B
May 31, 2015
In the movie Still Alice, actress Julianne Moore plays a world-renowned Linguistics Professor at Columbia University who suddenly finds herself forgetting things, getting lost, feeling less and less like herself when she receives the diagnosis: She has a rare genetic form of Alzheimer’s disease, early onset with little to no treatment options before her.
Several months into her diagnosis Alice is asked to give a speech at the Alzheimer’s Awareness gathering where she quotes poet Elizabeth Bishop saying, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master, so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster”. She goes on to say, I am not a poet, I am a person living with early onset Alzheimer’s disease, and as that person I find myself learning the art of losing every day.
Losing my bearings, objects, losing sleep, but mostly losing memories. All of my life I have accumulated memories, they have become life’s most treasured possessions….
Everything I accumulated in life, everything I worked so hard for, now all of that is being ripped away. As you can imagine, or as you know, all of this is hell, but it gets worse.
Who can take us seriously, when we are so far from who we once were?
Our strange behavior and fumbled sentences change others perceptions of us and our perceptions of ourselves.
We become ridiculous, incapable, comic, but this is not who we are… this is our disease.”
Last week, millions of people across the globe celebrated together, one of the church’s most memorable days, our Birth, scriptures were read in thousands of different languages, bright red flags, banners and burning flames were used as the pronouncement for such an occasion. This is a day within our community when the church is invited to become re-enchanted by her birth rite, to reclaim the significance of her existence, and literally to become a blaze of fire-burning HOPE in the world re-energized for the work that lies ahead. And with flames rising to the sky, tongues of all nations speaking the truth, engrossed in the cloud of witnesses that has sent her to this destiny, the church forgets for a moment the encroaching shadow, forgets for a moment the present by which she has become entangled, forgets for a moment the disease that would have her forget who she is, what she knows, from where she has come, and most importantly the memories that have brought her this far.
Some contemporary theologians, bloggers, pastors, media personalities like to claim that the church is in decline, that the church is facing her ultimate demise, that the church is indefinitely dying- often quoting statistics such as these: “Of the 250,000 Protestant churches in America, 200,000 are either stagnant (with no growth) or declining. That is 80% of the churches in America.
4,000 churches close their doors every single year.
There is less than half of the number of churches today than there were only 100 years ago.
3,500 people leave the church every single day.
Since 1950, there are 1/3rd fewer churches in the U.S.
And I can add to these from our very own UCC Statistical Profile:
From 2000 to 2010 alone, the UCC encountered a net loss of 696 congregations and 318,897 members… and counting.
In preparation for this post-pentacostal Sunday, often observed as Trinity Sunday I was reading through the texts as I often do waiting to find some kind of thread to be revealed, one that would weave the greater story together one puzzle piece at a time, that would at least circumvent the need to address Trinitarian theology whatsoever- some kind of metaphor that was inclusive of both the prophetic witness found in Isaiah’s revelation and the nucleus of the entire faith narrative that is revealed in John chapter 3 between Jesus and the pharisee. First, we have Isaiah whom Patricia Tull tells us is the only figure to cry out, voluntarily in response to God’s call, in the scriptures: “Here am I, Send me!” “Isaiah, Unlike Moses with his myriad excuses, is hardly able to contain his excitement, waving his hand like a student raring to speak up in class. In a very few strokes the story paints a prophet who, despite discouragement, remains eager to mediate between God and his community, and then turning a few pages I continued to John’s gospels where Nicodemus, the Pharisee, though completely ignorant of the spiritual insights of the gospel, seeks Jesus out in the middle of the night only to ask about about being born again?!” You can’t make this stuff up…! These are Billy Graham, run down the aisles of the football stadium kinds of moments! Needless to say, the metaphor that flashed scenes upon my memory filled mind was not one of jam-packed football stadiums or Jesus rock concerts where baby boomers met Jesus for the first time, were saved by grace and then dunked in the river out back. No, what filled the space in my brain was that of disease, decay, of a church inhibited by the tangled mess we have become, caught in the web of forgetfulness, void of the exuberance of our youth, somehow unreflective of a people born of the spirit.
In light of our current context, where the headlines typically read of death and disaster, violence, hatred, and exclusion, environmental catastrophes; where Storms and tornadoes claiming lives, and threatening water shortages in the NorthWest are plastered across pages alongside politicians calling for the term “climate change” to be banned, When education is becoming less a right and more a privilege or as former BB&T President John Allison would have it, “a commodity that will be bought and sold by students and donors alike,”
I asked myself one question:
Is the church, in fact, dying?
I remember as a child visiting my great-grandfather after he had been diagnosed with alzheimer’s disease. Prior to the dementia he was as kind and gentle a soul as you’d ever meet, always greeting you with a smile and a hug, sometimes lifting you off the ground he was so happy to see you. Ready with pockets full of that old dime store penny candy, breathing so close to your face with that big teeth-filled grin you could always smell his fresh minty spearmint gum breath, and rearing, he was, to go no matter the time of day. He used to sweep us up in his lap and read us stories the kind bound with the golden seal-, then we’d have lunch- usually nothing too tasty, and then all three of us would pile onto his riding lawn mower…which moved at just a half a second quicker pace than his old bones… he’d ride us up to the lake where we’d feed the ducks, whistle with the cat tails and listen to the frogs croaking by the bank. Afterwards we’d head back down to the house where grand daddy would then tell us to be quiet, and then he’d take a nap… surely we weren’t quiet, but it never seemed to bother him.
One visit after the dementia set it I remember him accusing my older brother of stealing his pocket candy, and then he got all freaked out when seeing me because he thought I came out of the television, that I had been the little girl on the commercial he was watching. He no longer looked at us with those kind and knowing eyes, but with fear and skepticism, as if he had completely lost those memories that fueled our giant hugs, filled our stories with laughter and sticky bitter candy with the sweet fragrance of his love. It was hard to watch him die, to become a shadow of the man he once was....
I know that the church is a far cry from a person, such as Alice or my great-grandfather, living with alzheimer’s disease, a horrible fate to befall anyone, and that to even make the comparison may seem less than sympathetic, but I think there are some important insights that we can learn in seeing ourselves both as the church that “we know we are”, and the one that the world is perceiving – as possibly losing everything...caught in the slow decline of this disease brought about by our culture, one with perpetual lies that entrap, and then suffocate with its polluted identity brought about by living from flesh to flesh.
Alice said in her speech, “Everything I accumulated in life, everything I worked so hard for, now all of that is being ripped away. As you can imagine, or as you know, all of this is hell, but it gets worse.”
Church, Who can take us seriously, when we are so far from who we once were? Our strange behavior and fumbled sentences change others perceptions of us and our perceptions of ourselves. Looking back at our birth, recalling the labor pangs that brought us into existence, and encountering the many call stories, like that of Isaiah, David, Hannah, Ruth, Moses, Mary, Paul, of those champions who fought to bring truth and light to the next generation should inspire us to look for the substance that Jesus says to Nicodemus is of water and spirit. To be willing to crawl back into the womb to seek that which is clothed in darkness yet has the potential to erupt with light, to understand what it is to be flesh of flesh and spirit of spirit. Church, when will we stop reading the headlines and start making them, stop succeeding the answers to those most willing to give them, when will the last door slam in our face?
Another form of Alzheimer’s to which I encounter with each and every visit to the country- back to Kentucky where my grandparents farm has been for all of my life - is very different than how I remember it affecting my great-grandfather. Now my grandmother, his daughter, is struggling with this disease, but this time it is a silent engulfing, an eroding poison that not only took her speech, and all ability to communicate, but it has taken her physical body as well, withered down to just 75 pounds from the plump, round-faced farming grandmother that I remember she lies in a bed 24 hours a day, in her home where my aunt, and grandfather care for her with the assistance of home health providers. This time, though, the memory-milking disease rendering her body entirely helpless, lacking all that might tell the world that she exists has left something for all of us.. her kind eyes, her knowing looks, her gentle tilting of the head that tells you she is “in there”, and “she is alive”- though not physically present, her spirit is deeper than deep, and fuller than full. She has a knowing glance that lingers, haltingly so, that calls you into her presence, that summons your spirit to kindle with hers, that is spirit of spirit.
Alice said in her speech “for the time being I am still alive, I know I’m alive. I have people I love dearly. I have things I want to do with my life. I rail against myself for not being able to remember things. But I still have moments in the day of pure happiness and joy, please do not think that I am suffering. I am not suffering I am struggling to be part of things”.
Church, we are more than Alive! And though we may be struggling to be a necessary part of the fabric of our society, we are Alive. And how do we know we are alive??
Because
Just this week After a Cleveland police officer was cleared of all charges in the shooting death of an unarmed couple, a coalition of clergy, including UCC national leaders, rallied with a call for reform of the city’s criminal justice system.
We know we are alive
Because when the same political forces that recently cut 48 majors, most dealing with education, from the UNC system forced the closure of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity and threatened Gene Nichol over 100 professors signed on in support of him as did most of the Chapel Hill- Carborro clergy ministerium.
We know we are alive bc: Last week Ireland became the first nation in the world to approve same sex marriage by popular vote. And- As the United States Supreme Court is under way hearing arguments about the legality of same-sex marriage, UCC advocates and executives pray for the inevitable—with 37 of the 50 states now recognizing marriage equality, it’s time for a national decision declaring equal rights for all people.
Church, How do we know that we, the church, are alive today, and more importantly that we will be alive tomorrow?
Just as Nicodemus asked Jesus in that late night encounter,
How can someone be born again after growing old?,
it’s time that we, the church, ask ourselves this same question… It is never too late to be born again, to live anew in response to the call of God… to listen to Jesus’ response and take seriously the call to be born of the spirit. Are we ready to respond to this call as the prophet did? To proclaim truth to a world that if left to disaster and disease would be only a fading memory unable to recall her birth, to live vitaly in the present and look to a hopeful future?
Are we ready to be born of the spirit?
Jesus said, "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Thomas Berry so gently reminds us that “The real skill is to raise the sails and to catch the power of the wind as it passes by.”
My prayer is that we, too, will raise our hands, and respond to the call, saying “Here am I! Send me!”
May it be so, amen.
Friday, May 15, 2015
Living the "In Between Life" - Sermon, Ascension of the Lord, May 17, 2015
Rev. Jenny Shultz
Sunday, May 17, 2015
Ascension of the Lord
Acts 1:1-11
Living the “In Between Life”
“How we spend our days”, according to Annie Dillard, “is how we spend our lives.”1 So the question is, if not Life itself, what is the meaning of the “in between time” that captures most of our moments, most of our existence?
If how we spend our days is, in fact, how we spend our lives2 then I spend my life in the checkout line at the grocery store, speeding up and down the aisles looking for the the last ingredient of my grandmother’s homemade apple pie which is probably, unfortunately, already in my basket. Before the steering wheel of my car driving my son to the nanny’s house where he will spend most of his in between time: he’ll fall and learn that he can get back up, he’ll bite a friend and learn that sometimes they bite back, he’ll build a castle out of dirt and understand that his hands were meant to engage the Earth, he’ll paint a butterfly and call it Mommy because he is learning to share his love with other living things…
Meanwhile I will sit, again, at 10 and 2, along 1-40 driving to the coffee shop where I will see Andrew who knows that I want a decaf iced americano with 3 shots, and then if it’s Wednesday morning I’ll see Bill Wright with his former colleagues and, first, learn that this weekend is he and Anne’s 60th wedding anniversary which they are celebrating today with their kids in VA, and second, i’ll allow my subconscious the luxury of imagining that I have any idea what he and his science buddies are talking about, quantum physics something..., then i’ll drive to the church, and on certain days after a while my car will take me, again, to the coffee shop- and this time I’ll see the woman that brings her laptop every day, drinks an espresso and then a cappuccino, and we’ll smile and exchange pleasantries, and then go back to work.
Then upon leaving church, I”ll drive back to the grocery store, speed up and down the narrow aisles of whole foods building a meal in my head as I pedal past my subconscious who’s busy staring down the dark chocolate bars found on every end cap, and then I’ll wait, again, in the checkout line, in the long line leaving the parking lot, at the stoplight… trying to discern if I should pull out the $10 from my purse to give to the army vet who is standing on the corner… waiting himself… then the light will turn green, so I’ll drive on by leaving my subconscious on the corner to have a meaningful conversation with the tattered man in my rearview mirror.
I don’t know about you, but I spend a lot of my life waiting, watching, passing by, speeding past, considering an option, but watching as it slowly fades away in the rearview mirror, walking fast, running even, leaving my subconscious to do the work of the present that my mind has already negotiated away, yielding it to the past.
What is life, if not the in between time?
Shauna Niequist, author of Cold Tangerines, writes this in the foreword of Jeff Goins book, The In Between:
“What we have is time. And what we do is waste it. Waiting for those big spectacular moments. We think that something’s about to happen- something enormous and newsworthy, but for most of us it isn’t. This is what I know: The big moments are the tiny moments. The breakthroughs are often silent, and they happen in the most unassuming of spaces.”3
Today is Ascension Sunday, often an overlooked holy moment in the life of the church, in the planning of the preacher as it is bookended by the holier days of our liturgical calendar…Easter on one side which it fulfills and Pentecost on the other which it anticipates. It may actually be intentionally overlooked by some of us theological types as we progressives tend to have difficulty with the notion that Jesus, or any of the other four individuals mentioned in the scriptures who were said to have been lifted into the sky, actually ascended into the “Heavens” - were taken up into the clouds. Or we could just say that many progressives have a hard time believing anything that we can’t see, touch, or prove… But that is for another sermon!
The best and most meaningful way that most of us have come to experience this idea as having spiritual meaning and authority for us is through its deeply metaphorical invitation to delve into the depths of the incarnation. Marcus Borg reminds us that, “because the risen and ascended Jesus is 'one with God,' he (like God) can be experienced anywhere. Jesus is no longer restricted or confined to time and space, as he was during his historical lifetime. Rather, like the God whom he knew in his own experience, he continues to be known in the experience of his followers4…. in your life and mine, in our daily tiny moments that often do lift our feet from the ground.
Another example, using language from Matthew's Gospel, is for Christians to think of the risen and ascended Christ as Immanuel--'God with us'.5
We know that the book of Acts is a written testament of the Acts of the Holy Spirit in the church, and really begins with the holy fire magic of Pentecost the true birth of the Church and her presence in all the Earth. However, Pentecost doesn’t happen until the 2nd chapter of Acts. What we find “in between” chapter 1, verse 1 and Chapter 2, verse 1 - proceeding this holy fire activity is actually the holy manna of the church’s birth, the tiny moments along the way that prove as kindling for the prophetic flames that will burst into the sky, that will reach across oceans and ethnicities, that will speak of the holy reign of Christ that is to come, for one and for all. But not yet… Jesus said, not yet.
These tiny moments, we read in Acts chapter 1 are about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the time that he was taken from this Earth at last. These tiny moments, in between, to which you have been my witnesses.. He said, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. But not yet… While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”6 But not yet. So if not yet, then what now?
What is life, if not the in between time?
Let’s listen now as Shauna Niequist testifies to this holy in between time once again,
"I sat with an old friend today. She and her husband have endured unimaginable loss throughout the course of their lives, and another very fresh loss in these last months. We sat in the golden fading light of a Chicago spring. Our kids ran around and around the screen porch, and the grass was impossibly green, almost glowing. And in the midst of all that wild and lush beauty, we sat facing one another and she told me all the particulars of that most recent loss. What I heard in her voice stunned me, moved me, instructed me. She was present to it, unafraid. She told me about it unflinchingly, and what I realized was that she decided a long time ago that she wasn't’ going to wait for perfect and she wasn’t numbing herself against the worst case scenario. She had seen the worst case scenario more times over than any of us should have to.
What I saw in her was a vision for how I want to live: In the midst of one of her darkest seasons, twisted with uncertainty, bruised by the words of former friends, she sat with me present and unarmed by busyness. She looked in my eyes and told me they’d be fine. She told me sweet and funny things about her kids, asked me about myself. She wasn’t waiting for the good part. She knows that these are all the good parts even while they’re the bad parts. She wasn’t shut down, going through the motions. Sh wasn’t holding tight until this season passed.She was right there with me, right there with her kids, right in all the glory and pain and mess and beauty of a spring night in between everything.”7
Theologian Jeffrey Peterson-Davis reminds us that hearing this commission while peering up into the sky, reaching for the feet of Jesus that he might lift them too, was quite staggering for Jesus’ friends. Bearing witness to Christ in a world that suffers is overwhelming. We have trouble even imagining our own communities being free from hunger and poverty, racism, classism, sexism, heterosexism, violence, from undue suffering and illness. But the final words of Jesus to his followers were that they will bear witness to him throughout the world.8
With mouths still gaping open, eyes squinted under the bright sun’s bedazzling glow, the men in white asked them’ Why are you still standing here looking up at Heaven?” As if to say, “what are you waiting for? Waiting on? Don't give up, don’t shut down, or just go through the motions, don’t just hold on tight until the season passes, but get in there, into the world, where your hands can engage the dirt, where you’ll learn that when you fall you can get back up again, that even in your darkest season of life, you can look at the world - eyes wide open and proclaim that you will be fine… that Christ is coming, again, in the same way that he was raised up from us.
I believe that as Jesus' feet lifted from the ground, as he ascended into the liminal spaces of our lives where time and distance have no rule, where his presence would permeate the very air we breathe, he took a little bit of each of us with him, like seeds that when looking out over the broken and embattled horizon of humanity he would scatter across the Earth, watering it with one tiny moment at a time...with each smile exchanged between strangers standing Side by side in the grocery store checkout line, and every time we are moved to be present with those standing on the corners of our lives who would otherwise fade into the distance of our rear view mirrors, each and every time the burden of shame is lifted from a young woman’s soul as she looks fully into the mirror at a wholesome self worthy of all that is love around her, with every promise fulfilled and every wounded heart forgiven, the ascended Jesus is present with us.
Jesus said the Holy Spirit power will come upon you, and the world will be transformed with one giant flame after another… not yet, but in the days to come. And As you wait, and watch, listen and learn...do so with the eyes of Jesus wide open to the possibilities of grace and justice, peace and proclamation, with the heart of Jesus, beating consistently with the prophetic hope that each moment seized in love is a moment of holy transformation for a broken and bewildered people, with the hands and feet of Jesus, never tiring of waiting in line, never giving up to the despair, or pride or envy or greed...working continuously as a shepherd caring for the sheep in his care. Friends, as we wait upon the Lord, let us wait boldly, not spending our moments wishing we had been there, had done that, had looked closer, listened longer, been moved to action.
If we listen, right now, there are dazzling white robed voices all around us, calling us to the front lines of our lives, pleading for us to open our eyes to stop yielding our present to the past: some are perched on our shoulders, some peering up at us with childlike wonder, some looking back at us through the rearview mirror as we continue to drive right on by.
Friends, Pentecost is coming! It will be here before we know it, the trumpets will sound, tongues will confess, red flowing robes will mark the church's birth. But on the dawn of this great day is an opportunity to live the "in between life", to put waiting to action, to allow your subconscious to lift into the sky, to seed the Earth one tiny moment at a time as witnesses to all that was and is and is to come.
This is what I know: The big moments are the tiny moments. The breakthroughs are often silent, and they happen in the most unassuming of spaces.”9
Go now into life’s tiny moments, giving yourself one seed at a time.
May it be so this day and all of our days. Amen.
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Bibliography:
1. Annie Dillard, The Writing Life (New York, Harper Collins, 1989).
2. Ibid.
3. Goins, Jeff. The In Between: Embracing the Tension between Now and the Next Big Thing. (Moody Publishers; New Edition,
July 23, 2013), forward by Shauna Niequist.
5. Matthew 1:23, NRSV
6. Acts 1:1-8, NRSV
7. Goins, The In Between, Forward by Shauna Niequist.
8. Peterson-Davis, Jeffrey, Ascension of the Lord, Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 2, Lent through Eastertide: Preaching the
Revised Common Lectionary (Westminster John Knox Press, 2013).
9. Goins, The In Between, Forward by Shauna Niequist.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Raygan Baker's Ordination: A Charge to the Candidate
Raygan Baker Ordination Charge
April 26, 2015
Dorothy Day reminds us that, “A custom once existed among the first generations of Christians, when faith was a bright fire that warmed more than those who kept it burning. In every house then a room was kept ready for any stranger who might ask for shelter; it was even called “the stranger’s room.” Not because these people thought they could trace something of someone they loved in the stranger who used it, not because the man or woman to whom they gave shelter reminded them of Christ, but because—plain and simple and stupendous fact—he or she was Christ.”
Raygan, today is one of those days that will mark for you, for the rest of your life in ministry, the call to the fire warming hospitality that Dorothy Day described, but rather than reflecting upon an empty room that remains ready by firelight it will be marked by the open spaces in your heart that have been made ready, that have been set apart for the work to which you have been called, that have gracefully been there all along, widening your capacity to love, to embrace, to receive, and welcome the stranger-as he or she is Christ.
Christine Pohl writes in Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition that Jesus’ words in Matthew 25:35, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” do not refer to any particular physical location for hospitality. Instead, the verse challenges us to examine our practices of welcome to strangers in every setting. Jesus’ words are more closely associated with relationship than with location. A first step in making a place for hospitality may be to make room in our hearts. Whether or not we can always find room in our houses, welcome begins with dispositions characterized by love and generosity.
Raygan, you are not a foreigner on this shelter-seeking road, fighting yourself for a place at the table, for refuge, and welcome, for acceptance and equality. And as a stranger in a world that has all but abandoned her call “to let her hospitality and good works abound,” as Augustine proclaimed, you have chosen to remain faithful to Gods’ call upon your life, to enter into the most fragile of places where human life is at it’s most vulnerable and transformative states. The church has always and will continue to struggle to embody this call of welcoming the stranger, of embracing the other, of opening wide the doors of grace that have been opened for each of us.
Raygan, yours is a heart like the strangers’ fire lit room, yours is a spirit made ready to guide the church into places where her fire can burn bright, where her doors can fling open with the truth of God’s love, and where her invitation can be made easily accessible to those outside who find themselves on the other side of faith’s legacy.
And, yes, even with a spirit made ready, prepared for the journey, set apart for this Holy work there will be times when you feel like your own light is not bright enough, not bold enough, simply not enough to perform the tasks before you. In those moments, I urge you to look to your left, look to your right, look at your feet beneath you, and look up and all around you. This sacred call is not one of isolation, and is not to be placed upon your shoulders alone. Today, Raygan, my Brother, you are called as a teacher, a co-laborer, a sojourner, a fellow-traveler, a companion on the Way, a covenant partner… and with you on the journey, always, are the saints who have gone before you, those who surround you even now, on this day, in this very room, and those who await your arrival in Evansville, Indiana to walk alongside you as fellow travelers in the next chapter of your life.
Never let fear or intimidation crowd your spirit, never relent in your unfailing love and generosity for others, but instead embrace the kindness and compassion that is within you, and go forth as Christ with the power and authority to bind-up the brokenhearted, to set free the captives, to prepare the way of the Lord.
This is the day that God has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! Amen.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Crucifixion...a new hope for the Resurrected
Feeling so blessed- I am married to the love of my life, and am Mommy to the sweetest boy in the whole world!
As a Pastor holy week brings a plethora of emotions to the table, but what a privilege to take it all in.
I am all too aware of the pain and suffering, the death and loss that accompany the lives of so many on this Easter Sunday, and know that resurrection means as many different things to people as does crucifixion. I myself, am limited in my understanding of resurrection as my life has been void of the many crucifixions that I witness on a daily basis, the kind that break, destroy, burn, kill and maim, disfigure, retaliate and isolate, the kinds that leave for dead not only bodies in the streets, but babies and mamas in roofless homes, children and adolescent boys abandoned to man-sized violence, black and brown youth with oversized dreams in an undersized white world, families dissected by disease, infidelity, mental illness, trauma, the everyday working public hostage to yesterday's bad policies and tomorrow's corrupt legislature. Brokenness, abandonment, murder, brutality, torture, suffering, lying, cheating, stealing, death...
Crucifixion.
And then there's Resurrection.
The kind that reunites drafted soldiers with grown baby girls, parent to child after war-torn annihilation, refugee families separated by decades of violence. Resurrection- like when the ice cream truck's jingle of sweet summer's stickiness wheels into the cul-de-sac and barefoot children run screaming for ice cold relief, like the time you leave the doctor's office and forever hanging on your tongue will be her last word: "remission", like the time you held your grandmother's hand while she took one last gaze across the decades of lines on your face and peacefully breathed her last . Resurrection- not only from the bodily-induced breathless coma that stills the heart's beat, but the kind of feather-like soaring above the clouds spurn by those words "I forgive you", the kind that shifts the family-feuded paralysis of loveless grudges to full-blown family reunion-type kinship.
Resurrection is not only made possible through crucifixion it is received, perceived, absorbed, accepted and/or rejected because of what is and has been crucified...within and without us. The closest ally to death's sting, to darkness that stops all things living, is the light that has been suffocated within its shadow. Only Resurrection reminds us of light's true value and, in betrayal of her dark friend of the night, it is resurrection that shines her blinding light into the darkness and with courage raises up, from the dust of our existence, that which had once been surrendered- life.
I pray that in my Eastertide tendency of seeking comfort and release, & rest and renewal, that I will lean more intensely into the trenches of crucifixion that exist behind each phone call, each unwanted visit and ignored face of an anonymous passerby, each painful memory that longs to remain "unacknowledged", each crevice and crater of heartbreak that threatens to claim a future joy. I pray that in my living I will not disavow the sacredness of the dying, the pathway of all birth from one life to the next.
Crucifixion...a new hope for the Resurrected.
As a Pastor holy week brings a plethora of emotions to the table, but what a privilege to take it all in.
I am all too aware of the pain and suffering, the death and loss that accompany the lives of so many on this Easter Sunday, and know that resurrection means as many different things to people as does crucifixion. I myself, am limited in my understanding of resurrection as my life has been void of the many crucifixions that I witness on a daily basis, the kind that break, destroy, burn, kill and maim, disfigure, retaliate and isolate, the kinds that leave for dead not only bodies in the streets, but babies and mamas in roofless homes, children and adolescent boys abandoned to man-sized violence, black and brown youth with oversized dreams in an undersized white world, families dissected by disease, infidelity, mental illness, trauma, the everyday working public hostage to yesterday's bad policies and tomorrow's corrupt legislature. Brokenness, abandonment, murder, brutality, torture, suffering, lying, cheating, stealing, death...
Crucifixion.
And then there's Resurrection.
The kind that reunites drafted soldiers with grown baby girls, parent to child after war-torn annihilation, refugee families separated by decades of violence. Resurrection- like when the ice cream truck's jingle of sweet summer's stickiness wheels into the cul-de-sac and barefoot children run screaming for ice cold relief, like the time you leave the doctor's office and forever hanging on your tongue will be her last word: "remission", like the time you held your grandmother's hand while she took one last gaze across the decades of lines on your face and peacefully breathed her last . Resurrection- not only from the bodily-induced breathless coma that stills the heart's beat, but the kind of feather-like soaring above the clouds spurn by those words "I forgive you", the kind that shifts the family-feuded paralysis of loveless grudges to full-blown family reunion-type kinship.
Resurrection is not only made possible through crucifixion it is received, perceived, absorbed, accepted and/or rejected because of what is and has been crucified...within and without us. The closest ally to death's sting, to darkness that stops all things living, is the light that has been suffocated within its shadow. Only Resurrection reminds us of light's true value and, in betrayal of her dark friend of the night, it is resurrection that shines her blinding light into the darkness and with courage raises up, from the dust of our existence, that which had once been surrendered- life.
I pray that in my Eastertide tendency of seeking comfort and release, & rest and renewal, that I will lean more intensely into the trenches of crucifixion that exist behind each phone call, each unwanted visit and ignored face of an anonymous passerby, each painful memory that longs to remain "unacknowledged", each crevice and crater of heartbreak that threatens to claim a future joy. I pray that in my living I will not disavow the sacredness of the dying, the pathway of all birth from one life to the next.
Crucifixion...a new hope for the Resurrected.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Faith as "Fiducia"
“If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving my faith.” ― Søren Kierkegaard
One of my Lenten practices has been to, again, give myself to my second love-- reading. This past week I read an article in the Huffington Post with the title, "Busy is a Sickness". In Summary, the author uses statistics from the American Psychological Association to remind her readers that busyness is killing them, literally. And contrary to the illusion that our society is becoming more and more sophisticated, thus, evolutionarily speaking, more adept at multi-tasking with the ability to more efficiently produce at a higher level in less time, this sickness of "busyness" is a self-induced epidemic that has the opposite effect, really, and threatens to erode that which is left of the "self".
Author Scott Dannemiller, a Presbyterian missionary shares the following example from the journal, Science.
"In America, we are defined by what we do. Our careers. What we produce. It's the first question asked at parties, and often the first tidbit of information we share with strangers. The implication is that if I am not busy doing something, I am somehow less than. Not worthy. Or at least worth less than those who are producing something.
Now, before you start to think this is just one guy's opinion, consider a recent study published in the journal Science. In one experiment, participants were left alone in a room for up to 15 minutes. When asked whether they liked the alone time, over half reported disliking it.
In subsequent studies, participants were given an electric shock, and then asked if they would pay money to avoid being shocked again. Not surprisingly, most said they would trade money to avoid pain. However, when these same people were left alone in a room for 15 minutes, nearly half chose to self-administer an electric shock rather than sit alone with their thoughts.
You read that right. Voluntarily. Shocking. (Which is so not punny.)
Think about what this means. Just being is so painful that we are willing to hurt ourselves to avoid it."
The quote at the beginning of this post illustrates, for me, the tipping point from which we are either falling- prey to our own insecurities and hollow identities, or towards a more graceful acceptance of the self and for all that she has to offer. This kind of grace-filled acceptance I find to be deeply rooted in this fiducia type of trust, a deep faith in the self, in others, in possibility and in hope and as directly dependent upon the kind of trust in God that Kierkegaard said would surely keep us "out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water, still preserving in faith". This is not the kind of belief or trust that would have us adopt every creed and doctrine presented in the Christian tradition, but a faithful belief that illuminates the relationship in God uniquely defined by our reliance upon God and as Marcus Borg said, "trusting in God as our support, foundation and ground, and as our safe place."
I have to believe that those who find that they are afraid of themselves, afraid of being in their own company, must not have access to this kind of "safe place", must not yet understand fully the completeness of grace that surrounds them. The kind of grace that promises that one's spirit is never alone even when emptiness surrounds them, but rather given over to the fullness of God's presence found in the shelter of that safe "trusted" place.
The only God that I would consider trusting in, the only God that I would seek to find shelter among, the only God in whom I would dare find a safe place- is the God whom I believe to be at work within each of us, inviting us to relationship, to be still, to sit awhile, to listen, to open ourselves to this most vulnerable trust that can "erode" the decay within us- the decay which feasts upon the lies of our busyness, upon the illusion of our invincibility, and upon our faithless practices perpetuated by a culture which is still seeking a floating device.
Rather than find our selves flailing about upon the surface of the deep, fighting a sinking battle, may we give ourselves to grace this day, and find ourselves within the trust-filled companionship of the one who offers us a safe place in which to find shelter, love and support.
Lenten Blessings.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
"That We May All Be One", Lent 2B Sermon
Rev. Jenny Shultz
March 1, 2015 Lent 2B
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-17
Mark 8: 31-38
“That We May All Be One”
On February 10, 2015 this world was robbed of the blessings of three beautiful lives and the love and community that they represented for so many family, friends and those of us who were impacted by their amazing spirits of hope and generosity.
Yusor Abu-Salha, 21, her husband, Deah Barakat, 23, and her sister, Razan Abu-Salha, 19 were brutally taken from their loved ones, murdered in cold blood, in an act of extreme violence and defilement… a man who acted against himself, against all of humanity and against God chose not only to play God, himself, by ending three innocent human lives, but in so doing broke the most sacred and ancient of covenants between the Creator and the created. A covenant which began in the garden with the breath of life that would sustain our very flesh and bones, a covenant that was later “cut” with Abraham, with the blood of animals, with the promise that his faithfulness would lead to numerous descendants and that God would always BE that—Israel’s God, then later with Noah the covenant of the colors in the sky that God would never extinguish the earth with water again, and then God extended the Abrahamic covenant to Israel once again, through Moses, in the Mosaic covenant promising that in their obedience, God would lead them into the promised land and that God would always be with them and keep them wherever they went. Finally, we experience this covenant, you and I, each and every day through the spirit of Jesus whose very essence was the covenant itself, come to replace that which was formerly “inscribed” by that which is incarnate, the holy presence of God that dwells within us.
In this season of Lent when we are encouraged to examine our own lives, and as a community to look to the promise of God held in the light for us as we walk this journey from Lent into Eastertide, from temptation to freedom, I cannot escape the thought that the three lives of those beautiful young people, taken from us much too early, are to be reminders to us of the covenantal relationship of which we are all part, a relationship that must be nurtured and actively acknowledged if we are to move forward in society as “one"-void of the violence that extinguishes our hope and corrupts the innocent, void of the oppressive forces that seek to take life rather than to sustain it, void of the very hatred, greed, lust and insatiable desire for power and wealth that has long exploited our differences rather than uniting us under a common covenant; one of love of God and neighbor.
”Growing up in America has been such a blessing," said Yusor Abu-Salha in a conversation with a former teacher that was recorded by the StoryCorps project last year. She said, “Although in some ways I do stand out, such as the hijab I wear on my head, the head covering, there are still so many ways that I feel so embedded in the fabric that is, you know, our culture. And that's the beautiful thing here, is that it doesn't matter where you come from. There's so many different people from so many different places, of different backgrounds and religions — but here we're all one, one culture. And it's beautiful to see people of different areas interacting, and being family. Being, you know, one community.”
Yusor was in touch with something that ran deep in her veins. She said she felt, “embedded” in the fabric of this culture and community. Perhaps what her spirit was really connected to was the covenant that bound us, Jews, Christians and Muslims, together long ago when God made a great promise to Abraham and then blessed him with many children. Included in Abraham’s offspring were Ishmael, his firstborn son, born of Haggar, Sara’s maidservant, and Ancestor to the prophet Muhammad, and then Isaac his second born son, born of Sarah, his wife, and father to Jacob, and ancestor to King David and then to Jesus himself.
So Abraham was not only the father of Judaism, but it was his line that eventually gave birth to two other great religions of our time, both Islam and then Christianity…from the same covenant we share the same promises of God…and as Yusor stated, “We are all one”…children of the same God born of the same promise.
If you’re a twitter user you can follow the #muslims4lent thread to see what thousands of Muslim young adults are tweeting about standing in solidarity with Christians during the season of Lent, this year, by abstaining from things for 40 days.
College-aged girl, Saadia stands holding a sign that reads, “I’m Saadia A Muslim American in solidarity, next 40 days NO McDonalds," and another writes, “I’m Reem, a Muslim Syrian American In solidarity, Next 40 days… No COOKIeS! #muslims4lent.”
Faisal a Muslim lebanese students says, “No Bread” next 40 days, in solidarity. #Muslims4lent.
Muslim American entrepreneur Bassel Riche who started the campaign says, “The goal is to thank the many Christians that have always shown love and respect towards Islam by showing them we in turn have the utmost respect for their beliefs”…and he hopes the “campaign will show the true face of Islam and take the spotlight away from extremists.”
For decades, the three monotheistic religions have been conversing in interfaith dialogue, working across the boundaries, in hopes that their efforts would help to create a shared understanding towards the call to justice for the poor, the disenfranchised, the widow and the orphan, a common sense of the sacred, of mutual respect and agency towards the common good. Rather than remaining in isolation from one another, outside of communion, they have and continue to work hard to find a common narrative that will thread our spirits together.
From the gospel of Mark, we hear Jesus claiming something similar in his call to discipleship. He said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”
This same universal call to a common identity rooted in shared belief of God, and love of neighbor proclaimed by Jesus, and made manifest in the lives of young people such as Yusor, should inspire us this Lenten season, to look at ourselves, examining the very core of our beings, our allegiances, asking ourselves the question… What does it mean to deny myself, to lose my life for the sake of the gospel, that I might save it?
Associate Professor of Preaching at Luther Seminary, Karoline Lewis, like me, was baffled at the first reading of the Genesis and Mark lectionary pairings for today, but decided to sit with it awhile before abandoning her efforts to make sense of what the biblical narrative was trying to tell her.
She said, “But I stuck with it for a while, and here’s what I started seeing. Abraham and Sarah? To what extent they ‘deny themselves’ just as Jesus asks. But it’s not a denial of the self. It’s a denial of remaining by themselves. That is, they deny a life that is autonomous, secured, enclosed, safe, and just the two of them, for a life that propels them into relationship -- with God and with a future realized by abounding relationship.”
I wonder if this is exactly what Jesus means.
If we ask ourselves the question, “What does it mean to deny myself, to lose my life for Jesus’ sake, and for the sake of the gospel” with the backdrop of covenantal relationship propping us up we might just find that the way forward includes a denial of selfhood “when it rescinds relationship, a denial of autonomy when it refuses community, a denial of individualism when it rejects intimacy.”
About the Muslims4Lent campaign Riche said, “Despite what our extremists have done to hijack our religion, we believe in peace, love, tolerance & harmony with other faiths. We don’t want to be seen as some distant, mysterious faith, we want to be accessible for people to open up to us…”
Would it not have been easier for Abraham and Sarah to remain as Lewis says, by themselves, free to live without the pressure of an abounding legacy, without the impending thought of childbirth… I know that I am nearly 60 years their younger and i’m telling you having a baby is no easy task… chasing a toddler around is not for the weary, physically or emotionally. Theirs was a denial of the life they’d always known, the security of home, the assurance of what lie ahead, aging together until the they were no more, just the two of them side by side sitting in their rocking chairs, staring up at the night sky. Theirs was a denial of self which unveiled the expanse of community, opened up their world to family, to laughter and crying, to brokenness and burdens, to celebrations and thanksgivings, to relationships…bound-up in the promises of God.
Like Yusor, who opened her life up to the other, made her life accessible, which in turn has shown the world the true identity of a faithful Muslim, and her goal…that we may all be one… we may need to ask ourselves some hard questions.
What is it in your life threatens the birth of new relationships, of “whole” and satisfying relationships with those you encounter every day… your family, your parents, your siblings, your children? What serves as a barrier for you in reaching out to the other, in finding unity among differences, and harmony rather than fear or judgement?
What is it that holds you back from living in community, of opening yourself up to a life of intimacy?
As children of God, and adoptees into a shared covenant we will all find ourselves in the place of Abraham and Sara at different times in our lives. Will we decide to look gracefully and faithfully towards the Easter promise of life and abundance, holding the promise of oneness to our chests, or will our fears of the unknown, and worship of our individualism keep us from denying that which could set us free, make us whole?
Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”.
May it be so…Amen.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
Ash Wednesday Sermon: Feb. 18, 2015
Rev. Jenny Shultz
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
1 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Ash Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015
Founding Pastor of Grace Commons in Chicago, Nanette Sawyer wrote a wonderful article in this month’s Christian Century magazine, an Ash Wednesday reflection, asking herself the question, “Could I treasure washing the dishes?” Reflecting on the Corinthians text she says “This would mean treasuring the fact that I am alive - as Paul puts it, that I am “treated… as having nothing and yet possessing everything” If I could do it, she said, I would remember and experience what a miracle life is. Throughout the remainder of the article she contemplates how her life might look, feel and be experienced differently if only she could remember that she was “alive” each and every day.
And this is where I think she connects truly with what the gospel is inherently about: She says,
“If I could treasure washing the dishes, I would not be storing up treasures on earth “where moth and rust consume” and “thieves break in and steal.” But I would be storing up treasures in heaven, treasures of the heart, treasures of love and honor and simply joy.
I would be fasting in secret, too. Secretly I would be giving up my fear that I am not enough, that my life is not enough, that there is not enough time or money or reward, that there is not enough suffering to atone for all that has been done wrongly in the world. I would be giving up resentment that life includes more work than play. I would let that resentment go, and I would find the play in work. I would do my work for the doing and not for the outcome. I would realize that I am alive for this— to serve, to try to make the world a better place, to love through the efforts I make. And sometimes I would serve the world by doing less, by having smaller dreams, by letting enough be good enough and trusting that our value comes from the fact that we exist.”
I know that I struggle on a daily basis with feeling like my good is good enough. And I know that I am not alone. More often than not my obsessive thinking these days is around being a good enough Mommy… with a two year-old running around I think this is only natural, but it doesn’t keep me from doing what we parents do best- compare ourselves to all of the other parents in the world. That’s right, in order for us mommies to feel better about our mommy skills & selves we typically seek the most important and influential resource of our time, the most reliable wisdom-filled parenting source out there… FACEBOOK. That’s right…we read dozens of Facebook articles most-often posted by other mommies about what they are doing or not doing with their babies and toddlers. Did they breastfeed, did they co-sleep with their child, did they let their baby “cry it out?”, did they make all of their own mashed-up sticky baby food from organic fruits and veggies, did they record every single day in a 1000 photos or more of which they shared on 6 social media sites, did they join a mommy group and a playgroup so that their infants could all lie on their blankets and practice rolling over together, did they stay home from work after delivering the baby to devote all of out time and energy to being the best mommy possible???????? And the list goes on and on, doesn’t it?
This weekend while procrastinating writing this sermon I was browsing Facebook when I stumbled across something my sister-in-law posted called “Mommy Guilt Bingo”. And the comparing began…
The first line of squares had me feeling pretty good, I was still an average mommy having served pizza for dinner, and with an incomplete baby book, but I could still at least take pride in the fact that I have not yet picked my child up from daycare in yoga pants with bedhead, or used the tv as a babysitter…and have not yet heard Sage repeating a 4 letter word. Phew!
Then, on to the second line…Failed to cherish every moment today, Birthday party wasn’t pinterest worthy (because we didn’t have a birthday party)…I work outside the home, i have on the rare occasion purchased non-organic produce when I just refused to drive across town to Whole Foods, and last, but not least I have bribed my toddler with a completely sugar-infested high fructose corn syrup laden lollipop- even just this week! And then, as I made my way through the bingo board - there it was - the real reason that mommy hood seems like an epic failure at times… I had an epidural!
Am I a good enough Mommy? Am I parenting to the best of my ability? Feeding him the right foods, playing the right games, making the right friends, choosing the right schools, the right playgrounds, the right playgroups? Am I spending enough time with my sweet boy? Am I letting the nanny do the mommy’s job? Is my best Mommy-self good enough?
Rev. Sawyer said, “treasuring washing the dishes was a way, for her, of storing up treasures in heaven, treasures of the heart, treasures of love and honor and simply joy, and a means of fasting in secret. Secretly, she said, she would be giving up her fear that she is not enough, that her life is not enough.
What if we could do our work for the doing and not for the outcome, work for progress because we believe that our efforts can change the world for the better rather than progress for progress’ sake, what if we would parent our children moment by moment without obsessing over the future, about the unknown, celebrating each diaper change because it reminds us that we are alive, sweeping the
floor with a whistle on our lips because we know that life is as brief as the moments between our
births until the time we will lie down for the last time, that with every nap time battle, each teenage infraction, and marital conflict- we can look in the mirror and be reminded that our best is good enough, that we are good enough simply because we exist. Sawyer reminds us that in so doing, “we are alive to serve, to try to make the world a better place, to love through our efforts, however small they may be. What if we could treasure washing the dishes?
As we prepare ourselves for this Lenten season, dipped in the ashen reminder of our fragility, a time to reflect upon our own lives, and to explore what it means to be “reconciled to God”, perhaps leaning deeply into these questions: am I enough simply because I exist, and could my life be such that the smallest of moments, those often overlooked, could be life-giving for me? …perhaps living with an orientation towards this smallness could be God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done in your life as it is in Heaven.
Sometimes, said Rev. Swayer,
“I would serve the world by doing less, by having smaller dreams, by letting enough be good enough and trusting that our value comes from the fact that we exist.”
When is the last time, if ever, you heard someone suggest that serving the world might mean “doing less”, having smaller dreams? I don’t quite think she meant what we might assume with the initial hearing of these words, that we should dream smaller, aspire to less, but with “small-er” dreams… not larger than life, but precisely life-sized, not overreaching, but reaching just far enough, not above the table where our eyes scan the room falling upon each and every color and size that this world would have us seek, but at table, and below the table where we can see what is directly in front of us, where our feet, sitting side by side, can reach the floor and where what’s sitting just below us is not out of our reach.
Brother Lawrence, a 17th century monastic brother, whose name was Nicolas Herman of Lorraine, worked for 15 years in the monastery kitchen and then the rest of his years as a sandal maker for the Carmelites of Paris. He is best known for his writings and correspondence collected in the historical text The Practice of the Presence of God, later edited by Harold Chadwick.
For Brother Lawrence doing less, and dreaming smaller was the largest, most expansive thing in his life.
He said, “It matters not to me what I do or what I suffer, so long as I abide lovingly united to God’s will—that is my whole business. I am in the hands of God, and He has his own good purposes regarding me. I do not concern myself, therefore, about anything that people can do to me. If I cannot serve God here, I will find some place else in which to serve him.
Since I first entered the religious life, I have looked on God as the goal and end of all the thoughts and affections of the soul. Possessed thus entirely with the greatness and the majesty of God’s infinite being, i went straightway to the place that duty had marked out for me- the kitchen.
There, when I had carried out all that called for me, I gave to prayer whatever time remained, and also prayed before my work and after.
Before beginning any task I would say to God, with childlike trust:
O Lord, be with me in this my work, accept the labor of my hands, and dwell within my heart with all Thy fullness.”
I believe that as we remember the life of Jesus and listen to his teachings from Matthew’s gospel about personal piety and prayer, and his encouragement towards the secret life, that when we do in secret we will be rewarded in secret,
and then we turn the pages to hear a disciple of Jesus, a committed follower to the way,
calling the church to be reconciled to God, we see a window opening up for us, to see ourselves as “more than enough”, an invitation to live into this divine “smallness”…
When I was in seminary I lived in an apartment complex that had a lake at it’s center, and most days before school I would run around the lake 5 or 6 times as part of preparing myself for the day. And, without fail, each time I would round the Southwest corner of the lake I would come upon an older man named George. George was always standing in the same place near the southwest bank just in front of an old wooden bench with a bag full of bread crumbs where he would patiently wait for the ducks. Most days I just smiled or waved and continued on my run, but on occasion I would stop and sit on the bench near George and just enjoy being in the company of his humble routine, watching and observing his interactions with the wild around him. George was hard of hearing, and was a disabled war veteran, so for the last 17 years had lived in this complex and found it his sacred business to attend to the ducks of this very lake. Before I moved that final spring semester I went on one final run hoping to run into George, but what I found was even more compelling… as I rounded the corner this time, I saw a small boy in the same place with one hand full of bread crumbs, and the other extended upwards held in the gentle grip of an older man… it was George. He was sharing the joy and grace of his practice with his grandson.
In response to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians,
What if we, like George, understood reconciliation with God as a “life-sized” task, and rather than just sizing up the unjustness around us and calculating what piece of the greater puzzle we might play in the great healing of our world we could see the call as personal and as small as one life at a time… as small as the boxes we inhabit, the cars in which we ride, the tables at which we sit, the sacred spaces of our lives that are captured in moments as in a frame… in the mowing of the lawn, the putting our children to bed at night, tucking them in on all sides, the diligent reading that our students must complete on this very night, the emails and papers, and presentations and tasks that hold us captive in time, with deadlines and action points awaiting, with difficult conversations looming over us, disappointment trending in our midst. What if being reconciled to God meant simply abiding with God, as Brother Lawrence expressed saying, “It matters not to me what I do or what I suffer, so long as I abide lovingly united to God’s will—that is my whole business.”
You may be thinking, “Yes, but I am not a monk or a priest, nor one to even aspire to personal piety”, but what can be true for each of us in this time and space as we occupy the flesh and bones that house our souls, that share a common beginning and ending—is that a great treasure, a gift that can only be recognized, unpacked and experienced in “reconciliation” awaits us even now. The gift of the present, of being alive to ourselves and alive to what and who are in our midst, the gift of working as with a whistle on our lips, of feeding the ducks faithfully for 17 years, of loving today as if our hearts would be gone tomorrow, the gift of looking in the mirror and discovering that “enough” is not found in What we complete, but in who we are made complete.
Covering ourselves in Ash this evening is a way to mark this joinery in faith, to receive the call to journey with Jesus these next 40 days… to take a deep breath and rather than looking up, scanning the horizon searching for what’s next, what else, what am I missing?? we are invited to meet one another at eye level, to see as Jesus did, those at table and beneath the table cherishing the very seconds and minutes that form our communal life… And we are invited to contemplate the question, “What if I treasured washing the dishes?”
I pray that as we leave this place tonight we will dare to dream in life-sized pictures, in real time, and that these next several weeks we will take the time to look into the mirror of our lives, and looking with our hearts, believe that what and who we see is enough, and though we may be someone who is “treated… as having nothing we may be found to possess everything”.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
1 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Ash Wednesday, Feb. 18, 2015
“Dreaming Smaller”
Founding Pastor of Grace Commons in Chicago, Nanette Sawyer wrote a wonderful article in this month’s Christian Century magazine, an Ash Wednesday reflection, asking herself the question, “Could I treasure washing the dishes?” Reflecting on the Corinthians text she says “This would mean treasuring the fact that I am alive - as Paul puts it, that I am “treated… as having nothing and yet possessing everything” If I could do it, she said, I would remember and experience what a miracle life is. Throughout the remainder of the article she contemplates how her life might look, feel and be experienced differently if only she could remember that she was “alive” each and every day.
And this is where I think she connects truly with what the gospel is inherently about: She says,
“If I could treasure washing the dishes, I would not be storing up treasures on earth “where moth and rust consume” and “thieves break in and steal.” But I would be storing up treasures in heaven, treasures of the heart, treasures of love and honor and simply joy.
I would be fasting in secret, too. Secretly I would be giving up my fear that I am not enough, that my life is not enough, that there is not enough time or money or reward, that there is not enough suffering to atone for all that has been done wrongly in the world. I would be giving up resentment that life includes more work than play. I would let that resentment go, and I would find the play in work. I would do my work for the doing and not for the outcome. I would realize that I am alive for this— to serve, to try to make the world a better place, to love through the efforts I make. And sometimes I would serve the world by doing less, by having smaller dreams, by letting enough be good enough and trusting that our value comes from the fact that we exist.”
I know that I struggle on a daily basis with feeling like my good is good enough. And I know that I am not alone. More often than not my obsessive thinking these days is around being a good enough Mommy… with a two year-old running around I think this is only natural, but it doesn’t keep me from doing what we parents do best- compare ourselves to all of the other parents in the world. That’s right, in order for us mommies to feel better about our mommy skills & selves we typically seek the most important and influential resource of our time, the most reliable wisdom-filled parenting source out there… FACEBOOK. That’s right…we read dozens of Facebook articles most-often posted by other mommies about what they are doing or not doing with their babies and toddlers. Did they breastfeed, did they co-sleep with their child, did they let their baby “cry it out?”, did they make all of their own mashed-up sticky baby food from organic fruits and veggies, did they record every single day in a 1000 photos or more of which they shared on 6 social media sites, did they join a mommy group and a playgroup so that their infants could all lie on their blankets and practice rolling over together, did they stay home from work after delivering the baby to devote all of out time and energy to being the best mommy possible???????? And the list goes on and on, doesn’t it?
This weekend while procrastinating writing this sermon I was browsing Facebook when I stumbled across something my sister-in-law posted called “Mommy Guilt Bingo”. And the comparing began…
The first line of squares had me feeling pretty good, I was still an average mommy having served pizza for dinner, and with an incomplete baby book, but I could still at least take pride in the fact that I have not yet picked my child up from daycare in yoga pants with bedhead, or used the tv as a babysitter…and have not yet heard Sage repeating a 4 letter word. Phew!
Then, on to the second line…Failed to cherish every moment today, Birthday party wasn’t pinterest worthy (because we didn’t have a birthday party)…I work outside the home, i have on the rare occasion purchased non-organic produce when I just refused to drive across town to Whole Foods, and last, but not least I have bribed my toddler with a completely sugar-infested high fructose corn syrup laden lollipop- even just this week! And then, as I made my way through the bingo board - there it was - the real reason that mommy hood seems like an epic failure at times… I had an epidural!
Am I a good enough Mommy? Am I parenting to the best of my ability? Feeding him the right foods, playing the right games, making the right friends, choosing the right schools, the right playgrounds, the right playgroups? Am I spending enough time with my sweet boy? Am I letting the nanny do the mommy’s job? Is my best Mommy-self good enough?
Rev. Sawyer said, “treasuring washing the dishes was a way, for her, of storing up treasures in heaven, treasures of the heart, treasures of love and honor and simply joy, and a means of fasting in secret. Secretly, she said, she would be giving up her fear that she is not enough, that her life is not enough.
What if we could do our work for the doing and not for the outcome, work for progress because we believe that our efforts can change the world for the better rather than progress for progress’ sake, what if we would parent our children moment by moment without obsessing over the future, about the unknown, celebrating each diaper change because it reminds us that we are alive, sweeping the
floor with a whistle on our lips because we know that life is as brief as the moments between our
births until the time we will lie down for the last time, that with every nap time battle, each teenage infraction, and marital conflict- we can look in the mirror and be reminded that our best is good enough, that we are good enough simply because we exist. Sawyer reminds us that in so doing, “we are alive to serve, to try to make the world a better place, to love through our efforts, however small they may be. What if we could treasure washing the dishes?
As we prepare ourselves for this Lenten season, dipped in the ashen reminder of our fragility, a time to reflect upon our own lives, and to explore what it means to be “reconciled to God”, perhaps leaning deeply into these questions: am I enough simply because I exist, and could my life be such that the smallest of moments, those often overlooked, could be life-giving for me? …perhaps living with an orientation towards this smallness could be God’s kingdom come, God’s will be done in your life as it is in Heaven.
Sometimes, said Rev. Swayer,
“I would serve the world by doing less, by having smaller dreams, by letting enough be good enough and trusting that our value comes from the fact that we exist.”
When is the last time, if ever, you heard someone suggest that serving the world might mean “doing less”, having smaller dreams? I don’t quite think she meant what we might assume with the initial hearing of these words, that we should dream smaller, aspire to less, but with “small-er” dreams… not larger than life, but precisely life-sized, not overreaching, but reaching just far enough, not above the table where our eyes scan the room falling upon each and every color and size that this world would have us seek, but at table, and below the table where we can see what is directly in front of us, where our feet, sitting side by side, can reach the floor and where what’s sitting just below us is not out of our reach.
Brother Lawrence, a 17th century monastic brother, whose name was Nicolas Herman of Lorraine, worked for 15 years in the monastery kitchen and then the rest of his years as a sandal maker for the Carmelites of Paris. He is best known for his writings and correspondence collected in the historical text The Practice of the Presence of God, later edited by Harold Chadwick.
For Brother Lawrence doing less, and dreaming smaller was the largest, most expansive thing in his life.
He said, “It matters not to me what I do or what I suffer, so long as I abide lovingly united to God’s will—that is my whole business. I am in the hands of God, and He has his own good purposes regarding me. I do not concern myself, therefore, about anything that people can do to me. If I cannot serve God here, I will find some place else in which to serve him.
Since I first entered the religious life, I have looked on God as the goal and end of all the thoughts and affections of the soul. Possessed thus entirely with the greatness and the majesty of God’s infinite being, i went straightway to the place that duty had marked out for me- the kitchen.
There, when I had carried out all that called for me, I gave to prayer whatever time remained, and also prayed before my work and after.
Before beginning any task I would say to God, with childlike trust:
O Lord, be with me in this my work, accept the labor of my hands, and dwell within my heart with all Thy fullness.”
I believe that as we remember the life of Jesus and listen to his teachings from Matthew’s gospel about personal piety and prayer, and his encouragement towards the secret life, that when we do in secret we will be rewarded in secret,
and then we turn the pages to hear a disciple of Jesus, a committed follower to the way,
calling the church to be reconciled to God, we see a window opening up for us, to see ourselves as “more than enough”, an invitation to live into this divine “smallness”…
When I was in seminary I lived in an apartment complex that had a lake at it’s center, and most days before school I would run around the lake 5 or 6 times as part of preparing myself for the day. And, without fail, each time I would round the Southwest corner of the lake I would come upon an older man named George. George was always standing in the same place near the southwest bank just in front of an old wooden bench with a bag full of bread crumbs where he would patiently wait for the ducks. Most days I just smiled or waved and continued on my run, but on occasion I would stop and sit on the bench near George and just enjoy being in the company of his humble routine, watching and observing his interactions with the wild around him. George was hard of hearing, and was a disabled war veteran, so for the last 17 years had lived in this complex and found it his sacred business to attend to the ducks of this very lake. Before I moved that final spring semester I went on one final run hoping to run into George, but what I found was even more compelling… as I rounded the corner this time, I saw a small boy in the same place with one hand full of bread crumbs, and the other extended upwards held in the gentle grip of an older man… it was George. He was sharing the joy and grace of his practice with his grandson.
In response to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians,
What if we, like George, understood reconciliation with God as a “life-sized” task, and rather than just sizing up the unjustness around us and calculating what piece of the greater puzzle we might play in the great healing of our world we could see the call as personal and as small as one life at a time… as small as the boxes we inhabit, the cars in which we ride, the tables at which we sit, the sacred spaces of our lives that are captured in moments as in a frame… in the mowing of the lawn, the putting our children to bed at night, tucking them in on all sides, the diligent reading that our students must complete on this very night, the emails and papers, and presentations and tasks that hold us captive in time, with deadlines and action points awaiting, with difficult conversations looming over us, disappointment trending in our midst. What if being reconciled to God meant simply abiding with God, as Brother Lawrence expressed saying, “It matters not to me what I do or what I suffer, so long as I abide lovingly united to God’s will—that is my whole business.”
You may be thinking, “Yes, but I am not a monk or a priest, nor one to even aspire to personal piety”, but what can be true for each of us in this time and space as we occupy the flesh and bones that house our souls, that share a common beginning and ending—is that a great treasure, a gift that can only be recognized, unpacked and experienced in “reconciliation” awaits us even now. The gift of the present, of being alive to ourselves and alive to what and who are in our midst, the gift of working as with a whistle on our lips, of feeding the ducks faithfully for 17 years, of loving today as if our hearts would be gone tomorrow, the gift of looking in the mirror and discovering that “enough” is not found in What we complete, but in who we are made complete.
Covering ourselves in Ash this evening is a way to mark this joinery in faith, to receive the call to journey with Jesus these next 40 days… to take a deep breath and rather than looking up, scanning the horizon searching for what’s next, what else, what am I missing?? we are invited to meet one another at eye level, to see as Jesus did, those at table and beneath the table cherishing the very seconds and minutes that form our communal life… And we are invited to contemplate the question, “What if I treasured washing the dishes?”
I pray that as we leave this place tonight we will dare to dream in life-sized pictures, in real time, and that these next several weeks we will take the time to look into the mirror of our lives, and looking with our hearts, believe that what and who we see is enough, and though we may be someone who is “treated… as having nothing we may be found to possess everything”.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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