“You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed/ You’re gonna have to serve/ somebody/ Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord/ But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Those of you who look like me might remember Bob Dylan’s song about making choices. Dylan says, we may be a state trooper, a construction worker, or a preacher, we might wear cotton or silk, drink whiskey or milk, but we all have to make choices. God calls us all. We can turn our backs and refuse to hear God’s call, or we can fall in with God’s people and follow God’s lead. It’s our choice, but “you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
“You gonna have to serve somebody.” This week we have begun our road trip with Jesus. Jesus has made his choice, no question there. He has “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” He has agreed to endure all that will take place there. However, despite all of Jesus’ teaching, his disciples have yet to understand what following him really means. On the way to Jerusalem, they pass through hostile Samaritan country. When the Samaritans realize that Jesus is headed for Jerusalem, where they would not be welcome, the Samaritans refuse to follow Jesus. Even so, Jesus has to remind his followers that his way involves compassion not retribution. The group then encounters three wannabe disciples. All three in their different ways suggest to Jesus’ friends – and to us – something about the choices that Jesus’ disciples and we must make.
The first wannabe must have been following Peter’s play book, as he naively declares that he will follow Jesus “wherever you go.” “Oh, yeah?” says Jesus, “do you realize that if you do you may not know where or when you’ll sleep, or where your next meal will come from?” It’s a warning, perhaps a suggestion that the wannabe disciple needs to discern some more. People who discern whether they are called to ordained ministry often hear a similar warning. Yet the message is clear for any disciple. You have to choose to follow Jesus, but you can’t expect worldly security if you make that choice. You might even end up homeless! Jesus’ way of life is not for the faint-hearted, nor is it for you if you value personal safety and comfort above all.
On to the next wannabe disciple. When Jesus calls him, this one asks to first bury his father. Isn’t that a reasonable request? Making sure that proper burial rites were carried out, especially for one’s parents, was an important duty in the ancient world. Yet Jesus’ request carried some urgency. And his response suggests that those who are spiritually alive must choose to answer God’s call now. There can be no procrastination in responding to God’s demands. Jesus’ response also reminds wannabe disciples that traditional relationships are reordered in the Kingdom of God. Relationships within the Body of Christ must be more important than family ties. Later Christian martyrs understood this aspect of discipleship fully, as they went to their deaths in Roman arenas, despite the pleas of their families to give up the new faith. Sometime read the story of Perpetua, a Roman matron who even turned her back on her newborn infant and went instead to her death as a Christian.
The request of the third wannabe disciple also seems reasonable: he wants to bid his family farewell. However, Jesus warns the man not to have a divided heart. There will always be some reason to delay following Jesus, some obligation pulling you back into the old life. What Jesus tells him – and all of us – is that once we commit ourselves to following Jesus we must not look back to what we had, what we gave up, or what was better about our old life. In the Rule of St. Benedict, new entrants to a monastery are required to surrender every one of their possessions, including their clothing, so as to be able to grow wholeheartedly into the new life of the community. When Jesus calls us, we must set our faces to the work that God is calling us to do, to the transformations that God is inviting us to undergo, and to the new family that God is bidding us to join.
“You gonna have to serve somebody.” Even Paul had to make a choice. He had had an experience of Jesus’ presence on the road to Damascus. He could have chosen to reject that experience and return to his old life. Instead, he said, “Who are you, Lord?” When he heard Jesus’ answer, he made the fatal choice: to make a radical break with his own past. He then let himself be led into the city where he was baptized by Ananias. Some years later, after proclaiming the gospel to several gentile communities, here he is writing to the newbie Christians in Galatia. In most of this letter he has been rebuking them for following those who want to circumcise them and make them into Jews. Paul reminds them that in Christ they have been freed from the demands of the law. They are not Jews, and they don’t need to be circumcised or do anything else that the law requires. However, they still face a critical choice. They can revert to their old, self-centered pagan ways, or they can live as those who are members of God’s kingdom. They can discipline themselves so that the fruits of the Spirit will grow among them. It is a choice: to be guided by the Spirit or not.
“You gonna have to serve someone.” Dolores Hart was a beautiful and talented actress. At the age of ten, she had joined the Roman Catholic Church. In 1956, at the age of only eighteen, she was signed to play a supporting role as the love interest to Elvis Presley in the 1957 film Loving You. Thereafter, Hart was in frequent demand, and she made two more films before playing with Presley again in 1958's King Creole. Hart went on to make her debut on Broadway. She won a 1959 Theatre World Award as well as a Tony Award nomination. In 1962, she starred in the film The Inspector, in which she played Lisa, a Jewish woman tortured in a Nazi concentration camp.
Although she was engaged to be married, she had begun to hear the invitation to a different kind of life. She had been in Rome, filming Francis of Assisi. While there she met Pope John XXIII. She told him, "I am Dolores Hart, the actress playing Clare." The Pontiff replied, "Tu sei Chiara!" ("No, you are Clare!"). Francis’s sister, Clare too had been beautiful, talented, and wealthy. Yet she followed Francis into a life dedicated to God, even founding her own order, the Poor Clares. Now Dolores herself heard God’s call. In 1963, at the age of twenty-four, Dolores entered the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, taking her final vows in 1970. In 2001, she was elected the prioress of the abbey. Dolores was profiled in the documentary God Is the Bigger Elvis, which was nominated for an academy award in 2012. In her autobiography, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows, released three years ago, she describes her inspiring journey from a full life in Hollywood to an even fuller life in the monastery.
“You gonna have to serve someone.” Choosing to follow Jesus is never easy – despite our Scripture lessons, or even Dolores Hart’s story. When we hear God’s call, we rightly fear that our lives will be destabilized, we wonder what might be coming next, we fear that we will lose status, and we fear our choices may make life more difficult for those who are dear to us. Those who think they are called to the ordained ministry must undergo a lengthy period of discernment, involving members of a regional discernment group and a diocesan commission. In the Wellstreams program, that program that trained me as a spiritual direction, at the end of the first year I spent a full day discerning whether I felt called to continue in the program. Discernment is healthy and appropriate – and there are many different aids to discernment – so long as we understand that ultimately we must make a choice.
What choices do you face in your lives? Most often, when we face difficult choices, it is because the Spirit has called us to look hard at our lives and ask whether we are truly following Jesus or someone or something else. Turning to God in prayer and seeking counsel from other Christians are good ways for all of us to discern God’s call to us.
We don’t know what the wannabes in the Gospel decided to do, but, even if they all turned their backs on Jesus, that was a choice. Dolores Hart had to choose. Even I had to sign my name to a piece of paper committing myself to the next phase of the Wellstreams program.
Our lives constantly call us to make choices, to answer God’s call or to fall back into a comfortable status quo. “You gonna have to serve someone.” Who will it be?
Showing posts with label Pentecost 6. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pentecost 6. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Whenever I am Weak, then I am Strong
“For whenever I am weak, then I am strong.” You have just heard the gospel in a nutshell! Yet, isn’t it a truly paradoxical statement? Certainly it is for most Americans. We live in a culture that emphasizes rugged individualism, competitiveness, and aggressive strength. And now, God help us, in the wake of the tragedy in Charleston, SC, die-hard gun advocates are suggesting that churches should have armed guards, and that pastors should be armed. Can you see it here at St. Peter’s?
No? Then hear the truly counter-cultural message in Paul’s second letter to the Christian community in Corinth. We’ve been hearing excerpts from this letter since the beginning of June. Actually, most commentators think that this is probably not a single letter – it’s too fragmentary. Rather, the letter seems to be a composite of several letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. The passage that we heard today is the last part of what some have called Paul’s “fool’s speech.” In it, Paul addresses criticism of his ministry by some “super apostles,” as he calls them, who have boasted that they are the true spokesmen for Christ. They have also claimed that Paul is not a true apostle, and that he is neither sufficiently Jewish nor sufficiently charismatic. Should Paul respond in kind?
While you wait for the answer to that question, fast-forward to December 27th of last year. In the evening of that wintry day, Heather Cook, the then suffragan bishop of Maryland, struck forty-one year old cyclist Thomas Palermo, killing him almost instantly. Cook was texting at the time of the accident and initially fled the scene. When she surrendered and was tested, she had a blood alcohol level of .22. (Remember that .08 is the level for driving under the influence of alcohol.) Three years prior to this accident, Cook had had another DUI conviction. However, she had spent only a short time in rehab and apparently had been receiving no follow-up care. The diocesan search committee that presented her for election as suffragan bishop knew of Cook’s prior conviction. After her election, diocesan officials even suspected that Cook was drunk at a dinner party the night before her September consecration, but it is unclear whether they took any action. Cook was arraigned in February on charges of driving under the influence resulting in a homicide, vehicular manslaughter, criminal negligent manslaughter, texting while driving, and fleeing the scene of an accident. Her trial will take place September. Cook was deposed from holy orders on May 1 of this year, one day after the twenty-seventh anniversary of her ordination as priest.
As we grieve the death of Thomas Palermo and ponder how Heather Cook might have avoided wrecking her life, does Paul’s response to his critics offer us any wisdom or hope? Paul begins his response by trotting out what we might call his “apostolic resume,” his list of qualifications and accomplishments. First he asserts his Jewish credentials: “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I.” Then he goes on to list the hardships he has endured in his work as an evangelist: “Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman – I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death.”
Then, as we heard, Paul alludes to his own experiences of visions and revelations: “I know a person in Christ….” Although Paul is speaking here in the third person, scholars generally agree that he is speaking of his own experiences. We are not sure to what exactly he is referring, whether his experiences on the Damascus road or some other visions. Is Paul boasting here in the same way that he has accused his rivals of boasting?
Actually, Paul is doing just the opposite. After soaring into the “third heaven,” Paul crashes to earth. In the frankest, most personal passage in all of his letters, Paul alludes to a weakness or limitation, the famous “thorn in the flesh.” No one knows what this “thorn” was, although guesses have ranged from the psychological, to external opposition, to physical maladies such as migraines, epilepsy, and eye infections. Although Paul asked for deliverance from the thorn, he did not receive it. Instead, he received another revelation: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” And so the thorn has become for Paul a perpetual reminder of his need for God’s grace, not only in enduring this limitation, but in his entire ministry. The thorn also reminds Paul – and by extension us – that although God does not inflict suffering on us, God can bring life out of suffering. Most important, the thorn reminds Paul and us that when we acknowledge our weakness, when we let go of the desire to be in control, when we give up the belief that we can fix the difficulties and tragedies of our lives by ourselves, when we acknowledge our dependence on God and on a supportive community, then – and only then – can we draw on the power of Christ, and – finally – allow God’s grace to work in us.
God willing, Heather Cook has reached or will reach that place of putting aside her own ego and drawing on God’s strength. Needless to say, Cook’s accident and Palermo’s death drew much commentary in both secular and Episcopal media. Some appropriately criticized the search committee for downplaying the seriousness of her previous DUI conviction and presenting her for election. However, what was much more important, for the first time in a long time Episcopal media began to question the role of alcohol in the Episcopal Church, both for individuals and for many parishes. We learned that a disproportionate number of Episcopal clergy are alcoholics. Many of us acknowledged the truth of the unfortunate epithet “Whiskypalians,” or in the saying – which I heard when I first came into the church almost fifty years ago – “Wherever there are four Episcopalians, there’s a fifth.” We also discovered that, after General Convention of 1979 approved a resolution addressing alcohol abuse, Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church was formed to provide a network of clergy and laity concerned with addiction and treatment.
On July 1, at this year’s General Convention in Salt Lake City, Bishop Mark Hollingsworth, of the Diocese of Ohio, rose in front of the House of Bishops and said, “I’m Mark and I’m an alcoholic.” Bp. Hollingsworth was speaking as chair of the Legislative Committee on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, a committee that had been created in response to numerous requests by delegates and others for the church to examine the role of alcohol in our life. Bp. Hollingsworth acknowledged his own journey of addiction and recovery and then introduced three resolutions which were subsequently passed by the bishops and affirmed by the deputies.
The first resolution recommends that ordinands be questioned at the very beginning of the discernment process about addiction and substance use in their lives and family systems. The second resolution acknowledges the role of the church in a culture of alcohol and drug abuse and “directs dioceses to work in partnership with The Episcopal Church Medical Trust, Recovery Ministries of The Episcopal Church, and community-based organizations in order to address most effectively prevention, intervention/diversion, education, advocacy, treatment, and recovery, including developing a list of trained therapists and consultants who are available to assist clergy and laity in this education process.” The third resolution creates a task force to review and revise policy on substance abuse, addiction, and recovery and recommends that, where possible, non-alcoholic wine be provided as an alternative to communion wine.
The Rev. Steve Lane, treasurer of Recovery Ministries of The Episcopal Church, was excited to see the church finally beginning to face the challenges of addiction. “The best known solution for [addiction] is a spiritual one,” he said, “but our church needs to be aware of it and see our own shortcomings and be aware of our own failures first before we can reach out and help others.” Retired Bishop Chilton Knudsen of Maine, who will begin assisting in the Maryland diocese in October, is a recovering alcoholic, an experience that is central to her ministry. “When the case in Maryland happened, my heart broke, as everybody’s did,” she said. Rather than advocating abstinence, Knudsen embraces the call for intentional awareness about alcohol abuse. Most important, Knudsen said, becoming healthy requires telling the truth about who we are and telling our stories. Deputy Doris Westfall of Missouri agreed. “The church holds out the hope of living into recovery, which is no less than resurrection,” she said.
Perhaps we have as a church begun to understand that, with alcoholism, drug abuse, and many other human weaknesses, denying reality or thinking we can find healing through our own efforts alone will not help us. Rather, perhaps we finally understand that, when we, like Paul, acknowledge our weaknesses and limitations, when we, like Bill W., the founder of AA, “made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him,” then we can open ourselves to the possibility of God’s grace working within us. Certainly, addictions are serious diseases, with both physical and spiritual aspects. But here is the good news: when we honestly examine our lives, acknowledge our need for God’s grace, and conscientiously avail ourselves of helpful organizations, Christ’s power and grace will support, uphold, and transform us. And then, by God’s grace, like Paul, like Bill W., and like Bps. Hollingsworth and Knudsen, we too might become instruments of grace for others.
No? Then hear the truly counter-cultural message in Paul’s second letter to the Christian community in Corinth. We’ve been hearing excerpts from this letter since the beginning of June. Actually, most commentators think that this is probably not a single letter – it’s too fragmentary. Rather, the letter seems to be a composite of several letters that Paul wrote to the Corinthians. The passage that we heard today is the last part of what some have called Paul’s “fool’s speech.” In it, Paul addresses criticism of his ministry by some “super apostles,” as he calls them, who have boasted that they are the true spokesmen for Christ. They have also claimed that Paul is not a true apostle, and that he is neither sufficiently Jewish nor sufficiently charismatic. Should Paul respond in kind?
While you wait for the answer to that question, fast-forward to December 27th of last year. In the evening of that wintry day, Heather Cook, the then suffragan bishop of Maryland, struck forty-one year old cyclist Thomas Palermo, killing him almost instantly. Cook was texting at the time of the accident and initially fled the scene. When she surrendered and was tested, she had a blood alcohol level of .22. (Remember that .08 is the level for driving under the influence of alcohol.) Three years prior to this accident, Cook had had another DUI conviction. However, she had spent only a short time in rehab and apparently had been receiving no follow-up care. The diocesan search committee that presented her for election as suffragan bishop knew of Cook’s prior conviction. After her election, diocesan officials even suspected that Cook was drunk at a dinner party the night before her September consecration, but it is unclear whether they took any action. Cook was arraigned in February on charges of driving under the influence resulting in a homicide, vehicular manslaughter, criminal negligent manslaughter, texting while driving, and fleeing the scene of an accident. Her trial will take place September. Cook was deposed from holy orders on May 1 of this year, one day after the twenty-seventh anniversary of her ordination as priest.
As we grieve the death of Thomas Palermo and ponder how Heather Cook might have avoided wrecking her life, does Paul’s response to his critics offer us any wisdom or hope? Paul begins his response by trotting out what we might call his “apostolic resume,” his list of qualifications and accomplishments. First he asserts his Jewish credentials: “Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I.” Then he goes on to list the hardships he has endured in his work as an evangelist: “Are they ministers of Christ? I am talking like a madman – I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless floggings, and often near death.”
Then, as we heard, Paul alludes to his own experiences of visions and revelations: “I know a person in Christ….” Although Paul is speaking here in the third person, scholars generally agree that he is speaking of his own experiences. We are not sure to what exactly he is referring, whether his experiences on the Damascus road or some other visions. Is Paul boasting here in the same way that he has accused his rivals of boasting?
Actually, Paul is doing just the opposite. After soaring into the “third heaven,” Paul crashes to earth. In the frankest, most personal passage in all of his letters, Paul alludes to a weakness or limitation, the famous “thorn in the flesh.” No one knows what this “thorn” was, although guesses have ranged from the psychological, to external opposition, to physical maladies such as migraines, epilepsy, and eye infections. Although Paul asked for deliverance from the thorn, he did not receive it. Instead, he received another revelation: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.” And so the thorn has become for Paul a perpetual reminder of his need for God’s grace, not only in enduring this limitation, but in his entire ministry. The thorn also reminds Paul – and by extension us – that although God does not inflict suffering on us, God can bring life out of suffering. Most important, the thorn reminds Paul and us that when we acknowledge our weakness, when we let go of the desire to be in control, when we give up the belief that we can fix the difficulties and tragedies of our lives by ourselves, when we acknowledge our dependence on God and on a supportive community, then – and only then – can we draw on the power of Christ, and – finally – allow God’s grace to work in us.
God willing, Heather Cook has reached or will reach that place of putting aside her own ego and drawing on God’s strength. Needless to say, Cook’s accident and Palermo’s death drew much commentary in both secular and Episcopal media. Some appropriately criticized the search committee for downplaying the seriousness of her previous DUI conviction and presenting her for election. However, what was much more important, for the first time in a long time Episcopal media began to question the role of alcohol in the Episcopal Church, both for individuals and for many parishes. We learned that a disproportionate number of Episcopal clergy are alcoholics. Many of us acknowledged the truth of the unfortunate epithet “Whiskypalians,” or in the saying – which I heard when I first came into the church almost fifty years ago – “Wherever there are four Episcopalians, there’s a fifth.” We also discovered that, after General Convention of 1979 approved a resolution addressing alcohol abuse, Recovery Ministries of the Episcopal Church was formed to provide a network of clergy and laity concerned with addiction and treatment.
On July 1, at this year’s General Convention in Salt Lake City, Bishop Mark Hollingsworth, of the Diocese of Ohio, rose in front of the House of Bishops and said, “I’m Mark and I’m an alcoholic.” Bp. Hollingsworth was speaking as chair of the Legislative Committee on Alcohol and Drug Abuse, a committee that had been created in response to numerous requests by delegates and others for the church to examine the role of alcohol in our life. Bp. Hollingsworth acknowledged his own journey of addiction and recovery and then introduced three resolutions which were subsequently passed by the bishops and affirmed by the deputies.
The first resolution recommends that ordinands be questioned at the very beginning of the discernment process about addiction and substance use in their lives and family systems. The second resolution acknowledges the role of the church in a culture of alcohol and drug abuse and “directs dioceses to work in partnership with The Episcopal Church Medical Trust, Recovery Ministries of The Episcopal Church, and community-based organizations in order to address most effectively prevention, intervention/diversion, education, advocacy, treatment, and recovery, including developing a list of trained therapists and consultants who are available to assist clergy and laity in this education process.” The third resolution creates a task force to review and revise policy on substance abuse, addiction, and recovery and recommends that, where possible, non-alcoholic wine be provided as an alternative to communion wine.
The Rev. Steve Lane, treasurer of Recovery Ministries of The Episcopal Church, was excited to see the church finally beginning to face the challenges of addiction. “The best known solution for [addiction] is a spiritual one,” he said, “but our church needs to be aware of it and see our own shortcomings and be aware of our own failures first before we can reach out and help others.” Retired Bishop Chilton Knudsen of Maine, who will begin assisting in the Maryland diocese in October, is a recovering alcoholic, an experience that is central to her ministry. “When the case in Maryland happened, my heart broke, as everybody’s did,” she said. Rather than advocating abstinence, Knudsen embraces the call for intentional awareness about alcohol abuse. Most important, Knudsen said, becoming healthy requires telling the truth about who we are and telling our stories. Deputy Doris Westfall of Missouri agreed. “The church holds out the hope of living into recovery, which is no less than resurrection,” she said.
Perhaps we have as a church begun to understand that, with alcoholism, drug abuse, and many other human weaknesses, denying reality or thinking we can find healing through our own efforts alone will not help us. Rather, perhaps we finally understand that, when we, like Paul, acknowledge our weaknesses and limitations, when we, like Bill W., the founder of AA, “made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him,” then we can open ourselves to the possibility of God’s grace working within us. Certainly, addictions are serious diseases, with both physical and spiritual aspects. But here is the good news: when we honestly examine our lives, acknowledge our need for God’s grace, and conscientiously avail ourselves of helpful organizations, Christ’s power and grace will support, uphold, and transform us. And then, by God’s grace, like Paul, like Bill W., and like Bps. Hollingsworth and Knudsen, we too might become instruments of grace for others.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Where is God
Jacob is on the run. His mother Rebekah had come from the family of his grandfather Abraham’s brother to marry his father Isaac. Jacob was the second-born of twin boys, and he had been born, “clutching the heel” of his brother Esau. Old Isaac preferred Esau, but Jacob was his mother’s favorite. With the connivance of his mother, Jacob had managed both to cheat Esau of his birthright and trick Isaac into bestowing his patriarchal blessing on Jacob. Now, with Esau’s threats to kill him still ringing in his ears, Jacob is on the run. He is running to his mother’s family in Haran, ostensibly to find a wife.
Jacob stops for the night and dreams of a staircase, a staircase like the ones the Canaanites build in order to reach the heavenly abodes of their gods. However, in Jacob’s dream, God’s angels travel up and down, joining the heavenly and the earthly realms. What is even more surprising in Jacob’s dream, the God of Israel, unlike the remote Canaanite gods, comes face to face with Jacob and directly addresses him. In this astonishing first encounter with God, Jacob hears God reiterate his covenant with Abraham and assure Jacob that indeed his descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth. In that promise Jacob also hears implicit reassurance that it was part of God’s plan that Jacob deceive Esau, and that Jacob’s exile from his home will only be temporary. As he awakens, Jacob realizes that “surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” To ensure that others will understand that this is now a sacred place, Jacob upends his stone pillow and anoints it.
“Surely the Lord is in this place.” Have you had an experience something like Jacob’s? Many of us find it hard to pray. For some us, dialogue with God is well-nigh impossible. For others of us, meditation makes no sense. Even in our own room, how can we quiet our minds enough to discover if God is speaking to us? Most of us ignore or can’t remember our dreams. However, some of us have experienced God’s presence in “thin places,” places where we can almost see through the veil and get a glimpse of the heavenly realm, places where God’s presence is palpable and undeniable, places where God personally touches and moves us.
Some of us encounter thin places in natural settings. Some of us, like Jacob, have found God in the vast open spaces of the southwest deserts. For some of us, mountain tops or ocean shores speak of God’s majesty and our own insignificance. Sometimes God breaks in on us in national parks, like Acadia in Maine, where “the mountains meet the sea,” or retreat centers, like Our Lady of the Pines, where I spent the week surrounded by pines, firs, cedars, and many other kinds of trees. And some places seem to draw us more tightly into God’s embrace because generations of faithful people have encountered God there. I think of Iona, on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland, where 7th century Irish monks established a monastery to lead the Scots to Christ and where a restored monastery and retreat center now stands. I think of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the end of the Camino Real, to which pilgrims have been walking since the 9th century. I think of the cathedral of Chartres, France, built in the 13th century, whose great labyrinth in the floor still draws pilgrims. One day I walked into St. Mary’s Episcopal Church on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The scent of incense that met me bespoke the prayers that have been said there for almost two hundred years. And then there are the sacred places of other faiths: the Great Synagogue in London, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Hindu temples, and Buddhist stupas. And beyond these are all the ordinary places in life where God continues to show up: among devoted followers of Jesus in even the smallest clapboard churches, at bedsides and deathbeds, or when one person lovingly speaks truth to another. All of these are places where people have had and continue to have a deep sense of God’s presence. In all these places, when we open our hearts, we know that “surely the Lord is in this place.” In all these places we are privileged, in Meister Eckhart’s words, to “penetrate things and find God there.”1
And when we sense that “the Lord is in this place,” when God grants us the grace of a face-to-face encounter, how do we receive it? Do we distrust such a felt sense of God’s presence, such an intuition of God’s reality and love? “Couldn’t happen to me,” we say, it must have been my imagination. People like me don’t have experiences like that.” Or do we distrust such experiences because they feel too pious and private? Franciscan teacher Richard Rohr rightly cautions us that what he calls “false mysticism,” often feels too much like ‘my little Jesus and my little me,’ and doesn’t seem to make many social, historical, corporate, or justice connections. As Pope Francis says, it is all ‘too self-referential.’”2
But, by the grace of God, sometimes we are enabled to see something greater than ourselves in experiences of God’s nearness. When Jacob encountered God face to face, he realized, perhaps for the first time, that God’s covenant with his grandfather also included him, that he was called to be the ancestor of multitudes, that he would be connected to generations yet unborn. He remained a runaway, a trickster, and a womanizer, siring the twelve tribes of Israel by two wives and two concubines. Nevertheless, from that day forward, his life was forever transformed.
As it was for Jacob, so it is for us. Teilhard de Chardin reminds us that, “Spirituality is not meant to be an alternative lifestyle, a road to retreat and escape; it needs to be an active leaven of life, feeding the zest and healing the wounds of life.”3 By God’s grace, when we unexpectedly encounter God, we may glimpse for a moment the vast and infinite being of God, the God in whom we and all creation “live and move and have our being,” the God who loves and cares for all more deeply than we can ever imagine. And by God’s grace, we too may be transformed, so that we may have deeper compassion for all humanity, indeed for all creation. By God’s grace, we may be enabled to share with others what we know of the God of love, who showed himself to Jacob, and who shared our humanity in Jesus. By God’s grace we especially may be able to extend to others the care and compassion of that God for all.
If our encounter with the living God, in sacred spaces in nature, in this sacred space, in the sharing of Christ’s Body and Blood, enables us to see more deeply God’s love for us and all of creation, then perhaps too God will show us or lead us to those who particularly need our compassion and care. In the last several weeks, a poignant example of those in need of our compassion and care has come to light: the unprecedented number of undocumented Central American children who have streamed across the U.S. border. There is much that can be said about the impact of undocumented people on border cities, and of what the U.S. government should or might do to secure our borders. Our elected representatives have, for whatever reason, not had the will to enact sane immigration policy, despite the desire of the majority of Americans to fix the immigration system. Seeking a quick fix to the most recent influx, many Americans believe that all undocumented people, whether children or adults should be immediately deported.
Our church has taken a different stance. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori counsels us “to remember these people and their difficult and dangerous position in [our] prayers – today, this coming Sunday, and continuing until we find a just resolution.” Urging us to contact our elected representatives, she reminds us that, “we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, and as a Church, we are asking the United States government to support [a humanitarian] response, grounded in justice and the fundamental dignity of every human being.”4 The Episcopal and Methodist bishops of Los Angeles have gone a step further. Together they visited the child detention center in Port Hueneme, California. They then joined with Muslim and Jewish faith leaders to prepare worship materials for the Interfaith Weekend of Compassion and Prayer for Unaccompanied Migrant Children, to be observed this weekend in the Los Angeles area.
There are no easy answers to the plight of undocumented Central American children, nor to the violence and poverty that impel them to leave their homes. Nor are there easy answers to the poverty of the people around us. If we have experienced God’s nearness, if we have ever been able to say, “Surely the Lord is in this place,” then surely too we can pray that God will remind us that we are all God’s children, and that God will allow us the blessing of experiencing the renewal of life that comes when we share God’s love especially with the least among us.
1. Quoted in Synthesis, July 20, 2014, 2.
2. http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Richard-Rohr-s-Meditation--The-One-Face-and-the-Everything.html?soid=1103098668616&aid=3Fx3z_67osI, July 18, 2014.
3. Synthesis, 2.
4. http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2014/07/10/presiding-bishop-on-the-crisis-of-unaccompanied-children-at-us-border/
Jacob stops for the night and dreams of a staircase, a staircase like the ones the Canaanites build in order to reach the heavenly abodes of their gods. However, in Jacob’s dream, God’s angels travel up and down, joining the heavenly and the earthly realms. What is even more surprising in Jacob’s dream, the God of Israel, unlike the remote Canaanite gods, comes face to face with Jacob and directly addresses him. In this astonishing first encounter with God, Jacob hears God reiterate his covenant with Abraham and assure Jacob that indeed his descendants will be as numerous as the dust of the earth. In that promise Jacob also hears implicit reassurance that it was part of God’s plan that Jacob deceive Esau, and that Jacob’s exile from his home will only be temporary. As he awakens, Jacob realizes that “surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” To ensure that others will understand that this is now a sacred place, Jacob upends his stone pillow and anoints it.
“Surely the Lord is in this place.” Have you had an experience something like Jacob’s? Many of us find it hard to pray. For some us, dialogue with God is well-nigh impossible. For others of us, meditation makes no sense. Even in our own room, how can we quiet our minds enough to discover if God is speaking to us? Most of us ignore or can’t remember our dreams. However, some of us have experienced God’s presence in “thin places,” places where we can almost see through the veil and get a glimpse of the heavenly realm, places where God’s presence is palpable and undeniable, places where God personally touches and moves us.
Some of us encounter thin places in natural settings. Some of us, like Jacob, have found God in the vast open spaces of the southwest deserts. For some of us, mountain tops or ocean shores speak of God’s majesty and our own insignificance. Sometimes God breaks in on us in national parks, like Acadia in Maine, where “the mountains meet the sea,” or retreat centers, like Our Lady of the Pines, where I spent the week surrounded by pines, firs, cedars, and many other kinds of trees. And some places seem to draw us more tightly into God’s embrace because generations of faithful people have encountered God there. I think of Iona, on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland, where 7th century Irish monks established a monastery to lead the Scots to Christ and where a restored monastery and retreat center now stands. I think of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the end of the Camino Real, to which pilgrims have been walking since the 9th century. I think of the cathedral of Chartres, France, built in the 13th century, whose great labyrinth in the floor still draws pilgrims. One day I walked into St. Mary’s Episcopal Church on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The scent of incense that met me bespoke the prayers that have been said there for almost two hundred years. And then there are the sacred places of other faiths: the Great Synagogue in London, the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Hindu temples, and Buddhist stupas. And beyond these are all the ordinary places in life where God continues to show up: among devoted followers of Jesus in even the smallest clapboard churches, at bedsides and deathbeds, or when one person lovingly speaks truth to another. All of these are places where people have had and continue to have a deep sense of God’s presence. In all these places, when we open our hearts, we know that “surely the Lord is in this place.” In all these places we are privileged, in Meister Eckhart’s words, to “penetrate things and find God there.”1
And when we sense that “the Lord is in this place,” when God grants us the grace of a face-to-face encounter, how do we receive it? Do we distrust such a felt sense of God’s presence, such an intuition of God’s reality and love? “Couldn’t happen to me,” we say, it must have been my imagination. People like me don’t have experiences like that.” Or do we distrust such experiences because they feel too pious and private? Franciscan teacher Richard Rohr rightly cautions us that what he calls “false mysticism,” often feels too much like ‘my little Jesus and my little me,’ and doesn’t seem to make many social, historical, corporate, or justice connections. As Pope Francis says, it is all ‘too self-referential.’”2
But, by the grace of God, sometimes we are enabled to see something greater than ourselves in experiences of God’s nearness. When Jacob encountered God face to face, he realized, perhaps for the first time, that God’s covenant with his grandfather also included him, that he was called to be the ancestor of multitudes, that he would be connected to generations yet unborn. He remained a runaway, a trickster, and a womanizer, siring the twelve tribes of Israel by two wives and two concubines. Nevertheless, from that day forward, his life was forever transformed.
As it was for Jacob, so it is for us. Teilhard de Chardin reminds us that, “Spirituality is not meant to be an alternative lifestyle, a road to retreat and escape; it needs to be an active leaven of life, feeding the zest and healing the wounds of life.”3 By God’s grace, when we unexpectedly encounter God, we may glimpse for a moment the vast and infinite being of God, the God in whom we and all creation “live and move and have our being,” the God who loves and cares for all more deeply than we can ever imagine. And by God’s grace, we too may be transformed, so that we may have deeper compassion for all humanity, indeed for all creation. By God’s grace, we may be enabled to share with others what we know of the God of love, who showed himself to Jacob, and who shared our humanity in Jesus. By God’s grace we especially may be able to extend to others the care and compassion of that God for all.
If our encounter with the living God, in sacred spaces in nature, in this sacred space, in the sharing of Christ’s Body and Blood, enables us to see more deeply God’s love for us and all of creation, then perhaps too God will show us or lead us to those who particularly need our compassion and care. In the last several weeks, a poignant example of those in need of our compassion and care has come to light: the unprecedented number of undocumented Central American children who have streamed across the U.S. border. There is much that can be said about the impact of undocumented people on border cities, and of what the U.S. government should or might do to secure our borders. Our elected representatives have, for whatever reason, not had the will to enact sane immigration policy, despite the desire of the majority of Americans to fix the immigration system. Seeking a quick fix to the most recent influx, many Americans believe that all undocumented people, whether children or adults should be immediately deported.
Our church has taken a different stance. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori counsels us “to remember these people and their difficult and dangerous position in [our] prayers – today, this coming Sunday, and continuing until we find a just resolution.” Urging us to contact our elected representatives, she reminds us that, “we are our brothers’ and sisters’ keeper, and as a Church, we are asking the United States government to support [a humanitarian] response, grounded in justice and the fundamental dignity of every human being.”4 The Episcopal and Methodist bishops of Los Angeles have gone a step further. Together they visited the child detention center in Port Hueneme, California. They then joined with Muslim and Jewish faith leaders to prepare worship materials for the Interfaith Weekend of Compassion and Prayer for Unaccompanied Migrant Children, to be observed this weekend in the Los Angeles area.
There are no easy answers to the plight of undocumented Central American children, nor to the violence and poverty that impel them to leave their homes. Nor are there easy answers to the poverty of the people around us. If we have experienced God’s nearness, if we have ever been able to say, “Surely the Lord is in this place,” then surely too we can pray that God will remind us that we are all God’s children, and that God will allow us the blessing of experiencing the renewal of life that comes when we share God’s love especially with the least among us.
1. Quoted in Synthesis, July 20, 2014, 2.
2. http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Richard-Rohr-s-Meditation--The-One-Face-and-the-Everything.html?soid=1103098668616&aid=3Fx3z_67osI, July 18, 2014.
3. Synthesis, 2.
4. http://episcopaldigitalnetwork.com/ens/2014/07/10/presiding-bishop-on-the-crisis-of-unaccompanied-children-at-us-border/
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
You Gotta Serve Somebody
“You’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed/ You’re gonna have to serve/ somebody/ Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord/ But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.” Do you remember Bob Dylan’s song about making choices? Dylan says, we may be a state trooper, a construction worker, or a preacher, we might wear cotton or silk, drink whiskey or milk, but we all have to make choices. God calls us all. We can turn our backs and refuse to hear God’s call, or we can fall in with God’s people and follow God’s lead. It’s our choice, but “you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”
Young Elisha faced such a choice when Elijah threw his cloak over Elisha’s shoulders. Elisha knew what that gesture meant. He knew that God was calling him to take Elijah’s place. He also knew that taking the prophet’s mantle was a risky choice. Elisha knew that Elijah has spoken truth to power in a culture where truth-telling was unwanted and dangerous. Elijah had publicly that the prophets of Baal were false prophets. He had openly criticized King Ahab for the injustice he had perpetrated. And Elijah had had to flee for his life because Queen Jezebel had put a price on his head.
You can see why young Elisha might have wanted to think twice before accepting Elijah’s mantle. Was Elijah counseling discernment when Elisha asked to first bid his parents farewell? Or perhaps just Elisha needed to settle his affairs before embarking on the prophet’s itinerant life. As he slaughtered his oxen, broke their yokes, and made a great farewell feast with their flesh, clearly he was severing his last ties with his old life. Despite the perils, Elisha had accepted God’s invitation and courageously followed in Elijah’s footsteps.
“You gonna have to serve somebody.” This week we have begun our road trip with Jesus. Jesus has made his choice, no question there. He has “set his face to go to Jerusalem.” He has agreed to endure all that will take place there. However, despite all of Jesus’ teaching, his disciples have yet to understand what following him really means. On the way to Jerusalem, they pass through hostile Samarian country, where Jesus has to remind them that his way involves forgiveness not retribution. The group then encounters three wannabe disciples. All three in their different ways suggest to Jesus’ friends – and to us – something about the choices that Jesus’ disciples must make.
The first wannabe must have been following Peter’s play book, as he naively declares that he will follow Jesus “wherever you go.” “Oh, yeah?” says Jesus, “do you realize that if you do you may not know where or when you’ll sleep or where your next meal will come from?” It’s a warning, perhaps a suggestion that the wannabe disciple needs to discern some more. However, the message is clear for any disciple. You have to choose to follow Jesus, but don’t expect worldly security if you make that choice. Jesus’ way is not for the faint-hearted, nor for those who value personal safety and comfort above all.
On to the next wannabe disciple. When Jesus calls him, this one asks to first bury his father. A reasonable request? Making sure that proper burial rites were carried out, especially for one’s parents, was an important duty in the ancient world. Yet Jesus’ request carried some urgency. And his response suggests that the spiritually alive must choose to answer God’s call now. There can be no procrastination in responding to God’s demands. Jesus’ response also reminds wannabe disciples that traditional relationships are reordered in the Kingdom of God. Family ties must be secondary to bonds within the Body of Christ. Later Christian martyrs understood this aspect of discipleship fully, as they went to their deaths in Roman arenas, despite the pleas of their families to give up the new faith.
The request of the third wannabe disciple also seems reasonable: he wants to bid his family farewell. Elisha asked to do the same thing. However, Jesus warns the man not to have a divided heart. There will always be some reason to delay following Jesus, some obligation pulling you back into the old life. What Jesus tells him – and all of us – is that once we commit ourselves to following Jesus we must not look back to what we had, what we gave up, or what was better about our old life. In the Rule of St. Benedict, new entrants to a monastery are required to surrender every one of their possessions, including their clothing, so as to be able to grow wholeheartedly into the new life of the community. When Jesus calls us, we must set our faces to the work that God is calling us to do, the transformations that God is inviting us to undergo, and the new family that God is bidding us to join.
“You gonna have to serve somebody.” Even Paul had to make a choice. He had had an experience of Jesus’ presence on the road to Damascus. He could have chosen to reject that experience and return to his old life. Instead, he said, “Who are you, Lord?” When he heard Jesus’ answer, he made the fatal choice: to make a radical break with his own past. He then let himself be led into the city where he was baptized by Ananias. Some years later, after proclaiming the gospel to several gentile communities, here he is writing to the newbie Christians in Galatia. In most of this letter he has been rebuking them for following those who want to circumcise them and make them into Jews. Paul reminds them that in Christ they have been freed from the demands of the law. They are not Jews, and they don’t need to be circumcised or do anything else that the law requires. However, they still face a critical choice. They can revert to their old, self-centered pagan ways, or they can live as those who are members of God’s kingdom. They can discipline themselves so that the fruits of the Spirit will grow among them. It is a choice: to be guided by the Spirit or not.
“You gonna have to serve someone.” Dolores Hart was a beautiful and talented actress. At the age of ten, she had joined the Roman Catholic Church. In 1956, at the age of only eighteen, she was signed to play a supporting role as the love interest to Elvis Presley in the 1957 film Loving You. Thereafter, Hart was in frequent demand, and she made two more films before playing with Presley again in 1958's King Creole. Hart went on to make her debut on Broadway. She won a 1959 Theatre World Award as well as a Tony Award nomination. In 1962, she starred in the film The Inspector, in which she played Lisa, a Jewish woman tortured in a Nazi concentration camp.
Although she was engaged to be married, she had begun to hear the invitation to a different kind of life. She had been in Rome, filming Francis of Assisi. While there she met Pope John XXIII. She told him, "I am Dolores Hart, the actress playing Clare." The Pontiff replied, "Tu sei Chiara!" ("No, you are Clare!"). Francis’s sister, Clare too had been beautiful, talented, and wealthy. Yet she followed Francis into a life dedicated to God, founding her own order, the Poor Clares. Now Dolores herself heard God’s call. In 1963, at the age of twenty-four, Dolores entered the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, taking her final vows in 1970. In 2001, she was elected the prioress of the abbey. Dolores was profiled in the documentary God Is the Bigger Elvis, which was nominated for an academy award in 2012. In her autobiography, The Ear of the Heart: An Actress’ Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows, released just this May, she describes her inspiring journey from a full life in Hollywood to an even fuller life in the monastery.
“You gonna have to serve someone.” Choosing to follow Jesus is never easy – despite our Scripture lessons, or even Dolores Hart’s story. When we hear God’s call, we rightly fear the destabilization of our lives, we wonder what might be coming next, we fear the loss of status, and we fear our choices may make life more difficult for those who are dear to us. Those who think they are called to the ordained ministry must undergo a lengthy period of discernment, involving members of their parish and a diocesan commission. As a requirement of the Wellstreams program, earlier this month I spent a full day discerning whether I felt called to continue in the program. Discernment is healthy and appropriate – and there are many different aids to discernment – so long as we understand that ultimately we must make a choice.
Elisha had to choose whether to follow Elijah. We don’t know what the wannabes in the Gospel decided to do, but, even if they all turned their backs on Jesus, that was a choice. Dolores Hart had to choose. Even I had to sign my name to a piece of paper committing myself to the next phase of the Wellstreams program.
Our lives constantly call us to make choices, to answer God’s call or to fall back into a comfortable status quo. “You gonna have to serve someone.” Who will it be?
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