Communal effort

So here's my sermon from today. After much agonizing, it went really well, thanks to my fabulous sermon-writing internet seminary compatriots. (First homiletics, then the world!!)
It's times like this that I dearly love my field placement. There are precious few places I can think of where I could go nuts with personal relationships with Jesus, but Holy Apostles is one of them. Then we all sat around and listened to the associate clergy sing 'Angel from Montgomery' at the newcomer's party. My day was awesome. :)

Sermon:
Text: Mainly John 10:22-30, but also Acts 13: 13-17, 26-39




Since I’ve moved to New York, and started seminary, something rather odd has kept happening to me. Once or twice, and I wouldn’t have minded so much, but we’re headed towards double-digits now, and I have concerns. I will be walking down the street, or strolling through Central Park. Either here in the city, or back in Virginia, it surprisingly doesn’t seem to matter, a friendly person will strike up a conversation with me. “How am I doing today, am I new to the area, etc etc.”
Being friendly myself, I usually respond, until we reach the sticking place. “Am I a Christian?” or, better yet, “have I been saved, or Have I found Jesus?”
Well, yes. I am a Christian. And I explain dutifully and with a smile that I am actually studying for the Episcopal priesthood.
And Here is my problem, and my quandry: Because No one I have yet met seems to take my explanation as valid. “Yes! But do you have a personal relationship with Christ? Have you been born again?”
And here my friendliness screeches to a halt into confusion, because apparently, a lengthy discernment process and two years of seminary has beaten the Christianity right out of me. How disturbing.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this question, the more it is asked of me, and I’m not sure that I agree with it, because I don’t know how to answer it truthfully. I have a personal relationship with Jesus. I have a personal relationship with God, and with the Spirit, but that seems oddly limited. We none of us have just a one-on-one mentor-type relationship with Jesus to the exclusion of everyone else on the earth. Our faith is built on the communities that we belong to, that shape us, with the experiences we share.
In today’s gospel, Jesus gets into another fight with the crowd, with his community. He has come to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Dedication, otherwise known as Hanukah, and nationalistic fever is running high. The entire Jewish nation is in the process of remembering when Judah Maccabee led the Jews in a successful revolt against the Greeks and rededicated the Temple, and re-established a self-governing Jewish State….until Rome came in and took over. Nationalistic fever is running high, and to add fuel to the fire, Jesus is standing in the Temple itself, the site of all fighting a hundred years before, when this conversation takes place.
And what does the crowd want? They want a messiah. They want a savior like Judah Maccabee again, to save the nation. It’s Chanukah, after all. This would be an appropriate time. But Jesus deflects: “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me, but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.” He points them back to what they have seen him do. He points them back to their shared experience as a community.
There is no straight answer. There is no straight yes or no. The Johannine Jesus doesn’t operate like that, in fact, he pretty much wrote the Gospel of circular logic. This Jesus doesn’t give sky-written messages of affirmation to anyone. Instead, we have to rely on other things.
This Jesus asks us to rely on what we see around us. In the time we’ve seen him in this gospel, we’ve seen water turn to wine. We’ve seen sick people get well, for the glory of God. We’ve seen blind men healed and restored to the embrace of the community. We’ve seen demons cast out. We’ve become a part of a community formed around the transforming of the world in God’s name. We’re asked to believe because of what we’ve seen around us, in the people around us.
Something similar happens in Acts. Paul and Barnabas preach in the synagogue, in much the same way that Jesus gives his monologue in the Temple. And they give themselves as proof of what they say. They tell the story of Jesus, his life and his death, and finally his resurrection, but ultimately it is their testimony that the story rests on. It is their presence in that synagogue, and their witness that moves the people to faith and to action.
It is our relationships with each other that shape who we are, and what we know. We are incapable of operating in isolation. We are unable to function without one another. The crowd that day in the temple responded to Jesus with such a mix of hostility and hope because of their collective history. A holiday dedicated to political liberation coming during the Roman occupation, and Jesus refuses to give the easy answer. Instead, he points them back to everything else they’ve known together.
It is tempting to reach for the easier answers: the arrows in the sky, the giant hands coming down from heaven, the day-glo lite-up Jesus figures that will sit on our dash boards and protect us as we ride through the night. But the truth is that we don’t always get those. Some times we do, and those moments are intense and amazing, and something to be treasured.
But more often than not, what gives us faith is each other. It’s our experience of the people around us. Our experience of the works we see God doing in this community around us. God working in your life, and in my life, and in the life of this parish, and in the life of the Episcopal Church, and, dare I hope, the Anglican communion,: in these communities we choose, and these communities we get thrust into.
These communities teach us about kindness, and faith, and love. Whatever we know about the nature of God and the nature of Christ, whatever we know about what it means to love one another, we learn in relationship with one another. It is by watching the Spirit work in the lives around us that we grow, and we learn what it is to live lives as Christians together. We learn together: I look at the spirit working in your life, and you can see the spirit in my life, and we together form the church. We offer ourselves as witnesses to what God has done in our lives, and we keep showing up, week after week, to see what God has done in other people’s lives.
For me, this watching for God in the people around me has been a transforming process. In college, my campus ministry was comprised of a close-knit group of people, and I was shocked to discover them-- other people my age who still went to church?! As a shy eighteen year old who thought she was called to priesthood, I was pretty much convinced I was insane, and everyone around me would agree. Imagine my surprise to find a community where there were others my age who not only still went to church, but even some who thought that it was cool that I might be clergy! Even a few who wanted to be priests themselves. It was those relationships that got me through. A friend wrote me a note early my first year, telling me I would make a good priest. It arrived on a day when I was convinced that I was incapable of much of anything… and it was the first time anyone had ever said that to me. I heard the divine speaking in the encouragement I received, just when I needed it, and in the encouragement I was able to give, as other friends later discerned their own calls. Watching God work in their lives reminded me that God was working in my own, even if the evidence, at times, seemed shaky.
So maybe all those people accosting me on the street were right to question me. Maybe I don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus, at least not a purely personal one, or one that matches up with their description. Instead, I think Christ comes to us through other people. Christ comes to us through the physical experience of the bread, wine and water in our sacraments. Christ uses our world, and our experience of it to speak to us.
Because now nothing is off-limits to God. We don’t just experience God in quiet contemplation, or in a disembodied encounter with our soul: We can encounter God in everything, in everyone. The God who became human for us shies away from nothing, and floods our world with light. God surrounds us, and every experience becomes an opportunity for a meeting with the Divine.
Our relationships with each other are something to treasure. Our interactions every day, with everyone we meet are incalculably precious, because by our actions, we have the opportunity to show them something about God, and we have the opportunity to be taught ourselves. The image of God in each one of us illumines the path to God for each other, and it is that responsibility that we knowingly shoulder when we enter this community. May we carry it out with humility and grace, to the glory of God and the reconciliation of creation.

Nothing

This is a blog post about nothing. Nothing exciting is happening. Nothing nothing nothing. But, I have resolved to continue updating the blog so here you go.
Things in my non-exciting life:
1. $25 Bag o'books sale at Cokesbury. It was a feeding frenzy. We scared the manager.
No really. This is true. He was frightened of our zeal for the cheap, cheap books, and I got some good stuff: (non-geeks, avert your eyes) Blackwell's Companion to the Hellenistic World, Moltmann(!), Virtuoso Theology, Writings by Advocates of Peace, One Electorate Under God?, Simone Weil (!!!), Daniel Berrigan(!!), Taking Back Islam by Michael Wolfe!, the Christian and Anxiety, Marilyn McCourt Adams(theodicy!yay! last copy! there was a tussel, but I always win theodicial throw-downs), and Antagonists in the Church, written by Stephen's Ministry guy. All for $25. I win
2. The bird's nest is no longer in my window.
The pigeons, living in the alley on the one side of my building have become increasingly violent and desparate, possibly depressive, as the year has gone on. They have started throwing themselves into this one alley-window, where my AC unit is with ever-increasing velocity, and vigor, to the point where they broke the plexiglass panel on the one side that was BOLTED into the windowframe, and dislodged it. Now, mind you, it was only bolted by 2 bolts, but still. BOLTED. METAL.
Anyway, after their Flights of Doom into my window and air conditioner, the pigeons started to build a nest in the space between the AC and the wall. I thought this was a somewhat alarming development, since these are apparently emotionally unstable New York City birds that will risk death in order to get housing space. (or they're just like normal New Yorkers. hmmmm.) Either way, I didn't want small baby birds that close to whirring AC blades. So it got cleared out today. So long, kamikaze pigeons.
3. I finished one sock! I am sock knitting genius! And I'm almost half-way done with the other sock, so soon, they will be a pair. Just in time for the weather to be too warm for me to wear socks. This was clearly genius planning on my part. However, they look lovely. You should be sorry you can't see through your computer.
I preach on Sunday, so a sermon will follow shortly.

No Bad News Today

See, sometimes it's good to set boundaries with the Universe. The Universe needs to know past which points it cannot push, because then? It Does Not Transgress them, but chuckles heartily at us small minions.
Yesterday, the day after I decided I was Done With This Week, the World Sucked, People Were Stupid, I went to a Patty Griffin concert. (whoo!!! Insert awesomeness here) It was, of course, fabulous.
For those of you who don't know, I aspire to be like Patty Griffin, at least in the singing category. I try to chant like her, sing traditional Anglican choral music like her (three guesses how that usually turns out; Latin does not lend itself to soulful belting. Tallis is somewhere shrieking at me.) and I walk around my small apartment pretending that really, it is not out of the realm of possibility for me to chuck the whole priesthood gig, and instead hit the road as a traveling minstrel.
Last night, I got to sit way way up in the back of this really old theater and watch this really tiny woman sing her heart out for almost two hours straight, with no sign of a break. It was better than middlin' church.
Or, to be fair, it was a pretty excellent description of what church is supposed to be, when it's doing its job properly; a group of people getting together, reflecting together on the deeper parts of what we know about being human, and, hopefully, getting better as a result. All led by someone who's brave enough to walk on out in front of us and be really really human up on stage for us to see, so we can take notes.
Hey, maybe I can do that after all....

Ok! That's it.

This has not been a good week. It has been a bad week. Any way you want to measure it, I declare this week bad. And I am hereby Done With It.
I submit the following reasons for your inspection:
Two days ago, still in the thrall of the nor'easter that was attacking New York, and causing water to stream down my closet wall ('towels!' was the helpful suggestion of the maintenance crew), I was waiting for the uptown 1 train. 20 minutes, and no train. I would now be late for my 3pm appointment. The rain, apparently, had caused the subway to implode. So I leave the station, lose my fare, and hail a cab, driven by a friendly Russian man, who will take me up town.
And we listen to the radio.
And I start to hear things about Virginia Tech, which I am familiar with.
So I ask him to turn it up. The details are sketchy, but there's been a shooting. 'Yes, did you hear? Someone shot up the school!' he exclaims. 'Probably some Mohammad guy. Let's hear what Bill O'Reilly has to say.' He changes the station to Bill O'Reilly.
I'm having trouble breathing. My migraine from earlier returns.
I wonder who I know at Virginia Tech still, from when I was in college. I wonder who I know from college with friends there. I try to make lists in my head.
I wonder if I can jump out onto Broadway, just tuck and roll away, evade the zooming traffic, and Bill O'Reilly's yapping.
I watch the meter, and figure out how much less of a tip I can give the suddenly-much-more conservative cab driver and still leave the cab intact.
We arrive, and I jump out, still not sure what happened, and more angry than anything else.
Slowly, over the past two days, the seminary has processed it, in various seminary-like ways:
the prayers at the beginning of classes, brief conversation in PT, and a whole talk in Liturgics.
Confronted with the prospect of being the rector of a church outside Blacksburg somewhere, we had to plan a service for that night, on a few hours' notice. What would we do? What choices would we make? How would the sermon go? What liturgical resources would be appropriate? As pastors, as priests, what was our first move?
More than anything, that was helpful for me, but in a surreal way. While everyone else in the class could approach this with some level of disconnect, I'm still struggling.
My reality is that I probably will take a church somewhere near Blacksburg. Many of the people I will minister to have been profoundly affected by this, and many of my friends have already been affected. I was the person in the class who pointed out that the first thing you should do is find out what happened to your people. You can plan a very moving liturgy, but if someone from your parish has landed in the hospital, or has died, and you don't know about it, everyone else will have checked out.
So, basically, I'm done with this week. I'm tired of it. We need to have a new week, and it needs to happen now. The weather needs to get nice, and it needs to actually act like spring, and the world just should go along with it. (and also, I should have the power to decree stuff like that.) It is decided!

Hee....

Yeah, it's a bit disturbing, but it's funny as hell. Enjoy!

Easter recap

My Easter resolution (like Lenten ones, only with more joy!) is to update the blog more frequently. Hence this post.
Holy Week went well, with its usual march of services, craziness, rehearsals, caffeine and exhaustion. Once again, the liturgical church successfully commemorated the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ, and in my little corner of it, it went swimmingly well.
At the seminary, us singing precentor folk sang things with no organ and no instrumental support, and somehow managed to make it sound like music, through the extreme power of the pitch pipe and some major positive thinking. We also managed to beat back what has become known as the Great Plague of 2007, which had me, and the entire soprano section, in its evil clutches for over a week, and ended up with an extreme case of laryngitis. Seriously. I was squeaking and croaking for over a week and a half. I would open my mouth, start the air flow, and.....nothing. It's the stuff of nightmares.
Luckily, my voice returned to me by Wednesday, and none too soon, for the marathon of preaching, and singing, and talking of the Triduum.
At Field-Placement Extraordinaire (FPE), the Vigil was great. I was the first crucifer, meaning I had to carry the Big-Ass Cross (technical term. In Latin, for you unReformed, pre-VatII types, Largus Assum Cruxit) . This resulted in my having a back-ache for the duration of Easter, but it was so worth it! We were smoked, and sprinkled, and sung at to the best of everyone's ability, all culminating in a mass sing-along of the Hallelujah chorus (music and parts provided!) . Best part: I did not burn my bulletin, alb, hands or face with my little candle. This is a major victory for me, since I'm not good with those things.
In other news: I finished my shrug that I was knitting! I am a knitting goddess! It only took a month (compared to the last sweater which took 2 years.) and was harder, as it featured cables (so fun!) and picking up stitches.
Am now knitting: socks (pictures to follow, I think) and a shiny purple scarf. Because who doesn't love the idea of a shiny, purple, ribbon scarf?

Two! Two! Two posts in one!

Day, that is.
So this is the sermon that I preached tonight, as promised. And while I'm at it, a thought.
The sermon turned out well, in that I liked the idea, and I felt like it went well (as opposed to me standing up there and talking ever faster to try to cover the fact that I was pretty sure I was spewing utter swill.) And the congregation liked it---a lot, as it turns out. But they also were kind of flabbergasted on my subject. The rector commented that he had never heard, in 30 some years of ministry, a positive sermon on Judas. So I was now kind of famous.
Really? I mean, as I think about it, he's right. I've never heard an out-and-out sermon on Judas either---mainly it's a throwaway reference to 'he's not in hell because no one is, so take heart' type thing. But it still surprised me. Because, we're Episcopalians (and Christians, besides, but that label isn't worth so much these days). Aren't we supposed to go to great (and occasionally absurdist) lengths to rehabilitate things everyone else has given up on? Wouldn't Judas be at the top of that list? How has no one gotten around to this yet?
Anyway, here's the sermon. Tell me what you think, please, and if you, too, were shocked by my lack of piety. Because I think I'm going to make this my new mission: one sermon on Judas per year!

Text(for reference. If you're a die-hard, you can look it up.): John 13:21-25

If Judas had a feast day, it would be today. Though, to be more precise, it’s not much of a feast--There’s too much darkness and silence for it to be a feast-- It’s more a day of remembrance for him, for what he did. For what happened to him and around him. Because he’s too important, has too much of an impact for this story to be told without him.
And truth be told, I’ve always gotten along well with Judas, in some way. Maybe even more consistently than I’ve gotten along with Jesus or any of the rest of his intrepid followers. (Judas, after all, never gets co-opted in the name of war, never gets blamed for tsunamis or buildings collapsing, and never tells me that ‘its all for the best’, and never wanders around confusedly, like Peter, James or John.) When I was 6 or 7, my parents gave me a bootleg taped copy of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’, and I was utterly entranced. I literally wore it out—it was the first musical I ever fell in love with—and I rented the really retro 70’s movie from the video store every week, til I saved enough money for my own copy. I would spend hours with my brother, climbing around on our bunk beds, acting out the story. But as the oldest, I would pull rank---and make him be Jesus. And I would perch up on the top bunk and sing ‘Heaven on Their Minds’ for hours---All the anger, the fear and the frustration in that song was fascinating, aiming it at God was doubly so. Judas was so human.
And he is: there is a lot about Judas that is terrifying. After all, he sells out his leader, his master, the one person he gave up his life for, and that lurking betrayal is disturbing. But most terrifying of all, on some level, is that he’s human. Maybe more than the rest of the disciples in some way, Judas is a part of us.
Judas is that little voice who protests, who wants an explanation for the suffering and the pain, who refuses to be mollified by being told to wait. Judas wants it to get better now. All through the gospels, the things we’ve heard from Judas, he’s the one who argues back. He’s the one who protested when Mary spent all her money on perfume for Jesus’s feet. And couldn’t the money have been better spent on the poor? He argues? Judas is a zealot, a radical. Scholars look at his last name—Judas Iscariot—and think that this indicates he was a member of the Sacarii, a secret militia-type group that assassinated Roman military leaders of the occupation of Palestine. His life, prior to following Jesus was about freedom for Israel, with no master but God. Jesus is a shift from that, and probably a frustrating one, when all you can see around you is occupation and oppression, who wants to wait for a final, distant, transcendent Kingdom? The Kingdom needs to happen now. All the suffering, the poverty, the oppression needs to stop now.
Judas is the one who voices that. Speed it up, Jesus. People are dying. There are poor people, sick people, crippled people all around you, what are you waiting for? He’s that frustrated voice in all of us which raises our fists to the heavens in exasperation.
And through it all, Judas was right, in a way. Technically, yes. That perfume could have bought a lot of people a lot of food that day. Technically yes. Jesus as the Son of God could have kicked the Romans out of Palestine without breaking a sweat. He could have created an earthly utopia of peace, love and joy and installed himself as king, I suppose. He could have avoided all the martyrdoms of the disciples, the persecution of the early church, the excesses of the Crusades, all of the pain, all of the suffering. Technically, Judas is right. He was, after all, called to be a disciple in the first place. There’s something there that we need to hear.
But the thing about being a radical is that you get tunnel vision. Technically Judas is right, but that’s not quite the point. The point is larger than that. What Jesus does on the earth is larger than restoring the political Kingdom to political freedom. It’s larger than physical healings, and social commentary, though those are a vital part of it. Those things point the way to the larger framework of Jesus’s work, but Judas is consumed with everything else and doesn’t see it. Maybe the others do, or at least, they have more patience with trying to figure it out than Judas does.
And it’s the combination of these divergent voices that form us: the radical voice that protests, refuses to calm down, that stands in the desert hills and wails in frustration. That draws our attention to human suffering again and again. And the voice that urges us to wait, that reminds us that God isn’t done with the world yet, that more is going on than we know, and that looks for the glimpses of a suffering Savior in all the creation around us. That combination that works in the rag-tag band of disciples also works in us, and the push-pull keeps us walking forward on our journey, because running to far in one direction leads to disaster.
That’s what we remember tonight. Judas leaves. He leaves the balance of the other disciples who at least checked his impatience a little, and departs, into his own frustration and anger and terror that nothing would ever get better. So he isn’t there for the things that come after, for the trial, the death, and the resurrection. He’s not there for the Great Commandment, the beginning of the movement, or the coming of the Holy Spirit. He loses the community that kept him sane, and --Just as important-- they lose him. There’s no one sitting in the corner, reminding everyone about the poor, or the Romans anymore. His leaving is a tragedy, for him, and for those of us who stay, because ultimately, we need both of those little voices. John’s gospel describes it perfectly: he immediately went out. And it was night—for all of us. Amen

And you thought I had died or something.....

No such luck! In fact, I was just swallowed by the insanity that is Middler Year. (otherwise known as Year From Hell.) So there has been much class taking, much organizing of things, and much field-placement-ing. (yes. i invented a word. deal.)
I'm working at a lovely church down the street with an insanely large soup kitchen program. Upwards of 1100 people a day. Seriously, it's like a semi-scary feeding machine in there. And I trot myself in, and lead Morning Prayer and a Bible Study for the guests. Because that's pretty much all my skill set allows me to do. I provide coffee, I pray, and I can explain in great detail the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and also the Q Source Theory, but that's about it.
But this church is great, and they enjoy my odd little skill set. So much, in fact, that they let me teach a Lenten series on the Israeli/Palestine conflict. (hahah! Mortals. They know not what they do.) And my bible study group is fabulous. Example:
One day, I come in and sit down, and notice that we have a new face among us. I say, "Hi, I don't think I know your name!" New Face Guy says, "No, I can't tell you my name. Because the feds are after me. But you can call me Tree."
I think Oh boy . We have entered a med-free zone.
I say, " Ok. Well, no one's after me, so you can call me by my name."
We continue, without incident, looking at that part where Jesus lists the 2 greatest commandment hits (love God, love your neighbor, tada!). Suddenly, 'Tree' slams down his book, causing some alarm to me. (See above comment about my skill set. It doesn't include stopping non-medicated people from throwing things. I'm not a large person.)
Quoth 'Tree': "Man! This Jesus stuff is hard!"
Me, not sure where he's going: "Yes, Tree."
Tree, continuing as if I had not attempted CPE-style affirmation and failed miserably, and very serious and earnest: "I mean, I thought doing my bid was hard, and you wouldn't know what that is, Teacher, you bein' a preacher and all, but that was rough, with the knucklin' and the fightin' and people bein' all up in your anus, but this! This is harder than that!"
Me, trying not to giggle maniacally at poor Tree: "Yes, Tree. Christianity is hard."
Tree, again, to hell with my affirmations, and thankfully, my fighting back the laughing: "I mean, you gotta figure out who the good people are, and you can't go to clubs no more, and you can't be with your bad friends.....Shit! I mean, ....shit! can i say that in here, Teacher?"
"Sure, Tree, cut loose."
By this point, everyone else was staring in consternation at poor Tree, who was having some sort of spiritual something-or-other, and I was trying to figure out how to build on the concept of Christianity-is-harder-than-a-jail-sentence, without getting totally derailed. Sometimes I love my job. :) Though how i'm going to work poor Tree into a sermon is currently beyond me. Tweaking the language just makes it lose all its original impact.

In other news, I think I'm going to start posting my sermons on this blog. I got the idea from a fellow classmate, and it seems like a good idea. (And of course, you people need more sermons to read, right?) Also, it cuts down on the emailing and the sending of sermons that I do. Less work for me!!!!