All posts by Miranda Hassett

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Sermon, December 10

Since all these things – heaven and earth – are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be? 

I recently heard a friend talk about how in the assigned lectionary texts, most weeks, there’s one sentence somewhere that really seizes his attention, demands reflection and response. 

In our lessons for the second Sunday in Advent this year, this is that sentence, for me. 

Since all things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be? 

I’ve been thinking about it for weeks. 

That’s the bit of Scripture that just occasionally floats to the top in my brain… not the much more familiar, and comforting!, beginning of Isaiah chapter 40: “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem…” 

Those words are the beginning of a portion of the Book of Isaiah – which is sixty-six chapters long! – that is sometimes called the Book of Consolation. It contains many prophecies of return and restoration, after the more catastrophic words of the preceding chapters.

But even the comfort of Isaiah 40 is nuanced. We read a few verses further and find the text telling us that all people are grass, short-lived, ephemeral, insignificant. And in practically the same breath the text talks about good tidings! Good news!

The grass withers, the flower fades; surely the people are grass.

Is that good news?… 

Have you noticed – have you felt – the fascination of abandoned places? Places where people, with all our busyness and plans, used to be, and aren’t, anymore? 

TikTok regularly shows me videos of people exploring a derelict hotel, school, or shopping mall. 

Now, I do watch those videos, and TikTok will show you more of something it thinks you like, but it’s not just me. 

Posts like that regularly get 300, 400, 500 thousand likes, sometimes more. 

Turning over to Instagram, a better platform for evocative still photography as well as video… 

Abandoned America is a photographic project by an artist named Matthew Christopher. He has 84,000 followers on Instagram. 

Another account with a similar theme, Deserted Places, brings together videos and photos from folks exploring abandoned places all over the world, and has 1.3 million followers… 

A third account called simply “itsabandoned” boasts “Beautiful abandoned places” for its 1.2 million followers. 

There are photos of a three-story gracious home in the woods, trees growing from a tower, the patio and steps swallowed by moss, ivy climbing the walls. 

A greenhouse, elegant with stained glass – who knows where? – is being slowly swallowed by vines that have broken their way in from outside, the floor carpeted with dead leaves. 

A bowling alley still has a ball and pins waiting for use, as the floor returns to earth, and ferns, moss, and trees grow in the dim daylight from broken windows. 

There’s always an extra fascination for me in images of abandoned churches – glass and stone gradually falling to earth, fragment by fragment; pews and prayerbooks gently decaying back to their component molecules… 

In these images, in these places, I feel some tantalizing stew of recognition of mortality, and a strange delight in seeing what man hath wrought fall to ruin, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 

Five chapters before those famous words, “Comfort, comfort,” the book of Isaiah contains an evocative oracle of desolation.

Of Israel’s neighbor and enemy Edom, Chapter 34 says,

“From generation to generation it shall lie waste;
no one shall pass through it for ever and ever.
But the hawk* and the hedgehog* shall possess it;
the owl* and the raven shall live in it…
They shall name it No Kingdom There,
and all its princes shall be nothing.
Thorns shall grow over its strongholds,
nettles and thistles in its fortresses.
It shall be the haunt of jackals,
an abode for ostriches.
Wildcats shall meet with hyenas,
goat-demons shall call to each other… 

There shall the owl nest
and lay and hatch and brood in its shadow;
there too the buzzards shall gather,
each one with its mate.”

This is a prophecy of doom for Israel’s enemies – one that echoes what happens to Jerusalem and Judea when they are conquered, ruined, and emptied out. 

But it’s also beautiful. 

I want to see those ruins, don’t you?

Overgrown by thorns and thistles, inhabited by owls and wildcats and hedgehogs…

A place of death become a place of vibrant life. 

Wilderness is different from apocalypse. 

That was last week’s theme. 

But wilderness may be what comes after. 

What’s left, when all the things we built and planned and expected and relied on have dissolved.

Today – as always on the second Sunday in Advent – the lectionary turns towards John the Baptist, who announces Jesus’ arrival and mission. 

John is a prophet, like all the Old Testament prophets before him. And John is, specifically, a wilderness prophet.  

He preaches in the wilderness; he dresses like the wilderness, in animal skins instead of decent woven cloth; he eats the wilderness, living on bugs and wild honey. 

Wilderness is an important kind of place, in Scripture.

It’s a place of chaos, danger, and clarity. 

A place of life and a place of death.

A place you run to, to escape human danger, and a place where you confront non-human danger: wildcats and jackals, lions and wolves, hunger and thirst, the harsh terrain itself. 

The wilderness is inhospitable at best, and hostile at worst.

And the wilderness in Scripture is a place where, again and again, people encounter the Holy.

We read this Isaiah text today because our Gospel text from Mark quotes it: “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness…” 

Studying these texts this week, I realized something that I had somehow never noticed before. 

There is ambiguity in the text of Isaiah 40. 

Our translation, the New Revised Standard Version, says, ‘A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord…”’

But when Mark quotes the same text, the mysterious Voice is no longer just talking about the wilderness, it has become “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness…” 

Apparently this slight quirk of translation was part of the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible that Mark would have known, called the Septuagint.

But a new translation of the Hebrew Bible by Robert Alter that I often consult renders the Isaiah verse the same way: A voice cries out in the wilderness… 

Whose voice is this, anyway, that cries out either about – or in – the wilderness? It’s not clear. A footnote in one of my scholarly Bibles notes, “The identity of the voice… has been deliberately left mysterious by the prophet.” (Jerusalem Bible) 

What the text does say plainly is that God’s presence will be found in the wilderness. 

So perhaps the voice is also in the wilderness… or even of the wilderness. 

It’s not a far-fetched thought! Just two chapters later, in Isaiah 42, Creation speaks: “Sing to the Lord a new song! Let the sea roar and all that fills it….let the desert and its towns lift up their voice!” 

An ecological lectionary commentary recently introduced me to the Earth Bible Project’s principles of ecology in Scripture, including the principle of voice: That Earth is a living entity capable of raising its voice in celebration and against injustice.

And the principal of resistance: Creation not only suffers from human injustices, but actively resists them. 

I immediately realized I had learned similar ideas in seminary from Ellen Davis, one of the greatest Old Testament scholars of our time. 

Walter Brueggeman – another one – talks about this stuff too. 

The idea that Creation or Earth has agency and a voice isn’t just 21st century ecological woo. 

These are assumptions that underlie much of Scripture. 

Where modern environmental science and ancient wisdom point us in the same direction, we should probably pay attention, and listen to the voice of Creation – or its component parts. 

Isaiah 40 hints that the wilderness that is speaking, here, is the dry and rocky near-desert that the Judean exiles would have had to cross to come home to Jerusalem from Babylon. 

But with Isaiah 34 close at hand, the wilderness that comes after civilization may well be in our minds too – those owl-haunted ruins and moss-eaten mansions… 

When the post-human wilderness tells us, Surely the people are grass, it speaks with particular authority. 

So what does the voice in, the voice of, the wilderness have to say, in Isaiah 40? 

Human life and accomplishments are temporary. Nothing lasts. 

God’s coming anyway. Take comfort. Get ready. 

Since all things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of persons ought you to be? 

This past Tuesday I attended the Wisconsin Council of Churches annual meeting. British poet Jay Hulme was the keynote speaker. 

Our theme for the event was “chaplains to the apocalypse.” 

An invitation to wonder, together, what spiritual community and spiritual leadership look like in this season of the world. 

Jay told us – among other things – about Coventry Cathedral.

Our 2 Peter reading includes these frightening words: The heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire. 

On November 14th, 1940, during World War II, that happened to the city of Coventry, a midsized city in central England. 

515 German bomber planes carried out an attack on Coventry that night. Over the course of the night the Luftwaffe dropped 500 tons of high explosives and 30,000 incendiaries – bombs made to start fires. 

More than 43,000 homes were damaged or destroyed; infrastructure was shattered. 

At least 500 people died, possibly many more. 

And when morning came, Coventry’s 14th-century cathedral church was in ruins – its wood and metal interior structure had burned and melted, and its roof had collapsed. 

Surely the people are grass. 

But as people who loved the Cathedral wandered among its smoking ruins the morning of November 15, something remarkable started to happen.

The cathedral stonemason found two charred beams and lashed them together into a cross, standing it behind an altar of rubble. 

The vicar of a nearby church took a few of the big medieval nails from the floor – liberated as ancient beams burned – and tied them together with wire to create a smaller cross. 

And the Provost of the Cathedral, Richard Howard, took some chalk and wrote two words on the charred wall of the cathedral: 

“Father Forgive.” 

An abbreviated quotation of Jesus’ words on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

As the website of the Diocese of Coventry explains, Howard “wanted everyone to recognize their own part in the destructive patterns of behaviors which can lead to disaster… [and] to make a commitment not to seek revenge but to strive for reconciliation with the enemy.” 

The response to disaster – apocalypse – dissolving that first began to emerge, that smoky morning, developed into a lasting commitment to peace and reconciliation work grounded at Coventry Cathedral. 

After the German city of Dresden was brutally bombed in February of 1945, the Cathedral community sent Dresden a cross made from the nails of their ruined cathedral – a sign of hope, of endurance, of empathy. 

That cross has a place of honor in Dresden’s Frauenkirche. 

When it was time to rebuild Coventry’s cathedral, the design they chose was not one that tried to remake what had been before. 

To erase the wounds, the destruction. 

Instead, they built a modern worship space, and planted a garden within the ruined walls still standing. 

In that garden, members of the community pray the Coventry Litany of Reconciliation every day. 

Jay told us about Coventry. 

The bombs – the crosses. Father, forgive. The garden in the ruins. 

And he told us: When there’s an apocalypse, you have to make a choice about what kind of world you want to build among the ruins. 

What sort of persons ought we to be? … 

There are so many kinds of wilderness.  

Literal wildernesses in their sprawling glory.

We have to protect them by law, now, but in the past they were simply the places humans couldn’t easily figure out how to tame, to use, to inhabit. 

The wildernesses we leave behind when we abandon a place: derelict malls, boarded-up hotels or churches, sometimes whole neighborhoods or cities – hollowed out, haunted by crows, raccoons, coyotes. 

The inner wildernesses of our lives, our hearts, disorienting and empty. Places we avoid because they frighten us. 

Places where something once was, and isn’t anymore. 

Some churches will tell you that the themes of Advent are things like Peace and Love and Hope. 

I am here to tell you that the themes of Advent are things like Apocalypse and Wilderness.

But yes, also: Hope. 

There is hope in apocalypse, hope in wilderness.

Hope in the emptiness before, and after, human striving. 

Hope in naming and facing our losses and our fears. 

Hope in grappling with what kind of person we mean to be.

Hope in the wilderness calling us to get ready –

Because even now, even here,

The Holy comes to meet us. 

 

 

More about Jay:

https://jayhulme.com/

More about Coventry: 

https://www.coventry.anglican.org/the-story-of-the-cross-of-nails.php

Worship

Sermon, Dec. 3

Today we begin a new season, and a new year, at church!

Does anyone know this season’s name? … 

Let’s look at the whole year together… will somebody help me hold up the year? … 

It begins with Advent, this blue part here. 

After blue Advent comes white Christmas – 

then green Epiphany – 

then purple Lent –

then white Easter – 

then red Pentecost – careful, it’s hot! – 

then the long green season of summer and fall, the great green growing season. 

What happens when the green growing season ends?

Yes – we start again!

Can we connect the end to the beginning?

Because sometimes Time is a line, but sometimes Time is also a circle, right? 

Every end is a beginning, every beginning is also an end… 

There is our circle of the church year! 

And today we begin a new church year. 

Thank helpers and dismiss them. 

Advent is a season of expectation and preparation. 

It is the season when we get ready for the mystery of Christmas, when God came to earth as a tiny baby.  

But we are not just expecting Christmas.

We are expecting a time when God will come into the world again, to turn everything upside down and right side up. 

In the chapter after our Isaiah reading today, God says through the prophet, “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.”

People have been waiting for that new earth for a long time. 

We hear the yearning in several of our Scripture readings today: 

Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!

Restore us, O God of hosts! 

Stir up your strength and come to help us!

God’s people have prayed these words and others like them through many lesser apocalypses and catastrophes – conquest; exile; famine and flood; the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in the year 70, which was so traumatic for the first generation of Christians, and which seems to be part of what Jesus is speaking about here. 

God’s people have experienced God’s saving help through many lesser restorations, too. Have moved through survival into hope, growth, renewal. But we still wait for the ultimate transformation and renewal of our lives and our world. 

Advent is always a good time to revisit the word apocalypse. 

In common use, it has come to mean either “the complete final destruction of the world,” or “an event involving destruction or damage on a…  catastrophic scale.”

That usage of the word comes from the Bible – from the book we know as Revelations, or the Revelation of John. 

That word revelation is a translation of the Greek word apocalypse – which is the first word of the book. It actually means revealing or uncovering. In the terminology of Biblical studies, the end or final transformation of the world has a different name: the Eschaton. And an apocalypse is a text that talks about the signs that will tell us when the Eschaton is coming. 

Today’s Gospel, for example, contains a little apocalypse, as Jesus tells his disciples how to watch for the signs of the coming of the Son of Man. 

But the word apocalypse came to be understood to mean the end of the world, because the Book of Revelation – also known as the Apocalypse of John – describes that end so vividly. 

So there’s a significant gap between scholarly and everyday language, here. 

But there is also a lot of overlap between how the Bible talks about the eschaton, God’s final and ultimate intervention in the world, and how our contemporary culture thinks and talks and make movies and TV shows about the apocalypse.

One aspect of that overlap is, of course, fear. When whatever is coming, comes: what will it cost us? What will we lose? What, and who, will survive? These are frightening words and images, whether we’re talking about Scripture or about the latest word from climate scientists.  

Another aspect of that overlap is, well, revelation. Uncovering and clarifying what aspects of the present may be catapulting us towards doom. Laurel Dykstra writes for the Wild Advent lectionary commentary, “Rather than predicting the future the prophetic tradition points to the consequences of our current actions. [Old Testament scholar] Walter Brueggemann famously defines the role of the prophet [as] to radically critique the existing order, to feel and express the pain that would otherwise keep us numb and immobilized, and energize us with imagination and hope for an alternative.”

I suspect many of us have occasional moments when we suddenly see clearly some of the critical flaws of our shared way of life – the overconsumption; the lack of commitment to communal well-being; the overwhelm that keeps us too numb to undertake big change. 

The barrage of Black Friday deals in my inbox last week were a good example. 

And another aspect of the overlap between Biblical and cultural apocalypse is a need to stay alert, to pay attention. 

To read the signs, and be ready to take action. 

I’m not an expert in apocalyptic fiction but it seems to me that there’s often a character or a few characters who are the ones who catch on early, who connect the dots: Something big is happening. This isn’t just an ordinary Tuesday. 

In our Gospel today Jesus is basically telling his friends to be those people. Beware! Stay alert! Read the signs of the times! 

And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake!

Keep awake! It’s a theme of this Gospel and, arguably, a core theme of Advent. It comes up in our lectionary texts, and some of our Advent hymns too. Get ready; God’s coming! Prepare the way! You don’t want to be found asleep! 

What I notice this year, entering Advent, is a real sense of tension between this Advent admonition to wakefulness, and the demands of constant vigilance in our culture today. 

We don’t really need to be told to stay awake and pay attention. 

We live with weekly and sometimes daily signs of unfolding climate catastrophe. (Dykstra points out that our vocabulary for human-wrought impact on earth’s climate has moved in the past decade from “climate change” through climate crisis, climate emergency, climate catastrophe, and some are now using the term “climate apocalypse.”) 

Wars in Ukraine, in Gaza, strain our communities, our friendships, our capacity for compassion. 

Polarization and violence in word and deed in our public life wear us down, erode our hope and our courage. 

We got an email from my daughter’s middle school a couple of weeks ago with the subject line: “Lockdown drill and book fair.” Now, it’s not surprised that both of those things were happening, but something about tossing them together in one email to parents felt like a next step in making routine the regime of fear and anxiety we have all accepted, or that our leaders have accepted on our behalf. 

Keep awake!

I don’t think sleep is our problem. 

If anything, we are paying too much attention to too many things. 

We are overwhelmed and numb.

Our nervous systems never get to settle down. 

“Stay alert!” is not helpful or kind advice for the 21st century American. It’s redundant, in any case, with every ad for a home security system or video doorbell that our streaming services serve up. 

Maybe what we actually need is more quiet. More rest. 

Tricia Hersey, founder of the Nap Ministry and author of the book Rest is Resistance, is an evangelist for the importance of rest, as a generative place to dream, become more aligned with yourself and resist the productivity demands of our capitalist culture. Her work is grounded in black liberation and womanist theologies. She writes, “My rest as a Black woman in America suffering from generational exhaustion and racial trauma always was a political refusal and social justice uprising within my body. I took to rest and naps and slowing down as a way to save my life, resist the systems telling me to do more, and most importantly as a remembrance to my Ancestors who had their [rest and dreams] stolen from them… Rest pushes back and disrupts a system that views human bodies as a tool for production and labor. It is a counter narrative. We know that we are not machines. We are divine.”

https://thenapministry.wordpress.com/

(More here:  https://news.emory.edu/features/2023/07/emag-power-of-naps-13-07-23/index.html) 

Another African-American woman, poet Cole Arthur Riley, often bears witness to the importance of rest in her ministry on Instagram. She writes, for example, “Work is not the salvation you think it is. If you want to get free, exhaustion is not the way. Rest. Go slow. How will you stay near to yourself today?” 

Hersey, Riley, and others name that rest is radical and essential. We need it to step back from everything that overwhelms and exhausts us, and makes it hard to know or focus on what really matters. Rest can take many forms – an actual nap; making a cup of tea and reading something you enjoy (regardless of literary merit!); taking time to cook something from scratch, in an unhurried way – maybe put on some music while you measure and stir; have a agenda-free conversation with a loved one; go for a walk or sit by a window and notice the world… 

Why am I preaching REST when Jesus is telling us to KEEP AWAKE? Aren’t those opposites? Maybe not. 

This is something I am learning through the Clergy Contemplative Renewal program that I started in July.

I am discovering that there’s a quality of alertness, a way of being awake to the world, that is very different from being available to the overwhelm and the barrage of images and information, from being targeted by ads and trapped by doomscrolling. 

I am a long, long way from having mastered that other quality of alertness. But I know that it exists, now, and that’s a big step. 

Since the program began with a retreat in July I’ve been experimenting with microdoses of slow – of quiet – of still. 

And what I am learning – at the 101 level of contemplative practice, here! – is that replacing five minutes of reading the news with five minutes of sitting in silence, in the morning, does not make me less aware of the world. It makes me differently aware.

On a good day, it makes me better able to discern where to spend my attention and energy, in alignment with my hopes and intentions. 

If sitting in silence isn’t your jam – tuning in to nature does something similar inside of us. Dyksta’s ecological commentary on today’s Gospel calls our attention to Jesus’ advice: From the fig tree learn its lesson… She writes: “These words… are a clear directive that part of the work of Advent is a deep attention to the more than human world… The skills of observing tracking, noticing weather changes, seasonal changes are Advent practices that are also spiritual practices and skills. That deep attention and noticing is a kind of prayer. Can your community take on an Advent practice of noticing together? What plants stay green all year? What are the plant species that make up your advent wreath? Do you know their names? Do you recognize them as kin and neighbor? Which are native and which are introduced? How are humans in relationship with these?

Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, credited with galvanizing the modern environmental movement, is rooted in just this kind of attention – this staying awake. Carson writes “One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, ‘What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”

It is easy for us in Wisconsin (and perhaps also in Maine!) to think of winter as a time to stop paying attention to Nature… because everything shuts down, right? In the years when we have done Nature noticing as a congregation, we’ve usually ended it in fall. 

But there is plenty to notice, even here, even now. 

The shapes of snowflakes, and the patterns of frost or ice on lakes and puddles.

Which birds stick around, and where we see them. 

Tracks in snow that tell us about animal neighbors we never see. 

The myriad shapes and forms and textures of dead flower stalks left over from the summer – a winter prairie walk is just as fascinating as a summer walk. 

The skeleton shapes of trees – branch patterns, squirrel nests.

An opportunity to notice the diversity of bark. 

The different kinds of trees that stay green, their needles and cones. 

There is rest – there is grace – there is awakeness, in attending to these things. 

And, yes, there may be some pain, some poignancy, as well, when we notice that the signs of the seasons are changing in their pace and predictability, with global climate change. 

But that’s part of it. 

This quality of gentle, holy attentiveness I’m talking about isn’t a recipe for happiness. It’s a path to presence. To staying near to yourself, in Riley’s words. 

To better knowing what really matters. 

The seasons of Advent and Lent are parallel in many ways. Both seasons of preparation for great big holy mysteries; both seasons when we try to look unflinchingly at what is aching or amiss in our world, our lives, our souls.

But while people often take on some seasonal discipline in Lent, we don’t often do so in Advent.

Maybe we should. Maybe we can. Something small and gracious.  

Something we choose to do less of – or more of – to give ourselves a little more time to breathe. 

Put something down. Turn something off. Pick something up. 

Maybe it’s as simple as setting up Advent candles wherever you usually eat, and at the end of your evening meal, turning down the lights – lighting a candle – saying a prayer, from a booklet or from your heart – and pausing to breathe in holy darkness. 

Laurel Dykstra, “Wild Lectionary,” https://www.salalandcedar.com/wildlectionary?fbclid=IwAR1Mtxe-TS_1Bzh5rYcVEKdxhfAsAGR-MMaSrOETPQecXo9bOAO7hT0XnCo

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Sermon, Dec. 19

Today we read one of my very favorite collects. A collect is a type of prayer – a short paragraph that says something about God and then asks something from God. The funny name comes from the idea that it’s gathering us, or our prayers – collecting them together. We say a collect at the beginning of worship, and another collect at the end of the prayers of the people. 

The collect assigned for this Sunday reads, “Blessed God, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them…” 

This is one of our really old collects; it goes back to the first English Book of Common Prayer, published in 1549, and was written by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. If you’ve heard that the Church of England, our mother church, was founded by Henry the Eighth, please do look up Thomas Cranmer sometime! Cranmer’s big work was getting liturgy and Scripture to be in the language people understood – English, instead of medieval Latin. Having ordinary people be able to read and study the Bible was very important to him, and it’s important to me, too. 

I have always loved that list of verbs: Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. It lays out that receiving and finding meaning in Scripture isn’t a one-step or simple process. It takes time and reflection. Sometimes it takes study, seeking more information. It takes curiosity and prayerful openness.  

We have read several pieces of Scripture this morning already. So let’s turn to the rest of those verbs. What about mark? 

Mark is being used here in a somewhat archaic way, still preserved in the saying “You mark my words!” It means, To pay close attention to, or take note of. 

Let’s pause, then, to mark our first reading today, from the book of Judges – about the judge Deborah. 

Judges is the book of the Bible that lays out what happens after God’s people settled in the land of Canaan. Last week you heard their leader Joshua, Moses’ successor, ask the people: Are you going to follow the God who brought you out of Egypt, and obey God’s commandments? And the people answered: The Lord our God we will serve and obey!

Narrator: The Lord their God they did NOT serve and obey. At least, not for long.

The Book of Judges has some dark stuff in it – some PG-13, some definitely R – but it’s a fascinating read. People sometimes assume that anything contained in the Bible is good – is how things are supposed to be. Judges is NOT that. 

The editorial voice of the text is really clear: This is a book about a time when society was coming apart at the seams. Leadership was unstable; there was a lot of chaos and violence; there were no strong shared values or sense of the common good. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes, says Judges chapter 17. 

Among other things, the Israelites UTTERLY FAIL to wipe out all the other peoples who are living in the land, as the text claims God told them they should. They live right alongside the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; and they intermarry with them, and they start worshipping their gods. (3:5-6) 

The Israelites are breaking Commandment number one – You shall have no other gods before me! – left and right. And God gets cranky about it. 

As the book of Judges understands it, because the people aren’t loyal to God, God repeatedly lets them get conquered by other nations, in the many tiny back-and-forth territorial wars of this time and place. 

When they get conquered, Israel remembers God and cries out to God for help, and God sends them a leader to help them – a judge. The ideal judge was wise and attuned to God, and also capable of leading the people as needed, including military leadership at times. 

Not all of the judges in the Book of Judges are ideal judges! Have you heard of Samson, the strong man? He’s probably the most famous figure from Judges. But the text is not kind to Samson.  

Deborah is Israel’s fourth judge, after Othniel, Ehud – that’s a story! – and Shamgar. I hope we’ll see a short drama of the rest of the story at our Talent Show, but you can also just read Judges chapter 4 – it’s not long. 

What might we mark about Deborah’s story? 

It is significant that she is a woman! One of very few named female *leaders* in the Bible. 

It makes sense that this happens in the early years of Israel, when leadership is still informal and based on call and giftedness. 

More formal and hierarchical leadership structures tend to lean patriarchal and lock women out; this happens both in Israel’s history, and then later in Christian history. 

The voice of the text accepts Deborah’s leadership – and seems to present her as one of the successful judges. At the same time, the text is aware of conventional gender norms, and plays with them. War was men’s work – and we are supposed to notice that Barak, whom Deborah calls to lead Israel in battle, says, “I’m not going unless you go too.” And Deborah fires back by saying, Fine, but God’s going to use a woman to kill the enemy general. You aren’t going to get to chop his head off and bask in manly glory. 

I think all of that is really interesting, and in some ways surprisingly current! We are still, as a culture, working through how we feel about women as warriors – or even just as strong, assertive leaders. 

It was only during the Obama years – another Barak! – that combat positions in the U.S. military were opened to women. 

And it’s well known, at least among women, that if you’re in a leadership role and try to lead like a man, you’ll get called things like abrasive and bossy and another word that starts with b.

So I mark that about the Deborah story: that there are seeds of solidarity and struggle here for the long, long human journey of unpacking expectations and constraints around gender roles. 

How about learn? Sometimes we learn from Scripture;  sometimes we learn things that shape how we read Scripture. 

Our text from Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians is beautiful. It’s one of many in these weeks that lean towards Advent, with themes of staying alert and being ready for the day of the Lord, the second coming of Christ, the great and transformational intervention of God in history that the church still awaits. 

The thing that I am learning, in relation to this text and many like it, is that we need to be thoughtful about our imagery. 

This passage refers to Christians as children of light, not of darkness. What do light and dark mean, here? 

There’s a first layer of metaphor that’s pretty direct:

In the dark, you can’t see. You can’t do much. 

There aren’t electric lights, and oil lamps only go so far.

Dark is when thieves and bandits operate, and when people do the things they’re ashamed to be seen doing. 

Daylight is a blessing, in comparison. You can see what’s going on, and go about your business. 

That’s all straightforward enough.

Some later Christian texts, especially gnostic Christian writings, use light and dark in a more value-laden way – where light means good and pure, and dark means bad, evil, or corrupt. Paul is maybe leaning in that direction a little here. 

Sixteen hundred years later, European nations started conquering Africa and other places where darker-skinned peoples lived. And we started to add a racial dimension to those moral metaphors of light and darkness. 

Light-skinned people of European origin understood themselves as the bearers of culture, civilization, and the light of the Gospel to the dark places of the earth. 

And the idea of “darkness” increasingly tied together skin color with ideas of ignorance, childishness, and moral depravity. 

We who lead and worship in predominantly white churches have been asked to pay attention to how we use imagery and metaphors about light and darkness. Not to edit them out of our Scriptures, but to be mindful of the harm this language has caused, and can still cause. 

Sometimes learning makes us handle Scripture more carefully or in new ways. Being children of light, children of the day, means openness, honesty, integrity. Some of the metaphorical associations of “daylight” in modern American English have to do with coming to a new understanding, or with bringing something out into the open so we can take a good look at it. Developing greater awareness of the ways centuries of systemic racism have filtered into our language and thought is actually a pretty good way to be children of light. 

That brings us to inwardly digest. What a wonderful phrase! Sometimes we definitely have to really chew on Scripture to get to something that can feed us. 

Today’s Gospel parable is a puzzler. I don’t feel like I fully know what Jesus meant by it. What’s more, I’m not sure the Gospels know what Jesus meant by it. 

It is widely interpreted as a capitalist parable: Take a little, turn it into a lot, please the boss. 

We have this story in both Matthew and Luke’s Gospels, but they tell it very differently. Luke’s version includes some details that point towards a universally-hated political leader, Herod Archelaus, who was around when Jesus was a child. So it seems that for Luke’s version, the boss in the story is a bad guy. 

In Matthew’s version, if you peel back the layers of all the sermons you’ve heard about how you’re supposed to use your talents to please God – and I say this as we’re about to share a talent show! – it’s actually pretty hard to tell how we’re supposed to feel about the rich man. 

If we think he stands for God, what do we do with the fact that he is presented as harsh and greedy? 

What if instead of emulating the first two slaves, we’re supposed to see them as being welcomed in to a corrupt and exploitative status quo? Like a new employee who proves he’s willing to lie and cut corners, so he gets a promotion?… 

I’m not sure either Matthew or Luke has a coherent theological understanding of this parable. I wish we could get back to what Jesus actually said. I suspect part of the puzzle is that Jesus’ original audience would have known stuff we don’t know, that would have made the gist of the story more clear to them – like recognizing the allusions to Archelaus, or like the fact that being trusted with someone else’s money was a really big deal in the ancient world. (And a talent was a LOT of money! This was a fraught, risky situation.) 

What comes next in Matthew’s gospel is the parable of the sheep and the goats. We’ll hear it next week. That story features a true and righteous ruler – and suggests that what God is looking for in our lives is not return on investment, but feeding the hungry, clothing the cold, visiting the sick and imprisoned. 

There is – clearly – much to digest inwardly here! 

Our collect says that the goal of reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting Scripture is to hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life. First Thessalonians says that we will always be with God, whether awake or asleep, but other than that, today’s Scriptures don’t have a lot to say about life beyond this world. What I hope, rather, is that our abiding with, and grappling with, Scripture will help us feel that there’s something here worth the seeking, worth the reading, learning, and digesting. 

That in this big, strange chronicle of some part of the long human dance with God, there are texts that – by the grace of the Holy Spirit – still speak to challenges, questions, hearts and lives today/ That can still point us beyond ourselves towards something – towards Someone – bigger, better, wiser and kinder than we can imagine.

Let’s pray it one more time… 

Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Uncategorized

Sermon, November 5

This Gospel text is generally known as the Beatitudes – from the Latin word for Blessed. It may sound familiar; besides being often quoted, this is also the third time in a year that we’ve had it in the lectionary. We had the version from the Gospel of Luke last All Saints, 364 days ago, and we read Matthew’s version back in January when we were reading our way through the early chapters of Matthew’s Gospel. 

Nevertheless, thanks to a commentary on this passage at the Salt Project website, I do have a new thought to share. 

The Salt commentary points out that people have a tendency to try and turn this passage into instructions. Christians want to be blessed and here’s a list, direct from Jesus, of people who are blessed. So these must be our marching orders! 

But these are not instructions. Grammatically, these sentences are indicative, not imperative. Jesus isn’t telling people that they should go get themselves persecuted, or find cause to mourn. 

While aspiring to be a peacemaker, or to become more pure in heart, may be worthwhile, and while elsewhere Jesus does offer teachings about how we should live, that’s just not what’s happening here. 

Rather, Jesus’ words here are revealing a truth that is counter to many peoples’ assumptions, past and present. The Salt commentary says, “Looking around the world, then and now, it’s easy to conclude that the “blessed” are the rich, happy, strong, satisfied, ruthless, deceptive, aggressive, safe, and well-liked — and yet here’s Jesus, saying that despite appearances, the truly ‘blessed’ are actually the poor, mourning, gentle, hungry, merciful, pure in heart, peacemaking, persecuted, and reviled… This way of beginning [his sermon] rejects at the outset the idea that what’s most important about God’s blessing is how to get it and keep it. On the contrary, for Jesus, the most important thing about divine blessing is that it’s already graciously given; indeed, it’s already all over the place, just not where we might … expect it to be.”

The famous repeated word in this Gospel passage, “Blessed,” can be translated equally well as “happy” or “fortunate.” And that overlap in meanings itself points to the idea that anyone who seems fortunate, who has things really going for them, must be particularly blessed and favored by the Powers That Be. 

In every generation there are people and movements who rediscover and proclaim the idea that those whom God truly loves will inevitably be healthy, wealthy, and happy.

But there’s just no Scriptural basis for that idea. That’s never been the deal. 

Spiritual writer Annie Dillard put it this way in her book For the Time Being:  “You can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials with God, or you can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials without God. But you cannot live outside the welter of colliding materials.”

What this means, among other things, is that suffering – and bearing witness to suffering, which is itself a kind of suffering – is just part of life. 

If, as Jesus tells the crowd in the Gospel today, God’s blessedness particularly enfolds us when we grieve, when we struggle and yearn and shout, then there is no reason to think that belonging to God – being beloved of God – will somehow opt us out of the common human catastrophe in its many forms. 

Blessed and beloved, we will struggle. We will ache. We will grieve and rage. 

In our Revelation text today, John of Patmos gazes in wonder at the white-robed throng before the throne of God, and learns that these are those “who have come out of the great ordeal…” 

John probably had a particular great ordeal in mind – likely the persecution of Christians in his time. But there have been so many great ordeals.

Those touched by the many ordeals of human history indeed make up “a great multitude that no one [can] count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.” 

But. But belonging to God does matter. Somehow. Even if it doesn’t make us ordeal-proof. Even if we cannot opt out of the welter of colliding materials. 

The first letter of John says, boldly and tenderly:  We are God’s children now. 

There is growth and becoming – what we will be has not yet been revealed – but: Belonging, blessedness, belovedness, are already given. We are already a people claimed and called. Held in holy love.  Blessed to be a blessing. 

I think I say this every year at All Saints but it bears repeating: We are used to hearing “saint” used for extraordinary people, people with stories of miracles or martyrdoms or great acts of courage or faithfulness or self-denial to their name. 

But the early churches called all their members saints. People burdened by sorrow or beaten down by the daily struggle. People who never have enough. People who can’t reconcile themselves to the world as it is.  The hungry, the lonely, the strange.  Happy. Fortunate. Blessed. Beloved. 

Saints. 

What does that word mean, anyway? 

I know that going to etymology, word origins, is a frowned-upon tactic in freshman composition classes.  But I sometimes find it really interesting to dig into the deep roots of a word, to find its nearest relations and see what that cluster of meanings might suggest.

Saint is a particularly annoying word to investigate. It comes, straightforwardly enough, from the Latin word sanctus.  As in, sanctify, or the title for the thing we say or sing in the Eucharist that begins, Holy, holy, holy.

But the definition for both those words is just, more or less, sacred. Which has the same root word if you go back another language or two. And as you go further and further back in root words and origins, everything just means sacred or holy.  It’s the proverbial turtles all the way down. 

I think the frustrating circularity here does say something about the sacred: it’s hard to capture or define in words. We know it when we come close to it, but it’s hard to do more, within the limits of human language, than say: That. That’s sacred. That’s holy. 

But I chased the etymology of saint and sacred a little further – with the help of my well-informed friend Google – to the Proto Indo-European root of this cluster of words. People who study language have figured out some possible very deep, very old roots of many of our European and Asian languages.

The likely Proto Indo-European root word here is sehk. And that root word has some other branches, which can help us think about what defines the sacred. One branch is, To seek. As in, to look persistently for something that might be hard to find. 

Another branch is, Sacrifice. Giving or offering up something of value, something important to you – not in a transaction or a trade, but perhaps as an expression of gratitude, or loyalty, or in the hopes of strengthening a relationship by showing how much it matters to you.

Another branch on that word tree is, To make a treaty or a pact. To make an arrangement between two people or groups to be at peace, or to share resources or territory; or even to become one new thing, together. 

So: Maybe the sacred is that which we seek. 

Maybe the sacred is that to which we feel called to offer something. 

Maybe the sacred is what we are missing, when we feel adrift, alone or disconnected. That with which we long to reconnect or reconcile. 

A saint, then, is a person who has some kind of relationship with the sacred, the Holy – with that Other that we can’t easily name or describe. A relationship that might include seeking; offering; reconciling and belonging. 

This is fuzzy and undefined – but that’s kind of what I like about it, because that’s how it feels to me, a lot of the time. 

It resonates with my lived experience of sainthood, of striving to live my daily life as a person who belongs to God. 

A person of faith, where by “faith” I do not mean a coherent and theologically sophisticated and unquestioning conviction of the divinity of Jesus Christ, but something more like the thread in William Stafford’s poem, The Way It is. 

Listen: William Stafford’s “The Way It Is” –  

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

I don’t know much about this poet. I don’t know what the thread was, for him. But I know that this simple poem captures something, for me, of what it feels like to choose and follow faith. 

To be particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials with God. 

To be a saint, even though I wrestle with that word. 

Tragedies happen; people get hurt and die; nothing we do can stop time’s unfolding. 

But that thread of relationship with the Holy runs through it all – that relationship that has something of seeking and something of giving and something of returning and belonging. 

Today we observe the feast of All Saints. We honor saints widely known and named, the ones with miracles and martyrdoms and great acts of courage and faith.  We remember with love our beloved dead, the faithful departed and the not-so-faithful departed too, who have gone on ahead. And – I hope – we know ourselves, and one another, to be blessed. Known and loved. Called and claimed. Saints. 

Let us now continue with the lighting of candles on our saint altar. If you are so moved, you are welcome to come forward and light a candle in memory of someone you love and miss. Take your time; we will take as long as we need. 

 

 

Salt Project commentary (accessed October 31, 2023):  

https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/10/26/blessing-comes-first-salts-commentary-for-all-saints-day?rq=All%20Saints%20

Giving Campaign

St. Dunstan’s Draft Budget for 2024

HIGHLIGHTS:

  • Our draft 2024 Proposed Budget is about $337,000.
  • This is a $8000 increase over our 2023 budget, largely due to increases in staff costs and our diocesan assessment (funds sent on to the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee). 
  • Our main source of income is the pledged giving of members and friends of the parish like you, who’ve given 85% of our budgeted income this year.  THANK YOU!
  • To balance our 2024 budget, we will need $286,000 in pledged giving. 
  • You can invest in the ministry and community of St. Dunstan’s by returning your pledge envelope by November 19.  We’re so grateful for you!

Our Draft Budget for 2024… 

On the other side of this page you can see a table summarizing our draft budget for 2024. Our budgeted expenses at this point in the budgeting process are about $337,000. Last year, our budgeted expenses were about $329,000. Here is a brief overview of the changes relative to 2023. 

Increased staff costs

  • Our diocese recommends a cost of living salary increase for continuing staff. 
  • The Music staff compensation increased slightly as part of our search and hiring process in 2023. 
  • We would like to increase the Youth Ministry position from 8 to 10 hours a week (quarter time), to better reflect the work and responsibility involved. 

Diocesan assessment

  • These are funds we send to our regional jurisdiction, the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee, to help fund its work and mission. This number comes from the Diocese, and it goes up with our income. 

Cost savings and special gifts 

These increases total around $11,000 – but they are offset by some anticipated savings, as well as special funds for particular ministries. Here are a couple of highlights. 

  • We anticipate savings on energy costs due to our new solar panels. 
  • The Diocese of Milwaukee is giving us $8000 to support our youth minister salary.  With another designated gift, we have over $10,000 committed to help fund this growth area for our parish. 

What about the income side? 

We anticipate about $50,000 from sources outside of members’ pledged giving. In addition to the special gifts mentioned above, here are our major sources of non-pledged income. 

  • We anticipate about $14,000 in financial gifts that aren’t part of someone’s pledge – either in the offering plate, through the website, or for a special occasion like Christmas and Easter offerings.  
  • We hope to bring in about $17,000 from groups using our buildings and rent from the Rectory.
  • We will use about $4000 in proceeds from special funds intended to support our annual expenses. 
  • We expect another $6000 or so in income from assorted sources.  

Our primary source of income, every year – 85% of our budgeted income in 2023 – is the pledged giving of members and friends of the parish. 

What do we need for 2024? … 

To balance our budget, based on the current version, we would need about $286,000 in pledged income. That’s a big step up from this year’s pledged income of $270,000.

We know that the many of the same forces stretching the church’s budget are affecting you, too, like higher utility and grocery prices. Many folks may not be in a position to significantly increase their pledge this year. But smaller increases can add up, and new pledges – in any amount – help us move towards our church’s financial goals. 

We have reason for confidence in this community’s generosity. In recent years, many long-term members who were very generous with their financial support have gone on ahead into God’s presence, with our love and prayers. In just the past three years, such losses have meant almost a 20% decrease in yearly pledged giving to the parish.* 

But new and increased pledges have made up the difference and kept our pledged giving strong.  Your faithfulness each year in making a pledge at the level that is right for your household has made it possible for St. Dunstan’s to sustain our common life and expand our ministries, rather than cutting back. 

When we pledge, we choose to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We choose to play our part, building on the generosity and commitment of those who have gone before, to keep St. Dunstan’s alive and thriving for those who are here today and will be here tomorrow. 

We have done amazing things together, already. Let’s think, and talk, and listen, and pray, and make our pledges – and see what we can do together, for 2024 and beyond. Every pledge, in any amount, is important and appreciated. 

 

* Many of those beloved saints left final gifts to the church, which are very important for our common life as well. Those gifts are a different kind of giving from ongoing pledged giving, and tend to be used in different ways. If you’d like to know more about this, ask Rev. Miranda or our Treasurer, Val McAuliffe. 

Giving Campaign

Giving Campaign witness statement: Carrie

Vestry member Carrie T.  spoke on Sunday about why St. Dunstan’s matters to her. Carrie based her remarks on the first two questions of the Wondering Together  questions we are exploring this season: Why did you come to St. Dunstan’s, and why do you stay?  

I started coming to St. Dunstan’s in late 2018. The first time I came was much earlier than that. It must have been about ten years ago, shortly after the Reverend Miranda Hassett started here. Like many of us here today, I grew up in a different church tradition, a different church culture. To me church has always meant community, and mine was a strong one. And I’d come to believe that my experience was an anomaly, one that could not be duplicated. Going to church anywhere else, when I bothered to go, felt hollow. 

But it was important to me that I give my child an opportunity to develop his faith. So when I moved to the Madison area, it was important to me that I find a church that was universally accepting, one that truly welcomes all comers and recognizes that each and every one of us, regardless of sexual orientation and gender expression, is made in God’s image and is to be celebrated. I knew that such a church, if I was to ever find one again, was where I needed to be and where my child needed to be.

It was easy to see on the website that St. Dunstan’s was indeed such a church. So I came to St. Dunstan’s, with my husband and my then-four year old, and tried to hide in the back row, like I always had when going into any church other than the one in which I was raised.

Let me tell you: that did not work. You can’t hide in the back in st. Dunstan’s. I mean, some of us still try sometimes, but it’s really really hard.

I have come to understand that St Dunstan’s was in the incipient stages of a transformation back in that time. A renaissance, if you will. Like many churches that I had been in, almost everyone in the pews was two decades older than I was, and often older. The only kid my child’s age was Reverend Miranda and Phil’s youngest child.

But the good people of St. Dunstan’s understood that without new members and kids around, it’s difficult to keep a church alive. And so they were making young families a priority, and were excited to see mine there. After church I tried to sneak out like I usually do, but failed miserably. The kind people of St. Dunstan’s wanted to make sure we knew that we were wanted and welcome. I didn’t know what to make of that! I wasn’t ready to belong again, not like that. So to reward their eagerness, I stayed away. For years, actually.

Until it became apparent that there was no way I could be happy, no way I could raise my child with the values that are so important to me in a community of faith, other than the one at St. Dunstan’s. So we returned years later to discover that the Reverend Miranda and the good people of St. Dunstan’s had breathed more life into the church. It was growing. St. Dunstan’s was making it a priority to make children an active part of the community. Miranda had completed a sabbatical to learn more about how to include kids as active participants rather than disruptive afterthoughts, and it was working. 

Keeping this community going during the pandemic, when so many kids were isolated and only connected with others through online video games, was no small feat and worth more than I can possibly say. Without St. Dunstan’s, I sincerely doubt that my kid would be the happy, more or less well-grounded kid that he is today, and I know that to be true for a lot of us.

The St. Dunstan’s youth program is amazing. When my kid is here he knows he is wanted. When I can’t get him here for church services, he is still super connected to the church through the youth program – the incredible educational and fun sleep-away camps, games, campfires, and more, thanks to Sharon Henes, JonMichael Rasmus, and now, Isa, and Anna too. And so, so many others. And he knows that church and his relationship with God and community is not dependent on putting on a show or going through the motions, because it’s what you’re supposed to do, but rather about meaningful participation and belonging. 

So why do I stay? I stay because of Reverend Miranda. I stay because she is so accepting and loving and wise, and because I am so grateful for her educated insights in the stories ofd the Bible, and because of her amazing capacity to work with us, make us all feel loved and accepted, and inspire us to do more. 

I stay because of the volunteerism at St. Dunstan’s, and the youth group, which until this last year was entirely run by volunteers.

The people of St. Dunstan’s, all of you, are amazing. I learn so much from all of you. We step up for each other to the extent that we are able, because we know that if we don’t, things don’t happen. 

Our community does not succeed without our most important resource, and that is ourselves. We are not a church where we can just hide in the back. Not just because we don’t let each other hide but because we know that if we do, we do not succeed. We create climate initiatives and tap trees and install solar panels and create Scripture dramas for our kids and provide music for services when we were without a music minister,  even if that meant dusting off our super rusty piano playing skills or singing a cappella, because that’s what it takes sometimes, and supporting one another in heartache and joy, and everything in between. 

We step up for our community. Through our new partnership with Jewish Social Services, we have collectively spent thousands of dollars and many many hours in grocery stores, with groceries spilling out of the cart, and learning where to buy culturally appropriate food for refugees and asylum seekers, so that they have a stocked pantry when they arrive in Madison. Because if we don’t step up for each other and our community, who will? 

We each go through times when we can’t contribute as much of our time and talent, for all kinds of reasons. I’m going through one of those times right now myself. So sometimes our contributions ebb and flow. But I know that you all have my back because you have told me so.

So why do I stay? I stay because I am needed by all of you and because I need all of you. I stay because my kid needs you; I stay because you need my kid, and other kids who have infused life into our church.

I stay because I cannot just sit in the back and let everyone else step up.

To that end we give our time, our talent, and yes, our financial contributions to the church, indeed, to each other; because if we don’t, we know we don’t work. We can’t sit in the back and expect church to keep happening.

We can’t always give what we want to – what kinds of contributions we give often fluctuate – but we give what we can. 

And so I come to you all today to ask that you continue to do so. To continue to give what you can, with the understanding that what we can do varies for all of us over times as we progress through different parts of our lives; and to ask if it is possible, for you to increase your giving if you are able. Because if we don’t, who will? 

Finances, Giving Campaign, Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon, October 22

Today is the day we kick off our fall Giving Campaign – the four weeks when we invite members and friends of St. Dunstan’s to make a pledge, a statement of your planned financial support for the church in the coming calendar year. That allows us to form a budget and plan our mission and ministries. 

And the lectionary gives us this passage from the Gospel of Matthew. In the language of the King James Bible, Jesus says famously, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s.” 

Let’s make sure we understand the story. The Roman Empire is the occupying power in Judea and Jerusalem. They demand high taxes from the populace – after all, the main reason to have an empire is to take wealth from the territories you occupy! 

People have to pay the taxes with Roman coins, bearing the image of the Emperor – just like the dead presidents on our coins. This is a problem for pious Jews because it breaks the Ten Commandments. We heard them couple of weeks ago: You shall not make for yourself any idol. Meaning: Don’t make images of living things – animals or people – and then treat them as gods. Which is exactly what Rome does with the Emperor. 

This question about taxes is intended as a trap for Jesus. If he says yes, pay your taxes, he loses credibility as a prophetic teacher. If he says no, he makes himself even more of a target for the Romans.

But he sidesteps the trap so cleverly here! He says, Hey, looks like there’s a picture of the Emperor on this coin, so it must belong to him. So give the Emperor what is his; and give God what belongs to God. 

And what belongs to God? For the faithful Jews of Jesus’ time, for us today, the answer is: well, everything. 

I do love this story, and the trickster Jesus we see here. 

And I can’t help thinking that the people who designed our lectionary were really pleased with themselves for giving us this story in late October. 

Lots of churches do giving campaigns or pledge drives at this time of year. And the lectionary tees us up for a sermon about how since everything is God’s, you owe back whatever portion of your income or wealth your church leaders may ask of you. 

But obvious as it is, I find I can’t quite preach that sermon. 

For one thing: I just don’t think one persuasive or demanding sermon is going to dramatically change how or how much people give. Either this church has earned your loyalty, your support, your investment, by who we are and what we’re doing together or what we have the capacity to become, or it hasn’t. I can’t say anything in the next five minutes to shift that. 

I think being honest about how we use our shared resources, and what we need to do what we do, can be helpful and impactful. But those kinds of nuts and bolts don’t fit well in a sermon. 

The second reason I have a hard time preaching the give everything to your church sermon that the lectionary seems to be suggesting is that I don’t believe that church is the only way you can give back to God.

I do, actually, believe that we owe God pretty much everything. But there are many ways we can use our resources, time, and skill to honor God and respond to God’s call in our lives. 

There’s lots of good work in the world that doesn’t happen through churches. 

And caring for yourself and your loved ones is also holy work. 

Now, there are ways to use our money that are not offering it back to God. Every Instagram ad or glossy catalogue in your mailbox would like to show you a few. It’s easy to use our resources in ways that are selfish or just pointless. Wrestling with that, finding our enough, can be tough this culture and economy. 

Discerning how to use our time, talent, and treasure in ways that please God, and serve God’s purposes of justice, mercy, peace and flourishing, is ongoing work for all of us. 

Giving to the church isn’t better or holier or more important than anything else. There are certainly many churches where we might have big questions about how they use their resources. 

And yet I am inviting us into generosity, in supporting this church and our shared life here. I do believe we’re doing good work together here that we couldn’t do on our own. And that some of that good work is not unique, but at least distinctive; that God has particular work for St. Dunstan’s, and that we’re striving to do it. 

I believe that St. Dunstan’s is worth our support and our investment, in the many forms that can take. 

I am encouraged and inspired on a daily basis by so many aspects of our life together here, as a church community. 

When I read today’s Epistle, I immediately resonated with Paul’s words of gratitude about this church’s “work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in Christ Jesus.” 

I thought, that sounds like the loving, lively, curious, engaged group of folks that I have the privilege of pastoring!

And then of course I got into the weeds of interpreting the text. “Work of faith and labor of love” – I got curious about work and labor. In English those words can be used the same way in some contexts, but they have some different meanings too. I wondered: What’s the difference in Greek, the language in which this letter was first written?

So I looked it up! Work is ergon, like in the word “ergonomic.” It just means, a thing you do. A deed; a project.

Some of our works of faith this year included our Kindness Fair and Creation Care Fairs; grocery shopping for refugees; putting up signs for Pride Month; helping care for the Native American mounds at Governor Nelson Park; having solar panels installed. 

We’ve done a lot of big stuff this year, in response to the areas where we have felt God’s call together. 

So if that’s work, what is labor? The Greek word is kopos. It seems to imply something more ongoing – and frankly, more demanding – than the word for work.  It suggests struggle and weariness and some amount of inconvenience. 

Paul’s phrase “labor of love” here, then, points to the bigger and deeper work of being people of love. 

The part of it all that’s not just doing but becoming. 

I can see that work of becoming people of love, underlying a lot of the projects I just named, and lots of other things too. 

I can see it in our care for the kids and youth among us – and those not among us. In a recent conversation about why youth group matters, one of the kids said, “Youth group is a space where you can be safe and be yourself, and be as wild as you need to be at the end of the week, or as tired as you need to be at the end of the week, and it doesn’t matter, because you will feel safe and accepted no matter what.” 

What a holy thing to be able to offer. 

I can see our labor of love in our efforts to build connection, listen to one another’s needs and struggles, and hold each other in faithful prayer. 

I see it in the ongoing work of seeking ways to respond together to climate change and climate grief; to loneliness; to those marginalized and targeted by hateful language or laws. 

I can see it in our efforts to care for our elders, and to lay our beloved dead to rest with love and dignity – something we’ve had too much practice with this past year, frankly. 

So I want to join Paul in naming with gratitude what I see in this church: your works of faith and your labor of love.

What about steadfastness of hope in Jesus Christ? 

I know hope can be hard work at times – though it can be easier to hold hope in community than on our own. 

What Paul names here isn’t just abstract or generalized hope. It’s hope in Jesus Christ. Which means: Hope that God is with us, in the struggle, the mess, the pain; and that Love will ultimately win, even if hatred and death seem triumphant for a season. 

Let’s turn here briefly towards poor Moses, still struggling with the burden of leading God’s recalcitrant people through the wilderness. The somewhat formal language of our Bible translation can hide the fact that Moses is complaining bitterly, here. The Message Bible paraphrase has Moses saying, “Look, you tell me, ‘Lead this people,’ but you don’t let me know whom you’re going to send with me. You tell me, ‘I know you well and you are special to me.’ If I am so special to you, let me in on your plans. And remember: this is your people, your responsibility.”

This text follows closely on last week’s story: While Moses was on the holy mountain meeting with God and receiving the Ten Commandments, the people got restless and demanded that Aaron – Moses’ brother and second in command – make them some gods. So Aaron takes all their gold jewelry, makes it into a golden calf, and tells the people, “This is the god who brought you out of Egypt!” And the people have a big party, eating and drinking and who knows what else. 

God is NOT HAPPY with any of this; and neither is Moses. But Moses pleads with God to have mercy on the people – not to abandon them. 

What Moses is really asking in today’s passage is, Are you still with us, God?  In spite of everything?  In spite of the people choosing a cow statue over your power and glory – and otherwise complaining, misbehaving, and acting out in every possible way? 

Moses pleads – and God relents, and commits to traveling on with the people. And then Moses asks for something big: a glimpse of God’s glory. I love the Hebrew word for glory: kavod. It means, most literally, weight. I have felt that holy weight, now and then.

God gives Moses a limited glimpse – of God’s goodness, not God’s glory; and only a look at God’s back, as God passes by, not the full glory of God’s face, the Divine countenance. Old Testament scholar Robert Alter says that while it may seem odd to us, it was natural for these “ancient monotheists” to “imagine [God] in… physical terms”, as having a face, a hand, a back. 

But, Alter says, the text is saying something bigger here:  “The Hebrew writer suggests… that God’s intrinsic nature is inaccessible, and perhaps also intolerable, to the finite mind of [humanity], but that something of [God’s] attributes— [God’s] ‘goodness,’ the directional pitch of [God’s] ethical intentions, the afterglow of the effulgence of [God’s] presence – can be glimpsed by humankind.” [Read that again.]

THIS is what we are about, as people of faith. Seeking glimpses of God’s goodness, God’s intentions for the world, God’s glory. Striving to mirror back that goodness, and share it with others. 

And maybe what Paul calls “steadfastness of hope in Jesus Christ” just means sticking with a community that’s doing that seeking and striving together. 

I have to remind myself every year that the Giving Campaign season is, ultimately, a time of turning towards the Holy to guide us. It’s not about us; and we can’t sustain any of this on our own. 

There’s a quote from Christian ethicist and writer Stanley Hauerwas up next to my desk: “The church is a prophetic community necessary for the world to know that God refuses to abandon us. We are God’s hope for the world; you are a servant of that hope.”

May our work together in these weeks be a sign and an instrument of God’s hope for the world, manifest among and through us. Amen. 

Finances

Financial report, October 2023

Budget Summary, Third Quarter 2023

Income 

On the income side, we are running a little behind on pledge income, but we find we usually catch up towards the end of the year; in addition, some new members and others are giving very regularly and generously. Plate, special occasion and pledged giving, taken together, are almost exactly on budget. 

The biggest challenge on the income side is that rental income from the Rectory has been lower than anticipated, due to a pause between tenants for some needed repairs. New tenants are moving in and we will start to receive rental income again soon. 

We are not yet generating much building use income from the Parish Center. If you know of a group or event that might like to use one of our spaces, please put them in touch! 

Overall, thanks to a special gift, as well as people’s generosity with plate and pledge giving, we are only about $3000 behind budget on the income side. 

Expense

Lay Staff expenses are below budget due to the vacancy in the music staff role over the summer. Outreach will give away their full budget before the end of the year, as usual. 

Our Buildings and Grounds expenses are high due to high utility bills, and snow plowing expenses from last winter/spring. However, our electric bill for September was $53! While we expect bills to go up again as we turn on the heat (which is largely gas-powered), we are still excited to see the impact of our new solar panels in this way. 

Other areas of the budget are pretty close to budget, overall – some a little low, some a little high. Overall, we’re about $7000 over budget on the Expense side at this point in the year, due mostly to utility and snow removal expenses.

Overview

Our budget for 2023 was a deficit budget to begin with. Given our current income and expenses, income is about $17,500 behind expenses right now. We hope we can improve on that in the remaining months of the year, through managing our expenses wherever possible and through the the continued generosity of members and friends. 

What does this mean for St. Dunstan’s? We are not in immediate financial danger. We don’t have any debt, and we do have some funds and assets that help cushion us in a year like this. However, as we explain in our fall Giving Campaign materials, we’re not in a position to cover deficit budgets indefinitely. 

There are lots of signs of vitality and hope in our congregation. Your parish leaders are trying to discern wisely about how we feel called to grow and serve, without making too many decisions on the basis of money. On the other hand, we know there is some big-picture work to do on moving towards greater financial sustainability for our parish. Please pray with us for wisdom, hope, and possibility. 

If you’re interested in joining the Finance Committee, to be part of financial planning and decision-making at St. Dunstan’s, talk with Rev. Miranda or our Treasurer Val McAuliffe.

scripture, Sermons

Homily, Oct. 15

Banquet Parable Parallels

Please click the link above to get the document referenced in the sermon!

  1. Matthew’s parable 
    1. Why read this today? Revised Common Lectionary. 
      1. We get Matthew’s version of this parable, which is also in Luke, and I believe Matthew’s version is pretty distorted – – why it sounds like such a terrible party!  
        1. A wonderful paper I found exploring this parable, by Ernest van Eck at the University of Pretoria: “Almost all scholars agree that the Matthean version of the parable is secondary.” 
  1. Look at page – comparisons. 
    1. Matthew and Luke are two of the four Gospels (explain). 
      1. Mark is the earliest written Gospel. 
      2. Most Biblical scholars agree that Matthew and Luke both draw on Mark, AND seem to have had access to another source that seems to have been a collection of Jesus’ sayings and parables. (Q source)
        1. There are debates about that hypothesis but it’s held up pretty well over time. 
        2. So when we see something in both Mt and Lk, that isn’t in Mark, we might guess that they got it from Q; & then they both maybe put their own spin on it & worked it into the narrative in their own way. 
    2. And then there’s Thomas. 
      1. Gospel of Thomas – discovered in 1945 as part of a cache of ancient documents found in Egypt. 
      2. Dating uncertain; probably sometime in the 2nd century, later than the canonical gospels, but built on/contains some earlier material. 
      3. It is a sayings gospel – no narrative, just teachings. Overlaps by about 2/3 with the things Jesus says in the canonical Gospels. 
        1. Some of the other stuff is … real weird. 
          1. “Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man.”
          2. “Whoever has come to understand the world has found (only) a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world.”
          3. Or my favorite – simply: “Become passers-by.”
        2. Thomas likely the work of early Christian sect – a group that had split off from the mainstream church – had this set of their own teachings (“secret” teachings of Jesus), reflecting a more gnostic perspective. 
          1. Gnostic – spell it. Gnostic movements or wings within many religious traditions. 
            1. Characteristics: Emphasis on secret knowledge; intentionally cryptic; usually a strong sense of dualism between body and spirit, this world and another divine world. 
        3. The point here is: Thomas is weird. I think early church leaders were correct in deciding that this gospel did not belong in the Christian scriptures that would be carried forward as our holy text. 
          1. But, when it also has a parallel text to something that’s in our Gospels, it can be interesting and informative to look at it alongside!
  1. So, let’s look. 
    1. We’ve already heard Matthew. Will someone read Luke’s version? Skip the part in italics; it shows us how Luke puts this parable in the context of a dinner party. 
      1. [Have somebody read it]
      2. Now let’s hear Thomas.  [Have somebody read it]
    2. Comparing these texts… 
      1. All the really scary stuff in Matthew – the king sending troops to murder the invited guests and burn their city! The guests who weren’t dressed correctly being thrown into outermost darkness! – that is JUST in Matthew. And there’s strong reason to believe that’s Matthew’s editorial voice. 
      2. As I’ve said before: Matthew lived through the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70, after the Jewish revolt that started in 66. He makes sense of that trauma by blaming it on the Jews who rejected Jesus as Messiah. 
      3. Sending troops to kill the guests and burn their city is describing what happened to Jerusalem. 
      4. The wedding garment part is just weird. But it’s very clear that this is also Matthew’s addition. 
        1. “Where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” appears SIX TIMES in Matthew; ONCE in Luke; nowhere else in the Bible. 
      5. So: Matthew has stamped this story, as he received it presumably from Q, with his own trauma and rage. Why I’m mad that the RCL gives us his version!
    3. Comparing Luke and Thomas… 
      1. A lot more similar – quite recognizably the same story. 
      2. Luke’s framing of this parable: Jesus is at dinner at the home of a person of status. He criticizes the way people invite “friends and relatives and rich neighbors” who will invite you back in return – so your hospitality only seems like generosity when it’s actually part of a system of honor and reciprocity where you gain status by hosting an event, and will be given favor in return. 
        1. Jesus suggests pointedly that people try having a dinner party for people who can’t invite them to an equally nice party in return. 
      3. Van Eck notes that some scholars say the inviting of the poor, crippled, blind and lame is something Luke has added to the parable, because it’s the kind of thing Luke likes to emphasize. However, says van Eck, you can also flip that: “Because eating with the poor, crippled, blind and lame was so important for Jesus, Luke included it [here].” There are other passages that support that conclusion! 
        1. Luke – third invitation – “roads and lanes” – the host wants to fill their home. 
          1. Social geography of first century Palestine. People in your neighborhood, likely invitees, would share your social status. The farther you go out, the bigger the social drop in who you’re bringing into your home. A big deal, in a very status- and honor-conscious society. 
          2. This third invitation feels very Lukan. Even though I think Luke is right to understand the inclusion of the marginalized as central to Jesus’ message and mission, it also seems very possible to me that Luke added on that final invitation to really drive the point home. 
      4. Thomas – More elaborate and specific excuses, and an explicit anti-business slant. Those making excuses are too busy making money off the backs of their neighbors to come to this party. “Buyers and traders will not enter the places of my father!” 
        1. Thomas is not interested in who *does* end up at the party. That part is totally absent here. 
          1. Lots of stuff in Thomas that does have parallels in the Gospels is shorter, abbreviated. 
          2. But also: In gnostic thinking, defining who’s out  can be as important as defining who’s in. So it tracks that Thomas frames this story as a story about how terrible business people are. 
        2. What Thomas’s text does, though, is possibly add weight to Luke’s version as being more likely closer to the original. A lot more like Luke than Matthew. 
  1. Jesus’ “original” parable? 
    1. Everybody takes whatever Jesus actually said, and tries to make sense of it and re-tell it reflecting their concerns. 
    2. Is it possible to peel away the layers and get to Jesus’ original teaching – and what Jesus meant by it? 
      1. Somebody hosts a party – a banquet. They start by inviting the usual suspects – people with existing connections and relationships, people of comparable social standing. 
      2. But those people don’t want to come. 
        1. Van Eck’s paper: A new idea for me – The excuses are snubs. I always kind of saw that, but had never thought about it. But the universal refusal of the first round of invitees means something. 
          1. The invited guests in the story feel like this party is not the place to be. Van Eck says: “Attendance was socially inappropriate.” Maybe they don’t want to be beholden to that host – to feel like they owe them a favor. Or maybe that host is not generally socially esteemed. 
          2. A surprising and provocative idea for me because this is one of the parables where it seems like the central figure is a stand-in for God.
            1. I can understand feeling cautious about owing God a favor, or getting drawn into God’s social circle! God is weird and unpredictable, keeps strange company, and often makes big demands! And in our time and place, being known to be a friend of God does not generally boost your social status!
      1. The rejection of the first round of invitees ties in with a lot of the passages in the Gospels about people who feel like they don’t need what Jesus is offering. It’s easy for me to see this as part of Jesus’ story. 
      2. But the host really wants to have this party. Everything is ready! The food, the drinks, the music! They need some people to join their celebration. So they send out their slave to invite literally anyone they can find. 
        1. People who are usually not invited to the party, get invited to the party. It becomes a wild chaotic gathering of misfits, outsiders and weirdos. Presumably they eat and drink and dance and have a grand old time. (And let’s be clear, nobody accuses them of wearing the wrong clothes and throws them into outermost darkness.) 
      2. It makes me happy to think about what this means for the guests. Lots of us know what it feels like to not be on the A-list of invitees for something or another. Joyful to think that God’s party isn’t like that. 
    1. Van Eck: Not just what this means for the guests but what it means about the host. 
      1. This host rejects the expectations of their time and their social class, and instead gives to those who cannot give back; breaks down social norms about who does and doesn’t belong, status and class, purity and pollution; and treats everybody as family. (Van Eck, paraphrased) 
      2. The glimpse of God’s way of doing things that we get through this parable, as Jesus likely told it, is a glimpse of a world in which those with social standing and power do not “ostracize or marginalise the so-called unclean or expendable.” 
      3. And, Van Eck points out: “Like the host in the parable, Jesus regularly associated with the so-called ‘impure’ and ate with the so-called ‘sinners’ of his day.” And seemed profoundly unconcerned about how this might affect his own social status – choosing instead to care about those with whom he spent his time, their needs, their hopes, their hearts and souls. 
    2. That’s the core of this parable, which it’s almost impossible to pry out of Matthew’s terrifying anti-party. That’s the message of a Savior I want to follow – and the vision of a holy banquet I’d like to attend. Amen. 

Source:

VAN ECK, Ernest. When patrons are patrons: A social-scientific and realistic reading of the parable of the Feast (Lk 14:16b-23). Herv. teol. stud.,  Pretoria ,  v. 69, n. 1, p. 1-14,  Jan.  2013 .   Available here. Accessed on  10  Oct.  2023.