All posts by Miranda Hassett

Sermons, Spiritual Practices

Sermon, Nov. 14

One effect of being in one parish for nearly eleven years is that the kids start to grow up. As I watch them mature, knowing that they’ll be off on new adventures in a year or two or four or six, I’ve realized that what I hope they’ll carry with them – what I hope we all carry with us, when we log off or walk out the doors on a Sunday – isn’t so much belief in God.  What I want most of all – for our young people, for all of us – is a sense of being in a living relationship with God.

It’s hard to sustain belief without relationship – and it’s pretty easy to sustain belief with relationship. If you’re talking with someone on a regular basis, you tend to assume they exist. Relationship really is the heart of the matter. 

This is a humbling thing to realize because I don’t think I’ve modeled or taught it especially well. When we’re ordained, priests are charged with responsibility to proclaim the faith of the church – which pushes us towards things like teachings and doctrines. And then there’s prayer – the heart of our relationship with God. The Episcopal Church is good at inviting people into formal, set ways of prayer, individually or together. There’s good stuff about reading a prayer off the page, using it as a container for whatever we’re bringing to God. 

But we don’t always have a prayer book on hand – and what we’re carrying inside us does not always fit those containers very well. When someone comes into church like Hannah, praying from their heart, with tears and trembling… I like to think most priests would handle it better than Eli did, and at least not assume they’re drunk! But we don’t entirely know what to do with prayers that don’t fit into the restrained and elegant form of a Prayer Book collect. So today I’m going to take a cue from Hannah, and talk a little bit about prayer, as the heart of relationship with the Holy. 

There are a lot of kinds of prayer. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to focus on my own prayer life. There are the prayers I share with the church – on Sundays, at Compline, and so on. I bring my own heart-prayers and intentions to those gatherings, and join you in yours. There are family prayers – grace before dinner, Advent prayers, occasionally shared prayer for a particular person or need. There are my personal daily-ish set prayers, involving Scripture, prayer for others, and reflecting back on the day in the evening. 

And then… there’s my ongoing conversation with God. (Or with Jesus, or with the Holy Spirit, whatever name or aspect of the Holy feels easiest to call upon in the moment.) 

The conversational part of my prayer life connects with all that other stuff, but it’s different. It’s not in fancy words, and sometimes not in words at all. It’s not context-dependent; these are anywhere, anytime prayers. It flows from what’s going on in my life and in my heart. It’s the least structured part of my prayer life, and the most fundamental. 

I’m not talking about chattering at God all day. It’s more like touching base, maybe daily, maybe a few times a week, about the stuff that’s on my mind and in my heart. In my mother’s book about Saint Nicholas of Myra, she describes how he would turn his heart and mind towards the Mystery at the center of things. I like that image a lot – but let me be honest that sometimes it’s a pretty quick turn towards the Mystery, and then back towards whatever else I’m doing. 

In some ways this aspect of my prayer life looks a lot like a relationship with a close friend or family member. Sometimes we might sit down to have a real talk about something; sometimes I might ask their advice; occasionally there are big feelings to address. But a lot of the time it’s a casual, “Hey, remember not to lose track of this commitment!” Or “Hey, this is giving me trouble, can you help me figure it out sometime?” 

Conversation with a friend or partner or parent probably happens mostly in words – spoken or texted. With God, the channels of communication are much broader. On my side, I’m just…  talking to God. Sometimes out loud, sometimes silently, sometimes in writing. With or without words. Sometimes using music, or art. Some people find that silence and stillness help. Some people find that movement helps. 

On God’s side the channels are even more diverse. I might hear God speak deep in my heart. Or through the words of friends or strangers. I’ve heard God speak to me through Scripture or other things I’m reading. Through art; through music; through the natural world. Through pivot points where a path suddenly became clear. Through the occasional ridiculous coincidence. 

We have to learn to listen for God’s side of the conversation. Whether we’re looking for guidance or help, resolution of a difficulty, easing of pain, or simply the next right thing to do – God’s response may require some listening, some noticing. The clarity or mercy we’re seeking may not show up in the form we expect. 

You’ve probably heard the story about the man trapped on a roof during a flood who prays for God to save him as the waters rise. People come by in a rowboat and offer to help him; he says, No, I’m a praying man, I have faith that God will save me! Next comes a motorboat and then a helicopter, and the same thing happens: the man refuses their help, preferring to trust in God. Later, in Heaven, the man is furious at God: “I had faith in you! Why didn’t you help me?” And God says, I sent you a rowboat, a motorboat, and a helicopter; what were you waiting for?… 

It’s an old joke but there’s something to it. I’m sure I’ve missed rowboats before because I was looking for, I don’t know, some sort of angelic chariot? 

So, God’s replies to our prayers aren’t always easy to recognize. Furthermore: God’s timing is different from ours. Sometimes God leaves us on read for a while. Hannah becomes pregnant within months of her fervent prayer; but those months must have felt long in the living of them. Sometimes we have to be patient with God. I’m confident God often has to be patient with us. 

Most of the time, God’s side of our conversation, as I’m able to perceive it, is occasional and subtle. I start reading something and realize it speaks directly to something I’ve been wondering about for weeks. I happen to mention a problem to a friend who immediately offers me three concrete solutions. I wonder about whether something is the right direction for our congregation, then a new member shows up out of the blue with a deep passion for that exact issue. 

What’s the difference between things like this, and just a lucky turn in daily life?  Like finding cool boots in my size at the thrift store – which is fun, but which I would not generally interpret as divine intervention? How do I know when something I read or hear or see or experience is a glimpse of the mercy or guidance or assurance I’ve been seeking from God? I don’t know. Something deep inside me says: Pay attention. This. Now. Sometimes it feels like catching something heavier than expected. Sometimes my breath or my heartbeat tell me that something’s happening. Sometimes my eyes prickle with tears. Sometimes something just becomes almost imperceptibly clearer, or lighter, or softer. 

On the other hand, I’ve had a few times in my life when God answered me in laughably obvious ways. I remember a time in my 20s when I was driving home on a dark county road at night and struggling with a question of faith. 

I remember asking God – demanding of God – If this is what you want from me, give me a sign! And right on cue: A shooting star blazed across the sky above the road ahead of me. 

It was a precious, holy moment for me – but as soon as I put it into words, it sounds like something from Reader’s Digest. At best, too tidy, too sweet; at worst, a glimpse into an unsteady and desperate mind, ascribing personal meaning to space debris. 

In his book Unapologetic – an exploration of the lived experience of Christian faith – Francis Spufford describes a comparable moment from his own life. He’d spent the night arguing with his wife, and in the morning he went to a cafe to try to write. And as he sat there drinking his coffee and struggling to focus, somebody put in a cassette of the Adagio movement of Mozart’s clarinet concerto. Spufford writes, “If you don’t know it, it is a very patient piece of music… It sounds as if it comes from a world where sorrow is perfectly ordinary, but still there is more to be said. I had heard it lots of times, but this time it felt to me like news. It said: everything you fear is true. And yet… Everything you have done wrong, you have really done wrong. And yet…” It was exactly what he needed to hear at that moment, to calm his soul and help him move forward. 

A few pages later he talks about the nuts and bolts of how he makes sense of a moment like this. He says he doesn’t believe that God suddenly showed up in that cafe at that moment: “God is continually present everywhere anyway, … underlying all cafes, all cassettes, all composers.” Instead, he says, two centuries ago, Mozart wrote a piece of music that successfully expresses the reality that the universe is sustained by love. And when that music started to play, on that particular morning, he simply became able to notice what was always already true: that we are more than our worst moments, and that we are never abandoned. 

When we talk to God honestly – When we pray from our hearts, unfiltered, unpolished – our prayers are often not things we’d say out loud in church. We pray grasping prayers for things we want or think we need. We pray from our pain, our bitterness, our anger, our envy. Our fear or confusion or despair. How could we not? 

When we read Hannah’s prayer as our Song of Faith today, I skipped a verse: 

“The woman who was barren has birthed seven children,
but the mother with many sons has lost them all!”

Hannah seems to be imagining her rival Peninnah losing all her children, as punishment for her cruelty. The Song of Mary, the Magnificat, in Luke’s Gospel, is built on the foundations of Hannah’s song. But Hannah’s prayer bears the traces of her pain and anger. So do ours, sometimes. It doesn’t matter. We can’t hide those feelings from God; we might as well pray them. 

And how? There are so many ways. When words fail you or you’re weary of the sound of your own voice, anything can become a vessel for prayer. Maybe it’s choosing which salts to burn with colored flame, like we did at FireChurch a couple fo weeks ago. Maybe it’s holding tight to a rock and saying a name in your heart before you put it down on the green felt. It could be a picture you draw in your journal while thinking about a friend you’re worried about. Poet Mary Oliver offers this advice for prayer: “Just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate; this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.”

What I’ve shared here is from my own experience. If you recognize any of it, I would love to hear about the texture of your ongoing conversation with the Holy. If all of this is new to you – if you’ve never heard prayer described this way, or been invited into it – I hope you will try it. And if you feel that you have tried it, and heard only silence – then let’s talk. Or maybe I could connect you with someone else in this congregation. Clergy are not experts on personal prayer, and many of my best mentors have not been ordained. I know there are some people of prayer in this congregation who would be glad to companion someone. 

I’d like to close with a prayer for all of us… May we be as bold and open-hearted as Hannah in bringing the prayers and yearnings of our hearts to God. And in times when we see a prayer answered or a hope fulfilled, may we, like Hannah, notice God’s hand at work, and give thanks. Amen. 

Church Seasons & Holy Days

Homily, All Saints 2021 (Nov. 7)

The promise isn’t that there will be no loss. It’s that what is lost will one day be restored.

The promise isn’t that there will be no tears. It’s that the tears will be tenderly wiped away.

The promise isn’t that there will be no death. It’s that even though we die, we live. 

And no, I don’t know what that means. Nobody on this side of the veil does. 

All Saints is a feast day that brings together a lot of things. Remembering and giving thanks for the saints who, in their time and place, have helped God’s light shine out, all those we have called to stand beside us, and so many more.  

It means holding the memory of our own beloved dead – those who may not be named by the church or remembered beyond their dearest ones, but who, because we knew them, changed us for good.

And it means celebrating that we, too, are God’s faithful ones, chosen and called, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, set apart to live lives oriented towards God’s purposes on earth. 

 Our three-year cycle of readings points us towards different aspects of all this, each year.This year’s readings invite us to pause and grieve, in hope. 

Let me confess that I’ve taken a liberty with our Gospel text today. What is actually on the calendar is the next part of this story. Martha’s sister Mary comes to Jesus; she greets him the same way Martha did: “‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” She is weeping and the others gathered there are weeping and Jesus starts to weep too. Then he goes to the tomb where Lazarus is laid, and he raises him from the dead. 

It’s a powerful and important story. But this part – Jesus’ dialogue with Martha – is more reflective of our experiences of loss. For that reason, it’s often used as a text at funerals. 

Like Martha, we might reproach God: Surely, if you had been here – beside this hospital bed, on this dark road, in this lonely room – my loved one would not have died.

Like Martha, we hope to see our loved ones again one day – what the Rite I funeral service calls “a reasonable and holy hope” – but that Last Day seems too distant to offer much immediate comfort. 

Like Martha – like Job! – we try to find some kind of grounding in a conviction that, whatever else happens, God is God. 

Martha’s brother is restored to her, mere moments later. That’s not how it usually happens. 

We lose someone – or something: possibilities, precious things, beloved places. And we grieve. We ache. We rage. Sometimes we go numb. 

Today our All Saints texts tell us: God sees. God hears. God weeps with us. And that the new reality that is slowly and mysteriously being born, under and behind and within our reality – in God’s new world, promised in our Isaiah and Revelation texts, written nearly a thousand years apart – Death will be no more. There will be an end to grief, to loss. A loving God will wipe away all our tears. 

In the meantime, tough: how do we live in this reality? Where not to love seems intolerably lonely –  but to love means the inevitability of loss? 

In the Marvel TV series Wandavision, a character speaks to another character, who is grieving deep losses, and says: What is grief but love persevering? 

What is grief but love persevering? A beautiful line just asking to be quoted in a sermon. But I’m sure that many in grief, if there were a switch to flip to turn off that love when the beloved is gone, would consider it. Just to ease the ache of absence. 

But there is no switch. We were made for love, and so we were made for grief. 

At our clergy retreat last week we were invited to spend some time with a poem. The one that spoke to me was by Rainer Maria Rilke. It imagines the words God speaks to each soul just before it begins its life on earth – including this: 

Let everything happen to you: the beautiful and the terrifying.

One must just keep going. No feeling is final. 

Don’t let yourself lose Me. 

In my favorite Barbara Kingsolver novel, Animal Dreams, there’s a quotation that I think of pretty often – You can’t just replace people you love with other people. But you can trust that there will keep on being people to love.  

The promise isn’t that love will always be easy. It’s that love is never wasted. 

The promise isn’t that there will be no loss. It’s that what is lost will one day be restored.

The promise isn’t that there will be no tears. It’s that – someday, somehow, somewhere – our tears will be tenderly wiped away, by a God who knows our hearts and holds all our sorrows in the same loving hands that framed the universe. 

AuDivina, Formation, Music

AuDivina: Courage Songs, October 2021

AuDivina is short for Audientia Divina – Holy Listening. It’s a practice we developed here during Covid as another way to keep music at the heart of our common life while we were unable to sing together. In a nutshell, we listen to not-so-churchy music that relates to churchy or Biblical themes and narratives. We gather song suggestions from members of the parish and friends, via Facebook and email.

In October our theme was Courage. Here are the songs we listened to and discussed. There’s a longer list of recommended songs, below.

(Our November theme will be Gratitude, if you’d like to send something to Rev. Miranda at !)

1. Throw the Fear – Tom Rosenthal (2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_MKfWgGrJQ

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Tom-rosenthal-throw-the-fear-lyrics

2. Heavy – Birdtalker (2016).  – Watch some of video? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioMByL8KtBk

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Birdtalker-heavy-lyrics

3. What’s Up Danger – from Into the Spiderverse (2018)

We got several suggestions FROM musicals/movies – more so than with previous themes. I think this points to how important narrative is to us. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y88LVU7MAe4

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Blackway-and-black-caviar-whats-up-danger-lyrics

4. Still Sun – Obongjayar (2019)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba2NdGIXcu8

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Obongjayar-still-sun-lyrics

5. My Time (An Optimistic Rebuttal) – Rav (2021) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C8rPn4reZo

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Rav-my-time-an-optimistic-rebuttal-lyrics

6. Nina Cried Power – Hozier (2018)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2YgDua2gpk

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Hozier-nina-cried-power-lyrics

7. Soy Yo – Bomba estereo. (Watch the video!!) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxWxXncl53U

Words in English: https://genius.com/Genius-english-translations-bomba-estereo-soy-yo-english-translation-lyrics

THE EXTENDED LIST… 

Brave – Sara Bareilles

Waka Waka – Shakira

Fight Song – Rachel Platten

To dream the impossible dream – from Man of La Mancha

The Bullpen – Dessa

Ain’t No Man –  The Avett Bros

You can do this hard thing – Carrie Newcomer

When you walk through a storm – from South Pacific

I won’t back down – Tom Petty

Better Things – The Kinks

Defying Gravity – from Wicked

Warrior – Wyrd Sisters

Let the River Run – Working Girl

Soles – Rav feat. Kill Bill (2017) 

Batonga – Angelique Kidjo 

The person who suggested this one said it gives her a sense of energy without even knowing what it means. I looked it up: “West African singer, songwriter and UNICEF International Goodwill Ambassador Angelique Kidjo made up the word ‘batonga.’ At a time when education for girls was not socially acceptable in her native country of Benin, Angelique invented the word as a response to taunts when she was going to school. The boys did not know what the word meant, but to her it was an assertion of the rights of girls to education. Later it became the title of a hit song of Angelique’s in which her lyrics address a young African girl and can be roughly translated as, ‘you are poor but you dance like a princess, and you can do as you please regardless of what anyone tells you.’”

Uncategorized

Sermon, Oct. 24

What matters right now? 

I have a slip of paper on the frame around my laptop screen, with those words on it. Now and then I notice it. It’s almost always a useful question. A question that invites me to pause, and re-assess. 

What matters right now?

In today’s Gospel, Jesus’ disciples have a clear idea that what matters is the journey they’re on. This is not just any old walk across the countryside. Jesus is leaving Jericho ON HIS WAY TO JERUSALEM. The Triumphal Entry – the event we remember and re-enact on Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week and Jesus’ path to the cross – is the very next thing that happens.

I don’t know exactly what the disciples think is about to happen. They definitely don’t anticipate what Jesus anticipates: his arrest, trial, and execution. They might be banking on some combination of a people’s revolution and an angelic army that will kick out the Roman occupying forces and install Jesus as a new divine King on the throne of David. So they are champing at the bit! Things are about to get exciting! Tell that beggar to shut up and not bother the Master! We’re on our way!

But then they are interrupted. Because Bartimaeus won’t shut up. And the interruption becomes the story. The thing that matters. 

I don’t know whether Jesus stops because he finally hears Bartimaeus – or because he consults his own inner slip of paper that asks, “What matters right now?” Regardless: Jesus stands still. He calls Bartimaeus to him. And Bartimaeus is healed. 

Healed, and changed. Mark says that he follows Jesus on the way, meaning both that he joined the crowd headed for Jerusalem –  AND that he became a disciple, part of the movement. Which is probably why we know his name. 

The journey continues; but for a few transformative moments, the interruption became the story. There was a pause. There was listening.  There was noticing of needs, previously ignored. There was a fresh assessment of what matters.

We have lived this, haven’t we, dear ones? Our Great Interruption is almost too familiar to talk about. Covid forced us to pause…. and in the pause, we listened. We noticed needs we had ignored – in our own lives and in the larger systems that surround us. The differing impacts of the pandemic laid bare the starkness of economic inequality in our country. Locked down in our homes with few distractions, many of us saw more clearly than we had before the naked violence against people of color that our country tolerates. Likewise, we’ve watched the terrifying impact of increasingly chaotic and extreme weather systems worldwide. Global climate change no longer seems like tomorrow’s problem. 

And now, as we slowly emerge, I’m hearing from a lot of people that they’re pretty ambivalent about “getting back to normal.” The pause – the Great Interruption – gave us time to notice that lots of thing about Beforetimes Normal were not that great. Collectively, we’d like our “new Normal” to be better, kinder, more just, more inclusive, more mindful of our fragility and our interdependence. Individually, we’d like our “new Normals” to make more room for what matters. 

Where does church fit into all that?

Why does church matter, right now? 

One answer, of course, is that church matters because we gather to worship the Creator and Source, the Word and Friend, the Breath of Life and Advocate. There’s something precious and necessary about choosing, together, to present ourselves to the Love that formed the universe. Not everyone finds that they need a community in order to regularly turn their hearts towards God. But many of us find that it helps. A lot. 

Another answer is that churches can be a way to organize people’s efforts and resources to do good in the world. We do that some, here – and we do it reasonably well, though I suspect we have the capacity for more.

But church doesn’t only matter for what we can do out there. Church matters for what we do HERE. Within, and among. 

A couple of weeks ago, Sharad Yadav, the pastor of a church in Portland, wrote up a list of reasons to commit to a church. I think he was probably inspired by the same question I’ve just asked – what’s the value of church, in this time of the Great Interruption, the Great Reassessment?

Yadav says that church, at its best, can help us stay focused on what matters. He writes: To join a church is to live in rebellion against the … forces which are brainwashing you into making your consumer desire the center of the world.

[To join] a church is to organize your life around a time to confess your limitations, culpability and imperfections – together with other people.

Joining a church is a way of maintaining healthy skepticism about human knowledge and capacities in the language of divine mystery.

So: Stepping out of our cultural currents, repenting and making amends, reminding ourselves of our place in the universe – these are important practices for keeping our minds and hearts clear and oriented. 

Church, at its best, can help us know our own worth – and our capacity to share. Yadav writes, To join a church is to cultivate an environment …where your life is not measured according to any other purpose or goal than to discover and enjoy your own humanity.  

And: To join a church is to cultivate an imagination for how your unique talents and creative potential can be offered on purpose for love instead of money.

And church, at its best, can help us develop and practice our better-tomorrow skills. It can be a space where we explore, together, how to live more fully into our hopes and intentions. Yadav writes, Joining a church organizes your financial priorities around supporting an inclusive community for vulnerable people . . . that you actually have to live with.

Joining a church is a life lesson in how to deal with [jerks] without retaliating, dehumanizing or running away…

And… Joining a church is a way of practicing –  among a small group of people over a significant period of time – what you’d like the world to be like.

What would you like the world to be like?  How could we practice that together, here? 

I was talking with a young person of this parish recently who said he’d love to see St Dunstan’s lean into becoming our own squirrelly little mutual aid network. Mutual aid is a model in which people cooperate and share resources for the good of everyone in the community.  

The first step, of course, is to break down the foolish illusion that everybody here is FINE, economically, emotionally, employment-wise, and so on. Lots of us have needs – and the assumption that we’re all middle-class, healthy, happy, and totally have our stuff together, only makes it harder to name our struggles and and extend care for one another. I see opportunities on a weekly basis – whether it’s connecting the newly-bereaved with those already walking that road; or passing on hand-me-downs; or sharing skills like canning or knitting; or connecting the bored with the lonely, or the curious with the knowledgeable; or loaning out a specialized tool; or accompanying someone to their first AA meeting.

One of my favorite pandemic phenomena here at St. Dunstan’s was the spontaneous emergence of the puzzle box. There’s a plastic tub outside the church’s front door where you can borrow a puzzle, or leave one for others to borrow. If you’re local and like puzzles, check it out! I had nothing to do with it, and I think it’s great. 

What if we did more of that… bit by bit? With stuff? With skills? With our time? With our hearts?

What if we really had each other’s backs, in substantive ways – and not just long-established members and “church friends” and people who come every week, but anyone who thinks of St. Dunstan’s as their church home – and anyone who shows up looking for meaningful community?

Because a lot of people are looking for meaningful community. For people who will learn their name, and ask how they are, and mean it. 

Church matters because it’s made of people, and people matter.

Church matters because we try to see each other with God’s eyes and love each other with God’s love, here, and sometimes we succeed. 

Church matters because we’re all seeking and struggling and wondering, and it’s less lonely when we share it. And because our seeking and wondering are deepened by one anothers’ experiences and perspectives. 

In this season when the interruption has become the story – in this season of fresh assessments of what matters right now – I am so deeply grateful for all the people who believe that St. Dunstan’s matters, and who support this church with their time and talent, resources and prayers, energy and skill. 

And I am so deeply hopeful about all the people for whom St. Dunstan’s will matter – in a whole range of ways – in the days and months and years ahead, as we continue to seek to use whatever God places in our hands to add to the world’s measure of hope, wholeness, and delight. 

 

 

List of reasons to join a church posted on Facebook by Sharad Yadav, October 7, 2021.

scripture, Sermons

Sermon, October 17

We have a pear tree in our back yard. Phil planted it some years ago…. and this was the year it really matured enough to bear a full harvest of fruit.  The tree was covered with these lovely little greeny-gold pears, some with just a bit of a red blush. Phil harvested them and brought them inside to ripen, and we’ve been eating them happily for many weeks now. 

That’s our view of the pear tree situation. There are other perspectives.

Our dog, for example, also thinks of it as our pear tree, in our yard, with the our definitely including him. He likes to eat the fallen pears, and will sometimes bring them inside and leisurely eat one on the living room floor.

The local raccoons, on the other hand, question the whole concept of private property. Your yard? Your tree? Says who? Our pear tree is a destination, a point on their map of the neighborhood that’s worth a nightly visit. They seem to appreciate the pears just as much as the Hassetts, human and canine, do. 

If you predict that the canine and raccoon perspectives, the territorial predator versus the anarchic foragers, may have come into conflict, you’d be correct…  though fortunately everyone has emerged from those encounters unscathed. 

Perspective. It’s an interesting word.

Per-spect means see through. The word evokes an imaginary lens, through which you view the world. Photographers and other artists use the word literally; but it’s also used figuratively, all the time. We talk about getting perspective on a problem – meaning, to see it in context and in proportion. We talk about getting a new perspective on something – coming to understand it in a fresh way, maybe a broader way. 

Perspective is an interesting concept to bring to the Book of Job. 

The Book of Job spends two chapters dropping Job into the depths of human misery, and 35 chapters of Job demanding that God heed his suffering and give him some explanation, while his so-called friends tell him he must have had it coming somehow. 

Now, in chapter 38, God answers. And God’s answer… is complicated. 

God’s words emphasize the gulf between Job – a human being with the usual human limitations – and God, all-seeing, all-knowing, and eternal. Again and again, God asks Job questions which can only be answered, “Of course not!” – Is the wild ox willing to work for you?Did you give the horse its might, or clothe its neck with mane? Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars?  Can you catch a sea-monster with a fish-hook? 

It’s hard not to read it as mocking. God is putting Job in his place. Telling him that there’s a whole lot that he should not expect to understand. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman describes this as a massive failure of pastoral sensitivity on God’s part: “After Job relates in great detail his anguish and pain and bewilderment, [God] responds, ‘Let me tell you about my crocodile.’ Any pastoral supervisor evaluating this act of ministry would say to [God], ‘You couldn’t stand the pain and you changed the subject.’”

Fair. And yet: I love these chapters. Many people do.  

For one thing, it’s just wonderful poetry about the beauty and power and strangeness of the natural world. The passage about the ostrich is a great example: 

“The ostrich’s wings flap wildly,
though its pinions lack plumage.
For it leaves its eggs to the earth,
and lets them be warmed on the ground,
forgetting that a foot may crush them,
and that a wild animal may trample them.
It deals cruelly with its young, as if they were not its own;
though its labour should be in vain, yet it has no fear;
because God has made it forget wisdom,
and given it no share in understanding.
Yet when it spreads its plumes aloft,
it laughs at the horse and its rider.”  (Job 39:13-18)

The text holds up the absurdity, the idiocy of the ostrich – and its breathtaking speed. 

Leviathan is another favorite – God spends a whole chapter talking about this wonderful sea-monster!

“Can you put a rope in its nose, or pierce its jaw with a hook? 

Will you play with it as with a bird,
or will you put it on a leash for your little daughters?… 

I will not keep silence concerning its limbs,
or its mighty strength, or its splendid frame… 

Out of its nostrils comes smoke,
as from a boiling pot and burning rushes.
Its breath kindles coals,
and a flame comes out of its mouth.
In its neck abides strength,
and terror dances before it.”  (Job 41:2, 5, 12, 20-22)

These texts are great fun to read. But it’s more than that.  There is – somehow – a strange comfort here. Perhaps – a new perspective. 

Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis writes that it’s easy to see God’s answer to Job as no answer at all: “God… mows Job down with a stream of non sequiturs that have nothing to do with what is really at stake. If Job finally stops talking altogether, … [it’s only] because there is no point in arguing with a bully.”

But, she says, that reading misses the sense in which God is answering Job’s complaint. God offers Job “a God’s-eye view of the world” – starting with the mysteries of seas, stars, and seasons, then moving on to God’s delight in wild creatures. 

All the animals God praises in these chapters have something in common: they completely untamable. From a human point of view, they are useless at best, and terrifying at worst. If there had been raccoons in the ancient Near East, maybe God would have held forth about their dexterity and resourcefulness. The one exception – the war horse – proves the rule; it serves human purposes, yes, but the text stresses its fierce power:  “It laughs at fear and is not dismayed; it does not turn back from the sword; it cannot stand still at the sound of the trumpet.” 

Davis writes, “This God’s-eye view of the world plays havoc with Job’s notion of the way things ought to be – which is to say, sensible, well-adapted to human purposes, and above all, predictable.”

Remember how when Job’s children would get together for a party, Job would go make sacrifices just in case they had sinned? There’s so much about control – about the human illusion of control – in that single detail.  Job was invested in a model of the world in which if you checked all the boxes, everything would be OK.  Like the sons of Zebedee in today’s Gospel, Job’s relationship with God was founded on what God could do for him. 

And in these mocking, glorious chapters, God tells Job: That’s not how any of this works. Davis writes, “God’s involvement with the world expresses itself in huge, unapologetic delight in a creation whose outstanding quality is quite simply magnificence: power and freedom on a scale that is bewildering and terrifying.” She quotes spiritual writer Annie Dillard:  “Freedom is the world’s water and weather, the world’s nourishment freely given, its soil and sap; and the creator loves pizzazz.” 

God’s answer to Job is that the world – that life – is bigger and stranger, riskier and more beautiful than he has ever imagined. Davis says, “God calls this man of integrity to take his place in a ravishing but dangerous world where only those who relinquish their personal expectations can live in peace.” 

God asks Job – perhaps asks every human: Can you love what you do not control? Can you love what you can’t own? What you can’t protect? 

The world is not sensible, not well-adapted to human purposes, and certainly not predictable; can you learn to tolerate that truth? Could you learn to love it? 

I don’t think all this is answer Job was looking for. But it satisfies him. Perhaps it even changes him – heals him. Davis argues that the end of Job’s story – which we’ll hear next week – hints that Job learns to live and love more like God. 

And I think part of the lasting power of the Book of Job is that people continue to discover that same strange comfort. Holding pain, or loss, or anxiety, many of us find some peace in sitting near big water, or walking in the woods, or seeing a storm roll across the sky. In watching squirrels squabble, or gazing at the stars. Even the affection or demands of a familiar pet can take us out of ourselves just a little – into a perspective in which what’s really important is dinner and a warm lap.

Why does it comfort us, sometimes, to remember that we are simply one creature among billions on this big, old, wild world? That we are not the center of it all, but dust and ashes? 

I don’t know – but, sometimes, it does. 

And the witness of the book of Job is that it always has. 

Those raccoons stealing – sharing! – our pears – the bears who sit and gaze at scenic vistas – even the seagulls hanging around the Burger King – they remind us, quite simply, that our perspective is always limited. That there’s a bigger picture and a longer view.  Thanks be to God. 

 

Sources

Ellen Davis, “The Sufferer’s Wisdom: The Book of Job,” in Getting Involved with God, Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. 

The Annie Dillard quotation is from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

The Walter Brueggeman quotation comes from Brueggemann’s CHRISTIAN CENTURY lecture given in Chicago in September of 2005.

Finances

Budget Update, October 2021

Based on September financial reports.

INCOME

On the Income side, we are running somewhat ahead of budget, thanks to generous pledge payments that are overcoming deficits in feast and plate offerings, and rent and building use. Both of those areas were directly affected by the pandemic, and both are beginning to rebound now. We have hopes that they may continue their slow return to pre-pandemic levels in the months ahead. In the meantime, members’ generosity is keeping us on a solid footing. 

EXPENSE 

We are running close to budget overall. Our Lay Staff lines are under budget because our Office Coordinator Ann is still working reduced hours; our Music Minister Deanna is also working fewer hours this fall due to temporarily reduced availability. Formation is under budget, largely because youth were not able to take a trip this summer. Buildings and Grounds is over year-to-date budget largely due to snow removal costs early in the year. 

OVERALL… 

Year-to-date income currently exceeds year-to-date expenses. We expect some expenses that are currently under budget to catch up; for example, Outreach funds will all be sent out to do good in the world. However, if current trends continue, it seems likely that we will end the year with income and expenses very close, and possibly a slight surplus. 

Thank you so much to everyone who has made the effort to keep up your giving to St. Dunstan’s through the challenges of the past 18 months. We are carrying on and rebuilding, thanks to you, as well as to all the many ways people participate, help out, contribute, and support us in prayer. 

INCOME

2021

Budget

Actual

through Sept

Budget

through Sept
Feast & Plate 14,000 4800 8500
Pledge Payments 270,000 226,700 214,500
Rent & Bldg Use 14,600 5,800 10,800
Misc Income 2800 4300 1700
Total 301400 241600 235500

 

EXPENSE

2021

Budget

Actual

through

Sept

Budget

through

Sept
Clergy (incl. salary, pension, insurance) 132,400 100,800 100,700
Lay Staff (Music, Office & Childcare) 27,300 17,900 20,500
Worship 4200 3400 3000
Outreach Budget 21,200 14,400 16,100
Formation 9000 3500 6700
Fellowship, Welcome, & Leadership 2800 1200 1300
Bldgs & Grounds

(includes insurance)

 48,700 40,900 34,500
Admin & Office 14,300 10,200 11,900
Diocesan Giving 51,300 38,300 38,500
TOTAL 311200 230600 233200

All numbers have been rounded to the nearest $100 for ease in reading.In some cases this means the totals may be slightly off from the detailed financial statements. 

Uncategorized

Homily, October 3

Our first Scripture reading today is from the Book of Job. Job is a strange, interesting book of the Bible. It was probably written five or six hundred years before the time of Jesus. I don’t think the book is trying to tell us about a real person named Job. It’s not a biography. Instead, the story of Job is used to explore what it’s like when someone is suffering. Going through something really hard and really sad. How their community responds; and where God is, in times like that. Our first reading is the set-up for the story. You will hear God bragging about Job and how righteous he is. And then there’s this other character, the Adversary. Adversary means someone you’re arguing or fighting with. In Hebrew, the word Adversary is shatan. Satan! So we might say that this character is Satan – the Devil. But in these old, old stories, the Devil has a very special job: TESTING good people to see how good they really are. And that’s what happens here.  Let’s receive the story and our other readings, and then I’ll say some more about it. 

Job 1:1 – 2:10

So we heard the beginning of the book of Job! Notice how it made you feel. Did you smile or laugh a little? Some people did! That’s OK! I actually think it is supposed to be funny, even though the things that happen are terrible. All these bad things happen very fast because the story wants to get to what it’s really interested in  – which is how Job handles this situation; and how his friends handle it. 

I was trying to think of a good modern example that’s kind of like this, and I thought it’s a little like the TV show The Good Place. The Good Place is a show about what it means to be good person. And it’s set in some kind of afterlife. So almost all the main characters, are dead. But you’re not really supposed to be sad about that. It’s just the setup for the story. I think this first part of Job is meant to work the same way. 

I think if this was a TV show, I would probably stop watching because I didn’t really like any of the characters! The Adversary is certainly not very nice. Job himself seems kind of controlling and mean, actually. And God is TERRIBLE, here! Right? What an awful idea, that God would torture a human being just to see how faithful they are!

I don’t think the Book of Job really thinks that God is like that. I think the voice of this text thinks that God is hard to understand; and that life can be hard to understand. But the part of the story we heard today is not trying to tell us the truth about God. It’s just setting up a story. The Bible is complicated, and we’re not supposed to read all the pieces of it the same way. 

So, what happens next? … What happens next is that Job’s friends come to visit, to console and comfort him. That’s what you do when somebody suffers a tragedy, right? You come be with them. You let them know you care and that they’re not alone. 

And you know, Job’s friends start out pretty well, because they just sit with him, in silence, for seven whole days. But then they start to talk… and things go downhill fast. 

After two chapter setting up the story, the Book of Job spends 35 chapters on Job’s friends and Job talking – often arguing! – about what Job’s suffering means, and about God. 

His friends think they’re helping Job. But are they?  I want you to think about how it feels when you are really sad or really struggling, and then we’ll see if what Job’s friends have to say seems helpful to you. 

Job’s friend Eliphaz starts out. He says: Job, you say that all this tragedy just came out of the blue, but that’s not how things work. Bad things don’t happen to good people. God must be punishing you for something. You brought this on yourself in some way. So, cheer up! Your suffering isn’t meaningless; it’s happening because you’re secretly bad! 

Did that make you feel better?… 

It didn’t make Job feel better either. He said, you’re only saying this because my tragedy makes you afraid! You want to believe that this happened to me for a reason – so that you can tell yourself that nothing like this will ever happen to you.

Then Job’s friend Bildad tries to cheer Job up. 

He says, Okay, Job; maybe you ARE a righteous person. Then it must have been your CHILDREN who were sinful. That’s why God killed them. But since YOU are a good person, you’ll be fine. God will replace your lost children and your wealth, and you’ll be happy again. 

Did that make you feel better?…

Now, sometimes, it **could** be helpful to tell someone who is suffering that there may be healing and joy beyond their current situation. But it’s so easy to get that wrong, and to say it in a way that minimizes what they are going through. Also, you can’t just replace people you love with other people! Although you can trust that there will keep on being people to love.  

Job tells Bildad: You are trying so hard to make sense of this situation in human terms, but humans can’t know why God does what God does.

But then Job’s friends Zophar and Eliphaz start to scold Job. They say, You shouldn’t be talking about God like this! You keep saying you’re a good person and didn’t deserve this tragedy, but that makes God seem like a villain! Your anger is pushing you away from God. Just be quiet and accept your suffering. It is what it is. 

Did that make you feel better?…

Well, there might be some truth to the idea that sometimes we just have to learn to live with hard stuff. Sometimes there is no way to make sense of things. But Job doesn’t like being told to be quiet. He says, I have the right to cry out to God in my suffering. I don’t have to squash down my pain and my anger,  just because you’re uncomfortable. 

I am paraphrasing all of this – saying it in simpler ways than the text of the Scripture – but I want you to hear how angry Job gets! He calls his friends worthless doctors and miserable comforters! He says, If you would just shut up, that would be your wisdom!

He hears their platitudes – God doesn’t send us anything we can’t handle; everything happens for a reason;  what does not kill us makes us stronger; look on the bright side and count your blessings -Job hears all that and he calls it proverbs of ashes.

Proverbs of ashes. Empty words that carry no comfort for him. 

And even though I don’t entirely like Job – Job has a point. Bad things happen to good people all the time – and good things happen to bad people.  Sometimes what doesn’t kill us, leaves us wounded. And I don’t actually believe that everything happens for a reason – though I believe that God’s grace can often bring good out of bad situations. 

For Job, none of this means that life is meaningless and God is a fantasy. Job believes in God – and that God is good, even though sometimes it’s hard to spot God’s goodness at work until we’re looking back on something, or have some distance from it. 

Job is honest about feeling abandoned and unheard by God. He says, “I cry to you, and you do not answer me.” But Job is certain that God is there. Even in emptiness and loss.

And Job insists, again and again and again, that he’s shouting out his grief and rage to God, not because he lacks faith, but because he has faith. That there is room for these feelings in his love for God and God’s love for him. Wouldn’t it be nice if his friends could just be with him in his big feelings, too? 

A writer I like, Anne Lamott, says that in life it’s part of our job to hold someone’s hand and bring them juice, until it’s our turn to have someone hold our hand and bring us juice.  We all have times when we need comforting.  And we all have chances to be a comfort for someone else – to be a friend when things are hard or sad or scary. 

We can all learn from Job’s friends – what they get right and what they get wrong. Show up. Don’t try too hard to make it make sense. Let people feel what they’re feeling. If somebody else’s big feelings make you feel kind of funny inside, the loving thing to do is figure out how to handle that funny feeling on your own, instead of doing what Job’s friends do, telling him to stop talking about how unhappy he is because it’s making them uncomfortable. 

And remember: sometimes your silence is your wisdom.

Intergenerational Church, scripture, Sermons

Sermon, Sept. 19

Before I start, I want to say to the kids listening that in this sermon, I am mostly talking about you but not to you. I know that’s a little rude and I’m sorry. If you have any thoughts or ideas as you listen, I would love to hear them later! 

Alright. Let’s hear a tiny bit of our Gospel again: Jesus took a little child and put it among the disciples; and taking it in his arms, he said to them,”Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the One who sent me.”

Just 24 verses later – so close that it’s on the same pair of pages in my big study bible – we see Jesus hugging children again. This will be our Gospel in a couple of weeks but let’s hear it today. 

Mark 10, verses 13 to 16:  People were bringing children to Jesus so that he would bless them. But the disciples scolded them. When Jesus saw this, he grew angry and said to them, “Allow the children to come to me. Don’t forbid them, because God’s kingdom belongs to people like these children. I assure you that whoever doesn’t welcome God’s kingdom like a child will never enter it.” Then he hugged the children and blessed them.

I think there are a couple of core ideas in these twin passages. First, it’s the responsibility of grown-up Christians to welcome young Christians. Jesus says that – AND shows it, in his anger at the people trying to create a no-child zone around him. 

Second, grown-up Christians should not assume that children are empty containers and our job is to fill them with faith. Children have things to teach grown-ups about the Kingdom of God. There are parts of all … this … that they understand better than we do. 

Note, too, that none of this is limited to parents or family. In both of these scenes, Jesus is speaking to his disciples – his inner circle, those who will become church leaders after his death. Not to the kids’ parents or grandparents. 

In the past few decades, people studying intergenerational communities and churches have gained some insight into **why** Jesus might have stressed these things. In the mid-20th century, American churches fell hard for the idea that what churches do with kids should look a lot like public school. Age-graded classrooms, lesson plans and workbooks, attendance charts and reward stickers. All based on the idea that Christianity is a body of information that can be taught, the same way you teach long division. 

As early as the 1960s, an Episcopal priest named John Westerhoff started writing about how misguided this was. He says, Faith is caught, not taught. If we want to raise children who know and love our way of faith, we need to focus on being church together. 

Ongoing study of kids and faith have reinforced Westerhoff’s point. Being meaningfully included in faith community helps kids mature into faithful adults. Faith aside, it’s also good for kids to have grownups who know and care about them, outside their family. The reverse is probably also true!

We’re re-discovering that faith isn’t a body of knowledge but a way of living. As one recent article put it, “Congregations are not providers of religious goods and services. They are dynamic, living communities of sojourners accompanying each other in discovering a Christian way of life.” (Elton & Pinkstaff)  In such a group of fellow-travelers, it makes sense that we all – regardless of age – have experiences, skills, good ideas and fruitful questions to share. 

We’re re-discovering that liturgy is learning. Our shared worship, at its best, helps shape us, week by week, year by year, into the people God calls us to be. If our shared worship is inviting and engaging – if it is comprehensible – if what we say and do is aligned with what we believe and mean – then participation in worship is part of how kids – AND adults! – continue to grow in faith. 

We are re-learning what churches should always have known, because Jesus tells us so: that our shared life of faith is incomplete without the voices and perspectives of children. The great 20th century liturgical scholar Louis Weil says, “It is not only that the child changes by being brought into the community of faith, but that the community itself changes as the mystery of another believer’s life unfolds in the context of community.” (CAWCIB, xi) 

My friend Sylvia Miller-Mutia says, “The Spirit calls together intergenerational communities because we have gifts for each other.” 

At St. Dunstan’s, we’ve spent several years now exploring what it looks like to become an intergenerational church. To borrow words from one of the wise voices on this subject, Gretchen Wolff Pritchard, we shifted the question from “How can we keep the children from disturbing us during worship?” to, “How can we invite the children into real involvement?”

And then Covid came along, and church went online for a year. We worked hard to keep elements of all-ages participation in Zoom church – with some success. Our Scripture dramas meant a lot to kids and grownups alike. 

At the same time – we lost a lot. Some kids and households just couldn’t tolerate Zoom worship. And even with the kids who were on Zoom, the rest of the congregation couldn’t hear their chatter, or pick up a lost toy, or admire a drawing, or invite them to help with a task, in the way we could in Building Church. 

We did what we could; and we held onto hope for After. 

And now – here we are, in After. Sort of.  A tentative and emerging After, that requires continued experimentation, flexibility, discernment… and hope.  

Some of our kids won’t be back in church until kids can be fully vaccinated against Covid. And some families’ habits have changed during the pandemic, and Sunday morning church may not fit anymore. 

On the other hand: we have learned that the things we do to engage kids in worship, also work well for some grownups. Pritchard puts it this way: “I am increasingly convinced that children’s liturgical needs are not qualitatively different from those of adults.” (Offering the Gospel to Children, p. 101)

For example: as we’ve added ASL gestures to certain prayers, I’ve been tickled to discover which grownups have been itching for a chance to move and use their bodies in worship. I love it when adults take the invitation to grab a coloring page and markers – or to bring their knitting project! I love that we have both kids and grownups who really like to play the xylophones at the Eucharist. 

This fall we’re trying something new for older kids and youth – and others who may opt in: Church journals. They look like this. The idea is that kids will claim and decorate a journal. Then, every week, there will be a few questions to ponder – and answer in the journal, if you want. Some are reflective – like, What am I feeling grateful for today? Was there a time this week when I felt included – or pushed out? Some are noticing questions, like, What’s my favorite part of our Scripture story today?

There’s also a standing invitation to draw or doodle while listening or praying. I’ve always listened best while doodling, myself! 

With these journals, I’m trying to strike the delicate balance between inviting attention and making space for reflection. As I was preparing them, I remembered Father Ed Tourangeau, my priest when I was my kids’ age. Father Ed always left a little silence at the end of his sermons. He did this, he explained, because he assumed that somewhere during the course of his sermon, people would get off on their own train of thought. Something he said would lead to something they needed to think about… or maybe something else entirely would float to the surface and demand their attention. With the pause at the end of the sermon, he gave people time to wrap up their thoughts and return to the room. I love the pragmatism and generosity of that approach. 

We sometimes say that people – adults and kids – should pay attention during church. Let me be clear: I do hope you pay attention during church, beloveds. But I also hope you’re not ONLY paying attention to ME – or to whoever else happens to be leading worship at the moment. I hope that sometimes your attention will be caught by a word or phrase in a prayer or Scripture or song, and that will draw you towards something you need to think about, or something God has to say to you, deep down I your heart. I hope that sometimes your attention will drift to a loved one who’s going through a hard time, and you’ll pause to hold them in God’s light. Or you notice that some moment from the past week still feels unsettled, and you’ll dwell with whether you need to make amends, or change the situation. 

Let’s be clear: You’re not an audience or a class. And your responsibility here is neither to absorb information nor to appreciate a performance. There will  be neither quiz nor ovation. For some of you, sometimes, this set-apart time, this hour on Sunday mornings, may simply be a doorway into thanks, or a silence in which another voice may speak. (Those words come from the poet Mary Oliver.)

So with the church journals – as with many other things – planning something for our kids leads to naming something that’s true for many of us. 

Putting kids and youth at the center of our common life, alongside the grownups, rather than off to the side; and believing that we grownups can learn and practice faith with and from them – that’s one of the ways we follow Jesus, at St. Dunstan’s. 

I love these passages in Mark’s Gospel where Jesus embraces children. Jesus challenges so many assumptions in his ministry. It delights me that one of them is the idea that there are places kids don’t belong; that there are things that are too important for kids to be around.

I noticed, this week, that it’s easy to think of these stories as breaks from the urgent pace of Jesus’ march towards the cross. As warm and fuzzy “Awww!” Moments – before Jesus starts talking about crucifixion again. But thanks to re-reading the whole Gospel of Mark in Father Tom’s Bible study this summer, I’m questioning that view. Mark’s Jesus predicts his own death and resurrection three times, before he enters Jerusalem and the story begins to accelerate towards the cross. That’s where these scenes fall – among those grim predictions that confuse and frighten his disciples. 

Mark is a very careful writer. Whether that reflects the actual sequence of events or Mark’s choice: it is not an accident. These scenes are not soft-focus breaks from the urgent, building action. They’re important. As Jesus predicts that God’s Messiah must suffer and die, he’s preparing his followers for a world turned upside down: the mighty cast down, the lowly lifted up, the outsider brought in, the last made first. Old ways set aside, and new kinds of communities born. 

We don’t do what we do – our shared and ongoing work towards becoming an intergenerational faith community – because kids are cute and talented, though they are. We don’t do this because Welcoming is one of our Discipleship Practices, though it is. We don’t do this because we think it will make our church grow, though it might?

We do it because we pray every week, maybe every day, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. And this is one of the ways we walk towards the kingdom, and live out God’s divine will. Because in some way beyond our full understanding, this becoming is part of the redemptive work that God in Christ is doing in and for and through St. Dunstan’s. 

May the God who has called us to this work, give us the wisdom and will to continue it. Amen. 

Finances, Outreach

Outreach Committee Report, Late Summer 2021

The work of the St. Dunstan’s Outreach Committee in both 2020 and 2021 has been shaped by actively responding to needs presented by the global Coronavirus Pandemic.  However, the Committee’s work in 2021 looks and feels different than in 2020.  Last year demanded a fast-paced response to an avalanche of immediate economic crises emphasizing hunger and housing, and all the funds were exhausted by October.  2020 also was an eye-opening year to systemic racial and economic problems.  In 2021, the eye-opening has called for more conversation and deliberation about organizational response to the exposed systemic problems.  

To facilitate conversation and deliberation, our meetings in 2021 have added a couple types of personal sharing.  The first is through individual Committee members talking about why they do the volunteer work that they do and why their volunteer work is through particular organizations.  We are learning more about each other and more about the impact particular organizations have.  The second is through short discussions around “The State of Working Wisconsin in the COVID-19 Crisis,” a report from a nonpartisan UW think tank.  This is helping us think about exposed systemic patterns in Wisconsin.

Both the eye-opening from 2020 and our deliberations in 2021 are reflected in a slower-pace of distributions in 2021 and a more focused choice of supported programs.  

  • $1,000 for the Episcopal Network for Economic Justice,
  • $400 for MOSES’ efforts in criminal justice reform,
  • $500 for Bread for the World for hunger advocacy,
  • $500 to D.A.I.S. (Domestic Abuse Intervention Services), 
  • $200 for KIVA (micro loans),
  • $500 for the Road Home (rapid rehousing)
  • $1,000 for a Joining Forces for Families summer swim program for students at Elver Park,
  • $2,780 for Middleton Outreach Ministry’s new “Connections” Program focused on creating housing stability,
  • $1,200 was raised for St. D’s Diaper Drive.  To date $600 worth of diapers has been distributed among: 
    • Reach Out Lodi 
    • Healing House
    • Madison YWCA,
    • Allied Drive Food Pantry, and
    • Karen’s Essentials Corner
  • $1,000 for a medical clinic in the Diocese of Newala in Tanzania,
  • $500 for micro loans in developing countries through Working Capital for Community Needs (WCCN)
  • Also, in August the Committee received applications for the 2021 Outreach Endowment funds from 5 organizations, all of whom serve a multi-racial clientele.  Based on our longstanding approach of allocating 5% of the Outreach Endowment Fund’s principal each year (so as to maintain the fund in a sustainable manner), we understand that this year $5,469 is available for Endowment Grant allocations.  As in past years, we will provide a brief report at the Vestry’s September meeting that summarizes our recommendations for allocating St. D’s 2021 Outreach Endowment Grants and requests approval.

If you would like to learn more or get involved in the work of the Outreach Committee, contact the church office using the Contact Us form on this website, or call 608-238-2781 and leave a message!

Sermons

Sermon, Sept. 12

Have you ever felt ashamed of Jesus?

Let’s put some context around Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel. 

Peter is arguing with Jesus about whether Jesus has to suffer and die to fulfill his role as the Messiah – the One sent by God to save God’s people.  Peter says, The Messiah is supposed to throw out the Roman forces and usher in a new era of peace and prosperity for God’s people Israel! 

But Jesus knows that his call is to something much bigger and deeper than restoring one small nation-state. So Jesus says this famous line to Peter, Get behind me, Satan! 

Why “Get behind me”? Mark’s Gospel uses images of leading, and following, a lot – along with what seems to have been the earliest name for the Jesus movement: The Way. So Mark will say things like, “He followed Jesus on the way,” and he means both that that person walked along the road after Jesus, and also that that person became a disciple – a metaphorical follower of Jesus. So, “Get behind me!” is reminding Peter to stop trying to map the route and let Jesus lead. 

Why does Jesus invoke Satan here? In Old Testament tradition, Satan’s role is to test the righteous by trying to turn them away from their path. We see that in Jesus’ temptation after his baptism. And that is kind of what Peter is doing, here. He’s thinking in terms of human hopes, human success, human glory. He doesn’t understand the divine plan Jesus is called to fulfill. Full disclosure: I’m not sure I do either. But Jesus does.  And Jesus goes on to say something I think is really important:  that the greatest good isn’t personal success or glory or comfort. You can gain the whole world, but lose your soul. Sometimes the right path, the true path, the just path, involves pain and struggle and loss.  And if you’re not ready for that, says Jesus, maybe you’re not ready to follow me on the Way. 

So the people who are ashamed of Jesus, here, are people who are put off by the idea that God Incarnate, the long-awaited Savior, would be arrested and publicly executed.  And perhaps by the idea that being a morally good person doesn’t correlate neatly with being rich, healthy, or happy. 

That’s probably not what makes any of us feel ashamed of Jesus. For one thing, we know the part of the story that comes after the execution. For another thing, we know enough about the failures of human power and pomp to be glad that that’s not God’s deal. 

But that doesn’t mean we’re never ashamed of Jesus – or more likely, of bearing his name, as Christians. 

Being a Christian is always on the table for me. If someone knows anything about me, they know that I’m a pastor, and they assume that I’m probably a Christian. It’s hard to hide your faith when it’s also your work. Though I had a clergy colleague in New Hampshire who joined the local amateur ice hockey league, and I think he managed to keep them from finding out what his day job was for about eighteen months. He was convinced that if they found out he was a pastor, a priest, then all the easy camaraderie and trash talk and so on would dry up instantly. They might be afraid to cuss in front of him. 

It’s unusual for a pastor to be able to stay closeted for that long. However, most of you have a choice – and I don’t blame you if you are choosy about if and when you disclose that you’re a Christian. I know there are folks in this congregation who easily and graciously let others know that they are people of faith. I’ve seen you do it. It’s beautiful.

But others may be more cautious.  Because you probably have friends, acquaintances and colleagues who carry assumptions about what Christians think and do that you don’t want to be associated with.  If you share that you’re a Christian, then there has to be whole conversation about what kind of Christian. 

As Christians who are not a conservative evangelicals – the most vocal and visible type of Christian in America – we wear our faith identity while knowing that others who claim the same label often promote causes and agendas that may be very far from our convictions and hopes. Christians who promote anti-science and anti-vaccine ideas. Christians who stoke anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Christians who are striving to limit the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ people.  And Christians who are committed to making it more difficult for a person with an unwanted or dangerous pregnancy to have a full range of options available to them.

For the record, the Episcopal Church has long held the position that abortion should be safe, legal, rare, and, ideally, take place in the context of caring counsel from both medical and spiritual professionals. People hearing my voice right now may hold a range of views in their hearts. But I suspect the specifics of the new law in Texas, which has been getting a lot of press, cause concern and alarm for many of us. It seems like an approach that lacks compassion for people facing a life-changingly difficult situation. 

Some folks have responded to this harsh new law by referring to its proponents as the “Texas Taliban” – alluding to the Islamic fundamentalist movement in Afghanistan and suggesting an analogy between the treatment of women and girls in both contexts. 

This past week, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg called out that quip on Twitter. She pointed out that this little “joke” implying that religious extremism “is somehow Islamic, foreign, ‘other,’” stokes fear and hatred of Muslims, and of people who are perceived as Muslim. Ruttenberg says, “These jokes influence cultural conversations and who winds up on the receiving end of them is… not the Taliban… Stop punching down, your jokes aren’t funny, [and] you are causing harm.”

The apostle James is right; the tongue can be a deadly weapon. Our jokes can carry poison, even when we don’t intend it. Our careless words can be small flames that set a whole forest ablaze. 

But Ruttenberg goes on, because the issue isn’t just the risk of our words feeding hatred towards ethnic and religious minorities. It’s also the impulse, on the part of those who think of themselves as progressive Christians, to deny and deflect. 

She writes, “Reckon with the fact that [those behind the new Texas law] are Christians… Please don’t play the ‘not real Christians’ card here. It’s a kind of gaslighting. ‘Oh, the Crusades? The… pogroms? The pro-Holocaust theology? The genocides & cultural genocides.. of colonialism? Not Real Christians.’”

She continues, “I know it’s tempting to just want to cut back to the teachings of Jesus, to St. Francis, to Merton and Dr. King and James Cone and everyone else preaching about love and justice and care for one another. I love those guys too. I know there is wonderful, powerful, liberatory Christianity. I am a big fan of many of its teachers. [But] I believe that the best and most holy of it acknowledges and grapples with [harm] perpetrated in Jesus’ name.” 

I’m working on taking this challenge to heart. I know that it’s not helpful to say of those whose convictions are different from mine, on a whole range of issues, that they are not real Christians. Because they may well think that I’m not a real Christian. 

And also: Very few people actually wake up in the morning and ask themselves how they can make other people’s lives more miserable. Those whose convictions are different from mine are also striving to follow Jesus as they understand him. 

It’s also not enough to say, Well, I’m not that kind of Christian. I’ve heard that from Episcopal church leaders a lot. I’ve preached and proclaimed it myself – and been called out on it, rightly.  Because saying what you’re not is easy. Instead, step up to the challenge of saying what you ARE, and what you’re trying to be. Including past failures and present growing edges – because being honest about that stuff is what lets people know you’re serious about the work. 

Last week St. Dunstan’s mailed out a postcard to the residents of the new apartment complex next door to the church, and others who have recently moved in nearby. I was clear that the postcard should simply introduce St. Dunstan’s as a neighbor, without pressing people to attend or join. A lot of folks are pretty allergic to being invited to church without the context of an existing relationship. 

I drafted some text that said some things about the kind of church we are, or are trying to be – under the heading “Curious about church?” I said that we value justice and mercy, cultivating members’ spiritual lives, caring for creation, intergenerational community, and unconditional welcome. 

Then, under the heading, “Not looking for a church?”, I listed some ways we could be good neighbors: offering meeting spaces, collaborating on community projects, sharing our grounds as a place of solace. 

I shared that draft text with several keen-eyed members of this congregation. They helped me trim and clarify. But the most important change they suggested was to put the “Not looking for a church?” stuff before the “Curious about church?” stuff. 

I love St. Dunstan’s and I’m proud of what we’re building together here. So my natural impulse was to lead with that. But most of our neighbors probably aren’t looking for a church… and they’re not going to read past what we want to say about ourselves, to get to the part about how we want to be good neighbors for them, too.

Any reckoning with people’s reasonable suspicion towards churches – with some people’s experiences of harm through the actions and words of Christians – has to start with our commitment to simply being good neighbors, first and foremost. With an intention to be a presence for good in our community, regardless of whether it leads to recruiting new members. Because we have bridges to build and fences to mend, in order to be witnesses to Jesus as we know him.

It’s easy to feel a little shy about Christianity, in a city that is literally the headquarters of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. But those times when the dominant public face of Christianity seems far from your hopes and beliefs are exactly why it’s important to let folks know that there are lots of kinds of Christians. 

People may wear the label Christian uneasily. Maybe you feel like there’s a secret checklist of stuff you’re supposed to believe and positions you’re supposed to hold, and you’re not sure you check all the boxes. Maybe you feel like you don’t carry your faith into daily life enough to “qualify.” Maybe you’re just uncomfortable with the term, because of all its associations. Maybe you’d rather say that you’re Episcopalian than that you’re Christian. 

I define Christian pretty expansively. People who are drawn to Jesus in some way – even if he perplexes us as much as he attracts us. People who are trying to shape our lives, even in small ways, around Jesus’ path of boundary-breaking neighbor-love. People who are on the Way, trying to move in the same general direction as Jesus… even if we’re way at the back, wandering, stumbling, sitting down to rest, pausing to look at a rock. 

We ARE Christians, beloveds. Curious and confused, doubtful and hopeful. And when we encounter the word Christian, in the news, on social media, in the public square, in a context that makes us uncomfortable – as a label within which we cannot find ourselves – I hope that doesn’t make us ashamed. 

I hope it makes us determined. 

Determined to seek deeper understanding of Jesus – through Scripture, tradition, and reason; through conversation, prayer, and occasional encounters with the living Christ. 

Determined to love our neighbors and strive for the common good, for Jesus’ sake and even – when the moment is right – in Jesus’ name. 

 

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s Twitter thread starts here: 

https://twitter.com/TheRaDR/status/1433544536089841664