Announcements

Announcements, November 17

THIS WEEKEND & THE WEEK AHEAD…

Ladies’ Night Out, Friday, November 18, 6pm: Join us for good food and good conversation among women of all ages from St. Dunstan’s. This month we will meet at Lalo’s Mexican Restaurant, 5510 University Ave in Madison.

Build Madison, Saturday, November 19, 11am – ?: Do you like to problem-solve, make stuff, and work with a team? One of Madison’s local maker-spaces (a facility with all kinds of equipment for making stuff) is having a 24 hour build-a-thon and St Dunstan’s has some Advent-themed projects that need making. We are hoping to take a contingent of both adults and kids to be there part of the time and you are welcome to bring your own project as well. People with all types of backgrounds are encouraged to join in, whether you are an artist, tinker, crafter, builder or just willing to try something new. Alex Surasky-Ysasi, a new member who is a designer and engineer, is looking for a few adults and youth to join her – for a few hours, if not the full 24! Check out buildmadison.com for previous years projects. If you interested, talk with Rev. Miranda.

Piece Be with You! Please join us between services at 9:00am on November 20th for a festive, all-parish brunch celebrating the ingathering of our prayers, hopes, and financial pledges for our parish life in the coming year. We will enjoy fellowship, delicious pies, quiches and other offerings. Please sign up to bring your favorite pie or quiche. Pre-cut pies with labeled pie servers would be much appreciated.

Sunday school, Sunday, November 20, 10am: This Sunday, our 3 year olds to kindergarten class will be learning about the prophet Jeremiah, while our Elementary classes will explore ideas about Jesus Christ from the letter to the Colossians.

Rector’s Discretionary Fund Offering, Sunday, November 20: Half the cash in our collection plate, and any designated checks, will go towards the Rector’s Discretionary Fund this day and on every third Sunday. This fund is a way to quietly help people with direct financial needs, in the parish and the wider community. Please give generously.

Spirituality of Parenting Lunch, Sunday, November 20, 11:30am: All who seek meaning in the journey of parenthood (at any age or stage) are welcome to come for food and conversation. Child care and a simple meal provided.

Children’s choir rehearsal, Sunday, November 20, 11:30am: The Children’s Choir will gather for rehearsal after the second service. Kids need to be able to read words (but don’t need to know how to read music) and how to focus and learn with a group. Please talk to our Organist & Choir Director, Martin Ganschow, with any questions.

 Evening Eucharist, Sunday, November 20, 6pm: Join us for a simple service before the week begins. All are welcome.

Young Adult Meetup at the Vintage, Sunday, November 20, 7pm: The younger adults of St. Dunstan’s are invited to join us for conversation and the beverage of your choice, at the Vintage Brewpub on South Whitney Way. Friends and partners welcome too.

 Thanksgiving Service, Wednesday, November 23, 7pm: There will be a simple Eucharist service on Wednesday evening. All are welcome.

Black Friday Craft-In: VOLUNTEERS WANTED, Friday, November 25, 1 – 4pm: This year we’ll host our third annual Black Friday Craft-In, a free public crafting event. We can use all kinds of volunteers – whether your skill is sewing, woodworking, stamping, paper crafting, helping little kids with simple crafts, smiling at people and saying “Welcome!”, setting up tables, or putting cookies on plates. If you’d like to plan and set up a craft station of your own, let Rev. Miranda know (so we budget table space for you!), and we have some Michael’s gift cards available to help you cover materials expenses. Sign up in the Gathering Area to help out, or talk with Rev. Miranda.

Caroling in 2016: Last year a group of singers from St. Dunstan’s had a wonderful time visiting a few of our members and singing Christmas carols. We’d like to do the same this year. All ages are welcome to participate. Possible dates include Saturday, December 17; Sunday afternoon, December 18; and Friday, December 23. Please sign up and indicate your availability in the Gathering Area, or contact Rev. Miranda.

Thank You Box: Check out the colorful Thank You Box in our Gathering Area. During the month of November, you’re invited to write a note about a person, thing, or event, in our church’s life or beyond, for which you feel grateful. Put your note in the Thank You Box. In December we’ll turn our notes into banners which will hang around the church as a celebration of all the gifts we’ve received from God and one another.

OPPORTUNITIES TO SERVE…

Kids’ Advent Fundraiser: Last year the Sunday school kids asked the parish to contribute towards goats for people living in poverty in the developing world, through Episcopal Relief & Development. The parish was generous and we raised enough for four goats! This year we’d like to raise funds to support a schoolchild in Haiti, helping with his or her educational and everyday expenses, through the Haiti Project, an initiative of the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee. We’ll have a guest speaker on December 4 to tall us more. More information to come!

SHARING CHRISTMAS: There are still a few “ornaments” detailing gift ideas for each member of our adopted families on display in the Gathering Area!  Please choose one or more ornaments, sign your name on the form next to the number indicated on your ornament(s), buy your gift(s), wrap, firmly attach the ornament, and return to church NO LATER than WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7.  Thank you so much for your generous support of this wonderful Middleton Outreach project that makes Christmas brighter for so many!!

Christmas Cards for Jail Inmates: Thanks to all who have contributed cards; we have a good stock now! Our Card-Writing Station is now set up opposite the kitchen. You can take a moment to write a message while at church, or take home a couple of cards and the card-writing guidelines, and write at home. These cards will go to inmates at the Dane County Jail this Christmas, through an initiative of our sister parish Grace Church.

Christmas is a bleak time for these men and women, and even a simple message of kindness can bring some joy and hope. Our goal is to complete at least 100.

NEXT SUNDAY & BEYOND…

First Sunday of Advent All-Ages Worship Sunday, November 27, 10am: Our last Sunday worship is intended especially to help kids (and grownups who are new to our pattern of worship) to engage and participate fully. NOTE: Our 8am service always follows our regular order of worship.

Middle School Lunch and Learn, Sunday, November 27, 11:30am-1pm: Rev. Miranda invites the 10-and-up youth of the parish to meet with her for lunch after church once a month. We’ll dig into faith, Scripture, life, and our questions about all three. We’ll wrap up by 1pm, and we can arrange rides home for the kids if that helps with parents’ schedules.

Grace Shelter Dinner, Sunday, November 27, 7pm: Every fourth Sunday, a loyal group of St. Dunstan’s folk provides dinner for residents at the Grace Church shelter, and breakfast the next morning. See the signup sheet in the Gathering Area to help out. To learn more, talk with Rose Mueller.

Men’s Book Club Meeting, Saturday, December 3, 10am: The book is Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. “Essential. A compelling and damning exploration of the abuse of one of our basic human rights: shelter”. From abandoned slums to shelters, eviction courts to ghettoes, Matthew Desmond spent years living with and recording the stories of those struggling to survive – yet who won’t give up. A work of love, care and humanity, Evicted reminds us why, without a home, nothing else is possible. It is one of the most necessary books of our time. For more information, contact Jim Hindle.

NO 8am service on Christmas Day:  On Sunday, December 25, there will NOT be an 8am service. There will be a simple Eucharist at 10am. Christmas Eve services will be Saturday, December 24, at 3pm and 9pm.

Big Questions, Current Events, Sermons, Stories

Sermon, Nov. 13

Today’s lessons may be read here. 

How do you know when a story has ended? When it’s over, and everything that’s going to happen has happened, and there’s no more to be told?

Maybe nine months ago at Sandbox, our Thursday evening worshipping community, I shared one of those wonderful stories from Scripture that the lectionary never gives us on a Sunday. It’s a story from the time before King David, told in the first Book of Samuel. The Israelites were at war with the Philistines, their perennial enemies. They suffered a defeat in battle, and the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant, the holy golden chest that contained the stone tablets on which God had written the Ten Commandments. It was their holiest object, a sign of God’s presence with them, and it was at the front with them because they believed it to be an object of great power. And they lose it, in battle.

The Philistines carry it off in triumph to city of Ashdod, and place it in the temple of the god Dagon, one of their gods. They put the Ark at Dagon’s feet, as a sign of their god’s victory over Israel’s God. It’s a terrible moment, a real low point. If the story ended there… it would not be a good ending for Israel or her God. But the story doesn’t end there, with failure and defeat. In the morning, the Dagon statue has fallen over. So they pick it up again, and think nothing of it. But the NEXT morning, Dagon has fallen again – and now both its arms broken off and flung all the way to the threshold of the temple.

And then other things started to happen in Ashdod. People start getting these horrible growths all over their bodies. And there’s also a virtual plague of mice in everyone’s houses and fields, eating everything and pooping everywhere. It sounds funny, but it’s really not – in a subsistence agriculture economy, this is the stuff of famine. Ashdod wants to get rid of the Ark, so the next town over, Gath, says, Send it here. But then the same things start happening in Gath. So they send it on to Ekron, and guess what?…

Then the five lords of the Philistines got together and said, You know what? LET’S GIVE IT BACK. Let’s send it home to the Israelites. And they ask their wise people, what should we do? Should we send an offering to make peace with its God? They answer, Yes. Send the Ark back with five gold tumours – like the growths that appeared on the people – and five gold mice – one for each lord of the Philistines.

So they load up the Ark on a wagon, and put with it five gold mice and five gold tumors, and they hitch two young cows to the wagon, and they send them off, and the cows immediately pull the wagon straight towards the land of Israel, the city of Beth-Shemesh. The people were harvesting there, and saw the Ark coming. They welcomed it with great joy, celebrated and made offerings. That’s where you’d want to end the story, if you’re looking for closure, for just deserts. The people Israel dancing and singing with joy; the Philistines looking on at a distance, relieved to be rid of the thing, and having learned that Israel’s God was serious business…

If you want a tidy ending, stop there. If you go on, another verse, another chapter, the story gets messy again. As stories do – at least, the real ones. At Sandbox I had people make little golden mouse plaques. See, here’s mine. To remind us that the story might not be over yet. When we feel defeated and lost, God might still have some golden mice up God’s sleeve. The story is still moving.

Today’s lessons from the prophet Isaiah and the book of Luke give us two moments – not even chapters, but paragraphs – from another long, sprawling story, one of the central stories of our Scriptures: the story of Jerusalem. Jerusalem was conquered by David, not too long after the story I just told; he brings the Ark there and makes it capital of his kingdom. His son Solomon builds the Temple there. Jerusalem becomes the Great City of Israel, and takes on a symbolic meaning far beyond its reality. It’s a city, a real place with real beauties and real problems; it’s also The City, the religious and political and cultural heart of a people and their faith.

Both Isaiah and the visionary John who wrote the Book of Revelation imagine God’s ultimate salvation and redemption of the world in terms of a vision of a redeemed Jerusalem, a holy city. A City of peace and plenty, of freedom and health. Jerusalem is named over 1000 times in our Bible. Sometimes those writers are talking about the literal place. Sometimes about the symbolic place, the City of God. Sometimes they mean both at once… In the book of Tobit, as in many places in the Bible, the image of the return from exile and rebuilding of Jerusalem is used as shorthand for the redemption of God’s people, the setting-right of all that has gone wrong, the restoration of everything that has been lost. So Jerusalem is Jerusalem, and also often much more than just Jerusalem.

In this short passage from the book of Isaiah, the prophet is looking from one of the bad times towards the good times. These late chapters of Isaiah were probably written around the time of the return from exile, when the people Israel were released to go home by Cyrus, the new emperor of Persia. They had a LOT of rebuilding to do, in every sense; people had been scattered for two generations. But it was a moment of hope and possibility. A few verses before today’s passage, the text describes the destruction and loss that God’s people have lived through: “Your holy cities have become a wilderness, Zion has become a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation. Our holy and beautiful house, where our ancestors praised you, has been burned by fire, and all our pleasant places have become ruins.”

If you stopped the story then, things would look pretty hopeless. But the story was still moving. That destruction and loss is the context in which the prophet offers this holy vision of the City’s future: “No more shall there be in it an infant who lives only a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime… They shall build houses and live in them; they shall plant vineyards and enjoy their fruit. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity… They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, says the LORD.”

Five centuries later, Luke’s Gospel brings us Jesus talking about Jerusalem – this time, looking from one of the good times towards a bad time. At this moment, things are superficially fine – the Romans, King Herod, and the chief priests all getting along great, sharing the work of extracting wealth from the people and keeping any eruptions of dissatisfaction under control. Jesus sees how thin and tenuous it is; he sees that it’s not going to hold. How close the people are to the breaking point. He sees things with God’s eyes, yes, but to be honest any perceptive observer could probably have called this.

About thirty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Israel rebels against Roman rule; they lose. Jerusalem is destroyed, the Temple – the second great Temple, built after Cyrus sent the people home from exile – the Temple is torn down, not one stone left upon another. Luke and the other Gospel writers are writing after those events, which seemed like a terrible and final ending to many people. In the 70s and 80s and 90s, they knew that something would survive, that there was some kind of hope beyond those losses, that God still had some golden mice up God’s sleeve; but they did not know, yet, where it would lead, whether it would last. In the Epistles we hear the voices of the early Christians busting their butts to try to help write that next chapter. To make sure that neither Jesus’ crucifixion, nor Rome’s crushing of Jerusalem, would be the end of God’s people, God’s work in the world, God’s story.

Of course the story of literal Jerusalem goes on – messy and conflicted, beautiful and heart-breaking. And the story of metaphorical Jerusalem… of God’s people and our efforts to fumble our way towards that City of Isaiah’s vision, where no child is born to calamity, where everyone has a home and food – that story goes on, too. It goes on.

My dear ones. The election this week shook the country. Shook many of us, deeply. I don’t believe anyone here feels anything as simple as triumph or joy. Some of you probably feel some relief, because you trust one party’s approach to our country’s problems more than the other, and that party won.

Some of you feel deep, gut-wrenching grief and anger and fear, about what this next chapter in our country’s life will bring. I know that’s what you’re feeling, because I’ve heard from you, over the past few days.

And all of us – I’m just going to say this, because if it’s not true, it should be – all of us are deeply concerned at the widespread and well-documented reports of increased verbal and physical violence against Muslims, Latinos, GLBTQ folks, and others, perpetrated by those who see this election as legitimating hatred. Kindergarteners are bullying other kindergarteners by telling them they’re going to be deported. Young Muslim women are afraid to wear the hijab, the headscarf that is a sign of their devotion to God, for fear of being harassed or worse. A gay Episcopal priest got a note on his windshield calling him “Father Homo” and telling him that Trump will take his marriage away. However you cast your vote, as citizens and as Christians, we cannot tolerate this persecution of our fellow Americans and children of God.

There’s a lot to wonder and worry about, as we look around our country right now. There’s so much we don’t know. We’re still just trying to get our bearings in a changed landscape. Trying to stay connected, and remember to breathe.

There have been so many times in the long story of God’s people when people have thought, This is the end. The end of their people, their nation, their faith; even the end of everything. And there have been significant endings, of course – but none of them have been The End. The End, like the last page of a storybook. We’re not at that page yet. I don’t think we will be, anytime soon.

Please hear me: I’m not saying this election doesn’t matter in the big picture. I’m not saying everything will be OK. This new chapter will make new demands on each of us and all of us. Next week and next month and next year we will keep figuring out how to be the people of the story. People who work and pray for the good of the city where we dwell, faithfully and fiercely. People who stand right where Jesus told us to stand: shoulder to shoulder with those who are threatened or pushed to the margins. People who struggle to love each other and listen to each other, because we cannot afford to write each other off. We cannot.

Right now this is all I really know for sure, all I’m ready to say: This is not The End. The story is still moving. This story, our story, all our stories. The American story. The Christian story. The story of St. Dunstan’s. Still moving, still being told, being made, by our words and our choices, individually and together, and by the God whom we name as the Author of our salvation.

 

Announcements

Announcements, November 10

THIS SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13…

Children’s choir rehearsal, Sunday, November 13 at 9:05am: The Children’s Choir will gather for rehearsal. Kids need to be able to read words, but don’t need to know how to read music, and how to focus and learn with a group. Please talk to our Organist & Choir Director, Martin Ganschow, with any questions.

Drama of the Book of Tobit, Sunday, November 13, 9:30am: A group of youth and adults prepared a wonderful dramatic rendering of the Book of Tobit for our Summer Bible & Arts Camp in August. This week they’ll perform it again for our congregation! Please come see the performance.

Sunday school, Sunday, November 13, 10am: This Sunday, our 3 year olds to kindergarten class will be learning about the Exile and Return, while our Elementary classes will work with the prophet Isaiah’s vision of joy and restoration.

Christian Formation Committee Meeting, Sunday, November 13, 11:30am: Our Christian Formation Committee will meet to review and plan programs, especially our Epiphany pageant and study groups for early 2017. All interested folks are welcome to attend and participate.

Thank You Box: Check out the colorful Thank You Box in our Gathering Area. During the month of November, you’re invited to write a note about a person, thing, or event, in our church’s life or beyond, for which you feel grateful. Put your note in the Thank You Box. In December we’ll turn our notes into banners which will hang around the church as a celebration of all the gifts we’ve received from God and one another.

Ladies’ Night Out, Friday, November 18, 6pm: Join us for good food and good conversation among women of all ages from St. Dunstan’s. This month we will meet at Lalo’s Mexican Restaurant, 5510 University Ave in Madison.

Build Madison, Saturday, November 19, 11am – ?: Do you like to problem-solve, make stuff, and work with a team? One of Madison’s local maker-spaces (a facility with all kinds of equipment for making stuff) is having a 24 hour build-a-thon and St Dunstan’s has some Advent-themed projects that need making. We are hoping to take a contingent of both adults and kids to be there part of the time and you are welcome to bring your own project as well. People with all types of backgrounds are encouraged to join in, whether you are an artist, tinker, crafter, builder or just willing to try something new. Alex Surasky-Ysasi, a new member who is a designer and engineer, is looking for a few adults and youth to join her – for a few hours, if not the full 24! Check out buildmadison.com for previous years projects. If you interested talk with Alex or with Rev. Miranda on Sunday.

OPPORTUNITIES TO SERVE…

Black Friday Craft-In: VOLUNTEERS WANTED, Friday, November 25, 1 – 4pm: This year we’ll host our third annual Black Friday Craft-In, a free public crafting event. We can use all kinds of volunteers – whether your skill is sewing, woodworking, stamping, paper crafting, helping little kids with simple crafts, smiling at people and saying “Welcome!”, setting up tables, or putting cookies on plates. If you’d like to plan and set up a craft station of your own, let Rev. Miranda know (so we budget table space for you!), and we have some Michael’s gift cards available to help you cover materials expenses. Sign up in the Gathering Area to help out, or talk with Rev. Miranda.

SHARING CHRISTMAS: It’s time for “SHARING CHRISTMAS”!! The ornaments detailing gift ideas for each member of our adopted families are on display in the Gathering Area! Please choose one or more ornaments, sign your name on the form next to the number indicated on your ornament(s), buy your gift(s), wrap, firmly attach the ornament, and return to church NO LATER than WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 7.  Thank you so much for your generous support of this wonderful Middleton Outreach project that makes Christmas brighter for so many!!

Christmas Cards for Jail Inmates: Thanks to all who have contributed cards; we have a good stock now! Our Card-Writing Station is now set up opposite the kitchen. You can take a moment to write a message while at church, or take home a couple of cards and the card-writing guidelines, and write at home. These cards will go to inmates at the Dane County Jail this Christmas, through an initiative of our sister parish Grace Church.

Christmas is a bleak time for these men and women, and even a simple message of kindness can bring some joy and hope. Our goal is to complete at least 100.

NEXT SUNDAY & BEYOND…

Piece Be with You! Please join us between services at 9:00am on November 20th for a festive, all-parish brunch celebrating the ingathering of our prayers, hopes, and financial pledges for our parish life in the coming year. We will enjoy fellowship, delicious pies, quiches and other offerings. Please sign up to bring your favorite pie or quiche. Pre-cut pies with labeled pie servers would be much appreciated. Questions? talk with Laura Bloomenkranz or Sharon Bloodgood. Thank you!

Sunday school, Sunday, November 20, 10am: This Sunday, our 3 year olds to kindergarten class will be learning about the prophet Jeremiah, while our Elementary classes will explore ideas about Jesus Christ from the letter to the Colossians.

Rector’s Discretionary Fund Offering, Sunday, November 20: Half the cash in our collection plate, and any designated checks, will go towards the Rector’s Discretionary Fund this day and on every third Sunday. This fund is a way to quietly help people with direct financial needs, in the parish and the wider community. Please give generously.

Spirituality of Parenting Lunch, Sunday, November 20, 11:30am: All who seek meaning in the journey of parenthood (at any age or stage) are welcome to come for food and conversation. Child care and a simple meal provided.

Children’s choir rehearsal, Sunday, November 20, 11:30am: The Children’s Choir will gather for rehearsal after the second service. Kids need to be able to read words, but don’t need to know how to read music, and how to focus and learn with a group. Please talk to our Organist & Choir Director, Martin Ganschow, with any questions.

Evening Eucharist, Sunday, November 20, 6pm: Join us for a simple service before the week begins. All are welcome.

Young Adult Meetup at the Vintage, Sunday, November 20, 7pm: The younger adults of St. Dunstan’s are invited to join us for conversation and the beverage of your choice, at the Vintage Brewpub on South Whitney Way. Friends and partners welcome too.

Thanksgiving Service, Wednesday, November 23, 7pm: There will be a simple Eucharist service on Wednesday evening. All are welcome.

NO 8am service on Christmas Day:  On Sunday, December 25, there will NOT be an 8am service. There will be a simple Eucharist at 10am. Christmas Eve services will be Saturday, December 24, at 3pm and 9pm.

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Sermons

Sermon, All Saints Sunday

The Feast of All Saints is one of my favorite feasts of the church’s year. But it also challenges me, every year, to know how to honor and preach the day. Because there’s just a lot going on. In the idiom of writing assignments, a Sunday morning is basically a three-page double-spaced reflection paper, and all the themes and meanings that are packed into this feast day seem like they demand at least an 80-page master’s thesis!… But I promise this will be fewer than 80 pages.

What does this feast ask of us? Well: It asks us to remember. To call to mind, and name together, those holy ones who have gone before us into God’s presence. People who shined the light of God in their time and place; who did justice, and loved mercy, and walked humbly with God; who followed the right, for Jesus’ sake, the whole of their good lives long. As our Old Testament reading, from Ecclesiasticus, points out, some of those are people whose names are known to the church, to the world – people whose witness and impact were such that they’re honored with feasts and icons and shrines. People like our patron saint Dunstan, who’s a pretty obscure saint, yet here we are, still bearing his name and telling his story, ten centuries after his death.

But then, Ecclesiasticus goes on to say, there are those too who are forgotten, or all but forgotten. They may have lived humble lives, but they lived them well. They may have touched few lives, but they touched them for good. We all have some of those names that we hold in our hearts. And a lot of our practices around this feast invite us to honor those people. We light candles for them, and speak their names with love. We bring in photos and mementos for our Remembrance Table – where you can see some of the saints we’ve commended to God from this household of faith in the past year or so: Sybil, Frances, Jerry, Bill, Art. We remember those whose ashes have become part of the soil of our grounds, here, or who have a tree or bush planted in their memory, with the new Memory Tree Plaque in our Gathering Area, and by sending the kids out after church to take flowers to those grandmothers and grandfathers of our church family. In all these ways we practice abiding: honoring the past, telling our family stories, recalling where we came from.

And it’s important to remind ourselves that this is something more mysterious and joyful than remembering the dead. Our beloved dead are alive with God, alive in God. The Communion of Saints, our church teaches us, is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise. When we remember the dead we re-member, we put back together something that has been separated: we remind ourselves that we are still and always one body, one family, with those who have gone before.

So, the Feast of All Saints calls us to re-member. And it also calls us to re-commit – to our own call to sainthood. Our text from the letter to the church in Ephesus uses the word “saints” as it’s generally used in the New Testament: to mean all those who strive to follow Jesus, the whole fellowship of believers. Those who have been baptized, and those on the road towards baptism, all of us who have been promised redemption as God’s own people, and called to live as ambassadors of reconciliation.

The beloved hymn “I Sing of the Saints of God” actually captures this really well – with its charming catalog of saints and martyrs: one was a doctor, and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce wild beast – and its recurring refrain: And I mean to be one too! We know that our sainthood is given by God’s grace, not ours to achieve through our merit – thanks be to God! And at the same time, the gift of grace and the call of the Gospel pull on us, an invisible magnetic field that draws our hearts and lives to point towards mercy and justice.

I mean to be one too! “I mean,” as in, It’s my intention, my desire, my aspiration, to live like the saints we remember and honor: to be patient and brave and true, to love my God so dear, so dear, and let God’s love make me strong. We renew our baptismal vows on All Saints Day – and, some years, we baptize new believers – to hold before ourselves the call of faithful living: praying and worshipping, resisting and repenting, proclaiming, seeking, serving, loving, striving.

On the Feast of All Saints, then, we remember the saints who have gone before us, acknowledge our kinship with them, and affirm our intention to be one too. That is a lot to pack into one Sunday. And yet I don’t feel like any of it can be left out, or even that we could alternate which note we play, each year. Because it runs together – recalling the saints who’ve gone before, and claiming our sainthood. When we get real about what sainthood is, what it’s looked like in the lives of the uncounted millions who’ve walked that road before us, it comforts and encourages, challenges and inspires us.

It’s too easy to think of the saints, the capital-S famous ones or even our family saints, as if they were stained-glass figures, one-dimensional, frozen, idealized, captured in their best, most significant moment. But the saints aren’t, weren’t, otherworldly or perfect. They didn’t live in simpler times. They were a lot like us, which is why we can aspire to be a lot like them. Tobit, an example of faithfulness from before the time of Jesus, shared meals with the poor even when his own family was on the brink of starvation, buried those murdered in the streets, at great personal risk; and his difficulties wore him down so much that on one particularly bad day, he accused his wife of stealing a goat. Saint Theresa of Avila, the famous 16th century nun and theologian, could say lovely inspiring things like, “Let nothing trouble you, let nothing frighten you; all things are passing; God never changes.” And she is also remembered, one day when her horse threw her into a river, to have said to God, “Dear Lord, if this is how You treat Your friends, it’s no wonder You have so few!” One of the saints we remember here at St. Dunstan’s is Jonathan Daniels, a martyr of the Civil Rights movement. I love reading his diaries, in which he second-guesses his own motives and struggles with whether what he’s doing really matters.

For me there is very real comfort in looking at these lives, and so many others. I read an article a couple of weeks ago about the role of family stories in building resilience. There’s this body of research that suggests that the children of homes who tell and re-tell their family stories are more emotionally resilient, better able to cope with struggle and change. And in particular, stories that recall that the family, over its generations, has come through both hard times and good times – those stories correlate with the greatest resilience for the current generation. The stories of the saints – alongside the stories of Scripture – are those family stories for the church. They assure us that God’s people have dealt with crankiness and weariness and self-doubt, while managing somehow to stay faithful in times of need and struggle, and grateful in times of plenty and peace, for thousands of years. Their witness can help us have the resilience to do the same, in our time and place.

The resilience or the balance – that’s what the songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen called it, when he wrote about what makes a saint, back in the ‘60s. He wrote, “Contact with [the energy of love] results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence… I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a [person] setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is [a saint’s] glory… Far from flying with the angels, [a saint] traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. [She] can love the shapes of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such [people], such balancing monsters of love.” – Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers (1966)

I think that kind of resilience or balance is what Jesus is talking about in the first part of today’s Gospel. I’ve read this passage many times, but this year it jumped out at me that Jesus is talking *to his disciples.* In pictures of the Sermon on the Mount, of which this is part, there’s usually a huge crowd. But right here, the text says, He looked up at his disciples. He’s talking to his followers, his friends – people whose stories and struggles he knows. Maybe he’s looking at their faces as he speaks, thinking about how his words might land in each of their hearts. To those in bad times, in poverty, in grief, he speaks assurance and hope. Know that you are in God’s hands, blessed, beloved, and that better is coming, one way or another. And to those in good times, blessed by wealth and ease, he says, Hey, remember that’s just what it is; it doesn’t mean you’re God’s favorite or better than anyone else. Keep yourself grounded in what’s true and real and lasting, because hard times come around for everyone.

To all of his friends gathered around, he says, Our circumstances don’t define us. They influence us, of course. But they don’t get the last word. With God’s help, through the energy of love, you can keep your balance. With God’s help, by the immeasurable greatness of divine power working in and for us, you are resilient enough to withstand the risks of both easy and difficult seasons.

I woke up Wednesday morning this past week feeling like my own resilience and balance were stretched thin. The news just kept being awful, and I was running low on my inner resources. I came to church and lit candles and incense on the little altar. I sat there in the candlelight and prayed through a couple dozen of our Prayer Book collects. I chanted a few psalms. Then I just sat there in the dark for a few moments. And in the dark I heard the voice of Sybil in my memory – Sybil, our beloved deacon, who passed away this spring. I heard Sybil saying, Hopeful.

And then I started thinking about all the saints of this church who have gone on before us in the past year and more, and the witness of their lives for those of us left behind. I need Sybil’s weary and courageous hopefulness. I need Frances’ instant, genuine courtesy to every person I meet. I need Jerry’s determination to find the good in any misfortune. I need Bill’s strategic eye and capacity to see the big picture. I need Art’s gentle and total conviction that turning towards the needs of others is always the best escape from our own anxious preoccupations.

And there’s the witness of the capital-S Saints too – the witness of blessed Dunstan who knew that kings may come and go, but the work of God’s Kingdom always continues. the witness of blessed Francis who believed peace was always possible, even in the depths of division. the witness of blessed Mary, the Mother of God, who disbelieved in her own smallness, youth, powerlessness; who had the audacity to say Yes and become an agent of God’s purposes on earth. These are the saints of years past, whose light still shines to light our way forward. These are the family stories that shape us for resilience. These are the balanced monsters of love who teach us to look for grace even in chaos. And I mean to be one too.

Announcements

Announcements, October 27

TONIGHT…

Spooky Sandbox, Thursday, October 27, 5:30pm: All are welcome to a special edition of our weekly Thursday evening worship. We’ll share some spooky Bible stories, with appropriate music and crafts. Dinner will follow our intergenerational worship service. All are welcome!

THIS WEEKEND…

Ladies’ Night Out, Friday, October 28, 6pm: Join our monthly get-together as we dine at area restaurants and enjoy good conversation among women of all ages from St. Dunstan’s. This month we will meet at Sa Bai Thong at 6802 Odana Road, in Madison. 

Naming our Saints: In anticipation of All Saints Day, please fill out one or more Saint Slips, available in the Gathering Area. Tell us about a saint, well-known or known only to you, whom you remember with love.

Last Sunday, Sunday, October 30, 10am: Our Last Sunday worship is intended especially to help kids (and grownups who are new to our pattern of worship) to engage and participate fully. NOTE: Our 8am service always follows our regular order of worship.

Middle School Lunch & Learn, Sunday, October 30, 11:30am: Rev. Miranda invites the 10-and-up youth of the parish to meet with her for lunch after church once a month. We’ll dig into faith, Scripture, life, and our questions about all three. We’ll wrap up by 1pm, and we can arrange rides home for the kids if that helps the parents’ schedules.

Fall Giving Campaign: Kids’ Market: As the Kids’ portion of our fall Giving Campaign, the kids of St. Dunstan’s (and their parents) are invited to contribute used toys or other unwanted but useful items to our Kids’ Market, which will run from October 30 through November 13. Kids are encouraged to go through their rooms and bring in some small, good-condition items that are ready for a new home. (No clothing, and no more than one plastic grocery bag per child, please!) Please bring in all contributions by Sunday, October 30. Kids and adults of the parish can shop the Market from October 30 through November 13. All donations will go to support our 2017 parish budget, as our kids’ contribution to our church’s ongoing life. Thanks for your participation!

Black Friday Craft-In: VOLUNTEERS WANTED, Friday, November 25, 1 – 4pm: This year we’ll host our third annual Black Friday Craft-In, a free public crafting event. We can use all kinds of volunteers – whether your skill is sewing, woodworking, stamping, paper crafting, helping little kids with simple crafts, smiling at people and saying “Welcome!”, setting up tables, or putting cookies on plates. If you’d like to plan and set up a craft station of your own, let Rev. Miranda know (so we budget table space for you!), and we have some Michael’s gift cards available to help you cover materials expenses. Sign up in the Gathering Area to help out, or talk with  Rev. Miranda.

 Christmas Cards for Jail Inmates: Thanks to all who have contributed cards; we have a good stock now! Our Card-Writing Station is now set up opposite the kitchen. You can take a moment to write a message while at church, or take home a couple of cards and the card-writing guidelines, and write at home. These cards will go to inmates at the Dane County Jail this Christmas, through an initiative of our sister parish Grace Church.

Christmas is a bleak time for these men and women, and even a simple message of kindness can bring some joy and hope. Our goal is to complete at least 100.

THE WEEKS AHEAD…

International Potluck, Saturday, November 5, 5pm: Diversity comes in many flavors, and our congregation has a wide range of ages, sexual orientations, and nationalities.  The Diversity Potluck is a get-together intended to showcase and celebrate our beautiful diversity, whatever that word means to you.  Bring a dish that you feel celebrates your own personal diversity.  You can bring artwork, music, or poems (original or not) that celebrates it as well!  Feel free to dress up to celebrate it!  Dinner will start at 5:00.  Please, bring a small card telling us about your dish/art, and note if the dish is gluten free/ vegetarian/ peanut free.  Please sign up with what dish you are bringing in the Gathering Area.

Birthdays and Anniversaries will be will be honored and Healing Prayers will be offered next Sunday, November 6, as is our custom on the first Sunday of every month.

“Breaking all the Rules: A Byzantine Princess Writes History”, Sunday, November 6, 9am: This fall we are starting a new 9am opportunity: a time for some of our members who are scholars, educators, and thinkers of deep thoughts to talk about things they love to talk about. Leonora Neville, one of our newer members, is a professor of history at UW-Madison. She’ll tell us about Anna Komnene, a fascinating figure who is the subject of Leonora’s most recent book.

All Saints’ Day, Sunday, Nov. 6: We will celebrate this holy day with an opportunity to remember the faithful departed; renewal of our baptismal vows; and, at our 10am service, a kids’ saint procession.

Remembrance Station: Consider bringing in a token of one of those saints whom you remember with love and respect, as an extension of our All Saints commemorations. Our Remembrance Station this year will include a place to hang pictures or notes, and a table where you may place a photo or other memento. Please don’t bring in anything precious or irreplaceable. On Sunday, November 20, we will commend these faithful departed to Christ our King.

Falk Food Friends Grocery Packing, Sunday, November 6, following the 10am service:  All helpers are welcome as we prepare weekend grocery bags for homeless families whose kids attend Falk Elementary School.

Evening Eucharist, Sunday, November 6, 6pm: Join us for a simple service before the week begins. All are welcome.

MOM Special Offering, Sunday, November 6: Next Sunday, half the cash in our offering plate and any designated checks will be given to Middleton Outreach Ministry’s food pantry. Here are the current top-ten, most needed items: dried beans, whole grains, herbs and spices, low-sugar beverages, ethnic foods, spaghetti & pizza sauce, cooking oil, single-serve peanut butter, whole grain cereal and laundry detergent. Thank you for all your support!

Election Day Prayers, Tuesday, November 8, 12pm: There will be a simple prayer service at noon. Whoever we are voting for, whatever our hopes or fears, we can come together and pray for the wellbeing of our city, nation, and world. All are welcome. There will also be a Communion service at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, at 1833 Regent Street, at 5:30pm that evening.

Madison-Area Julian Gathering, Wednesday, November 9, 7:15 – 9:00 PM: Julian of Norwich was a 15th Century English mystic and anchoress.  Little is known about Julian’s life, but she wrote a book, as far as we know the first in English written by a woman, about a series of revelations which opened her to the depths of God’s unconditional love for us in Jesus Christ. Come join us for contemplative prayer, fellowship, and reading/discussion of Julian’s book.  At the beginning of each meeting, brief instruction on the practice of contemplative prayer is offered.  All welcome.

 

 

 

Giving Campaign, Sermons, Stewardship, Stories, Worship

Sermon, Oct. 16

Two men went up to the temple to pray. One of them was a Pharisee, a member of a movement within Judaism that was restoring the ancient practices of worship and piety described in the books of the Law. And the other was a tax collector – someone who worked for the occupying Roman government to collect punishing levels of tax from his fellow citizens. The Pharisee was standing by himself, and praying like this: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ Jesus said, “I tell you, this man, not the Pharisee, went down to his home that day justified. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Today we begin our annual Giving Campaign, the month in which members offer their pledges – statements of how much we plan to give during the coming year – to enable the church to develop its budget for 2017. At first glance, this is a TERRIBLE Gospel reading for the occasion. The Pharisee, who’s giving a tenth of his income to the Temple, comes out of this story looking like a jerk. His piety is held up as a mistake, not a model. So let’s talk about the Pharisee. Because it’s not his giving that’s the problem.

What’s wrong with the Pharisee? Well, Luke tells us that this story was directed at those who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and regarded others with contempt. That’s what’s broken about the Pharisee’s faith, in a nutshell. He trusts in himself that he is righteous. He fasts, abstaining from certain foods as the religious laws demand; he gives a tenth of his income to the Temple; you can bet he follows all the other rules of his faith too. There is nothing wrong with those practices – in fact, there’s a lot right about them! Fasting and giving and praying, and all the other daily acts of faith, are ways we turn belief into action, into habit.

The practices aren’t the problem. The mindset is the problem. If you think you can get right with God by simply checking a set of boxes, then you don’t actually need God. Being a good person becomes a lot like acing a test, and God becomes irrelevant. The apostle Paul talks about this mindset a lot, because before he became a Christian, he was right there with this Pharisee – righteous under the Law, meeting all its requirements. And then he met Jesus, and realized how inadequate and empty it all was.

So, the Pharisee trusts in himself that he is righteous; and he regards others with contempt. His sense of his own righteousness is based to a significant degree on being better than other people. This is one of my favorite parables because it gives us a glimpse of Jesus’ keen sense of humor. Did you notice the trap he sets here, with this simple little story? You hear the Pharisee saying, Thank God I am not like that tax collector! And the immediate, natural thing to think is, Thank God I am not like that Pharisee!

Let’s call that the Pharisee Trap: the tendency to find our righteousness in being better than others. The Pharisee Trap can be a real risk for Episcopalians. I’ve heard too many church leaders who should know better say that what’s great about the Episcopal Church is that we’re not judgmental like the fundamentalists, or manipulative like the evangelicals, or rigid like the Roman Catholics. I’m sure I slip into the Pharisee Trap now and then myself. We love our church, and we find grace in its particular balance of Scripture, tradition, and reason. It’s great when we talk about that, when we proclaim it.

But we need to be intentional in talking about why we love our church and our way of faith in terms of our strengths, more than in terms of other churches’ weaknesses. I have the privilege of having pretty regular conversations with people who are coming to the Episcopal Church from other ways of faith. And I always try to ask, What was hard about what you’re leaving, what didn’t fit? And, what was good about it? what will you miss? And I try to say, Here are things I love about the Anglican and Episcopal way of faith. Here’s what’s earned my loyalty and my joy. And here are the things we’re not so great at. Because we’re not perfect, not the pinnacle of Christianity.

So that’s what’s wrong with the Pharisee: self-satisfaction grounded in the conviction that he’s got this God thing all figured out, unlike SOME. And if you think that smug spiritual arrogance doesn’t sound very Episcopalian – well, then you haven’t been to all the same meetings I have… Okay. Let’s turn to the Tax Collector. He comes out of this parable smelling like roses. He humbles himself, lowers himself, before God, and God exalts him, lifts him up, sets him right.

What’s right with the Tax Collector? Jesus describes this character in the parable in a way that invites us to notice his grief and guilt: the man is standing far off, off to the side, alone; he would not even look up to heaven; and he is beating his breast, a gesture of self-abasement. And then there are the words of his prayer: God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

Jesus paints a vivid picture with a few simple details. He wants his hearers to understand the intensity of the tax collector’s guilt and longing for mercy. However – I want to be clear that I don’t think Jesus wants us all to approach God this way. A lot of his preaching and teaching is focused on encouraging people to approach God with more boldness, trust, and love. To take one key example, when Jesus’s friends ask him how to pray, he teaches them to call God, Father. Or even, Daddy or Papa – the word Abba that Jesus uses, in the Lord’s Prayer, is one that a child would use at home. Jesus calls his followers to greater intimacy with God, and away from a distant and fearful piety. He doesn’t want us to stand off to the side, to be afraid to look up at God, even in our deepest sins and darkest moments. So those details he tells us about the Tax Collector, I think, are meant not to give us an example we ought to follow, but instead to tell us something about the depth and quality of this man’s spirituality.

So what are we to notice about the tax collector? He’s open to God. Both in telling the truth about himself, his brokenness and his need; and in expecting God to respond. Look back at our friend the Pharisee: his words are technically a prayer, because he starts with “God.” But it he’s basically talking to himself about what a great guy he is. The tax collector’s prayer is far simpler – and far more honest. He doesn’t have a list of what he’s done wrong, or right. He simply names himself as a sinner, as having fallen short of God’s intentions for him. And he asks for God’s mercy. For God to receive him with love and save him from his own weaknesses and failures. While the Pharisee thinks he’s fine already, and has no need to be open to God, the tax collector’s burdened conscience drives him to seek God, in pain, in truth, in hope.

And that leads me to the second thing I think Jesus wants us to notice about the tax collector: He leaves different than he came. Jesus says, He went home that day justified. Set right with God – forgiven – exonerated – his burden lifted. Imagine him walking out of the Temple feeling … lighter. Feeling hope, once more, that there is good in the world and that he has a chance to be part of it. The tax collector leaves the Temple changed by what happened there – by his own prayer, and by God’s grace.

And that, friends, is why maybe this is a pretty good parable for the beginning of a Giving Campaign, after all. Because let’s face it: the real question of a Giving Campaign is, why have a church? You could get together for meals without church. You could give money to charity without church. You could study Scripture without church. Why commit your resources and time and skills and care to helping this place be and become and endure?

A couple of months ago, Scott Gunn, Episcopal priest and writer, wrote a blog post that caught my eye, responding to a statement he’d heard several times: The church should be out in the world. The implication being that we might be indulging ourselves by making sure we have a safe, warm, and lovely place to gather for worship and fellowship. Here’s what Scott says about that idea:

“Sometimes you hear people saying something along the lines that the church shouldn’t be focused on worship when there are so many needs in the world. And I fully agree that any church which turns its back on the needs of the world is no church…. [But] there is not a zero sum… here. A focus on worship does not reduce our focus on the world. Rather, a focus on worship is the church’s work, and … worship rightly done sends us out into the world. I think we confuse the work of the church and the work of disciples… When the church is doing its work, it will be forming disciples of Jesus Christ who find the needs of the world irresistible and who find themselves called to respond. Worship is not a distraction from the world, but rather it is the thin place that opens our eyes to the glory of God and thus to the possibility of glory in our world.”

Scott is saying, in essence, that the purpose of church is to be a place apart. The word Holy, in all the languages of the Bible, basically means: Dedicated. Set apart. And set apart for a purpose. At church we gather from our daily lives, into this holy place, this holy time; and then we go forth as disciples into the world. And like the tax collector, we go forth different.

When we held focus groups last year to talk about why you all make church part of your lives, a lot of you said something like that: that church was a place of solace, of restoration, of re-orientation. A place to bring your thirsty soul and receive the water of life. A place to sit and breathe, and remember the big picture, the long arc, the great story. A place to get re-grounded to face the challenges of daily living. A place to leave different.

Now, in all honesty and humility, I’m sure there are many weeks for you when it’s just church. I know there are for me. Maybe it’s a bit much to expect transformation every week. But at the same time, I’ve learned – mostly from all y’all – that there are a lot of ways in which gathering here, spending this intentional time with God and fellow Christians, does change us. Does send us forth different than we came. Even in small ways.

Because in the face of today’s perplexities, Scripture reminds us of the long history of God’s people struggling and shouting and grieving and journeying and surviving and rebuilding. Because in a divided world, here we share faith and friendship with people of different backgrounds and different views – yes, however homogenous we may look, believe me, we contain multitudes! – and those conversations bless and challenge us by making us remember our shared humanity. Because in an everything-is-fine world, sometimes, here, we are able to name what’s really on our minds and hearts, in prayer and conversation.

Because we can do small, real things together here about the world’s woes, coordinating our efforts and getting diapers or notebooks or a jar of applesauce or the price of a new muffler to those who need them. Because griefs or concerns that feel big and new and strange to us are wrapped up in the capacious and experienced arms of the church’s prayer, to which no human pains are unfamiliar. Because there’s room here to offer the things we’re good at and the things we love to do; and when a community recognizes and receives and acknowledges our gifts, we feel seen, and blessed.

Because despite weariness or despair that can weigh us down, here the bright energy of children and the soaring notes of our hymns and the color of the leaves in the sunlight can lift our hearts and restore some sense of hope and meaning. Because our liturgy invites us to lay down our burdens, offer up our prayers, and be fed by God’s unconditional, unshakable, unending love.

Now, I’m in danger, here, of sounding like the Pharisee. Of saying, God, thank you that our church is such a great place! We welcome everybody, we have beautiful worship and vital ministries, and we’re WAY nicer than Some Other Churches We Could Name. It’s a fine line to walk… I want to celebrate what we do well. I am proud of St. Dunstan’s and I take delight in many aspects of our life together. But I can’t, I don’t ask you, to commit financial support and time and ideas and skills to the life of this body because we’re perfect. We’re not.

I ask for your presence and participation and support because we’re building a good thing here, and I very much want to continue that work together. To follow through on where God is leading us. I ask you to stand with me before God, as we look towards another year in our shared life of faith, with the heart of the tax collector: open to God, in honesty, humility, and hope, and ready to be made new and sent forth.

Scott Gunn’s blog post may be read in full here: http://www.sevenwholedays.org/2016/08/17/where-does-the-church-belong/

Announcements

Announcements, October 20

THIS WEEK…

Outreach meeting, Saturday, October 22, 8-10:30am: All are welcome to join our conversations about how St. Dunstan’s can best serve the world with our resources and our hands. We begin with an optional potluck breakfast at 8am.

Children’s Choir Rehearsal, Sunday, October 23, 9:20am: The Children’s Choir will gather for rehearsal. Kids need to be able to read English (not music), and to focus and learn with a group. Please talk to our Organist & Choir Director, Martin Ganschow, with any questions.

Giving Campaign Kickoff and Parish Talent Show Sunday, October 23, 11:30-1pm: Our fall Giving Campaign starts with a Talent Show, at which members of St. Dunstan’s will have the opportunity to share their skills. A light lunch will be served. Come see the accomplishments of fellow parishioners and enjoy the show!

Grace Shelter Dinner, Sunday, October 23, 7pm: Every fourth Sunday, a loyal group of St. Dunstan’s folk provides dinner for residents at the Grace Church shelter, and breakfast the next morning. See the signup sheet in the Gathering Area to help out. To learn more, talk with Rose Mueller.

Need Greeters for Sundays, October 23 and October 30: Please let Pamela know by Friday if you are available to be a greeter for this Sunday or for next Sunday, October 30. You can email her at . Thanks for your consideration.

Naming our Saints: In anticipation of All Saints Day, please fill out one or more Saint Slips, available in the Gathering Area. Tell us about a saint, well-known or known only to you, whom you remember with love.

THE WEEKS AHEAD…

Spooky Sandbox, Thursday, October 27, 5:30pm: All are welcome to a special edition of our weekly Thursday evening worship. We’ll share some spooky Bible stories, with appropriate music and crafts. Dinner will follow our intergenerational worship service. All are welcome!

Ladies’ Night Out, Friday, October 28, 6pm: Join our monthly get-together as we dine at area restaurants and enjoy good conversation among women of all ages from St. Dunstan’s. This month we will meet at Sa Bai Thong at 6802 Odana Road, in Madison. For more information  contact Kathy Whitt or Debra Martinez.

Last Sunday, Sunday, October 30, 10am: Our Last Sunday worship is intended especially to help kids (and grownups who are new to our pattern of worship) to engage and participate fully.  NOTE: Our 8am service always follows our regular order of worship.

Middle School Lunch & Learn, Sunday, October 30, 11:30am: Rev. Miranda invites the 10-and-up youth of the parish to meet with her for lunch after church once a month. We’ll dig into faith, Scripture, life, and our questions about all three. We’ll wrap up by 1pm, and we can arrange rides home for the kids if that helps the parents’ schedules.

Fall Giving Campaign: Kids’ Market: As the Kids’ portion of our fall Giving Campaign, the kids of St. Dunstan’s (and their parents) are invited to contribute used toys or other unwanted but useful items to our Kids’ Market, which will run from October 30 through November 13. Kids are encouraged to go through their rooms and bring in some small, good-condition items that are ready for a new home. (No clothing, and no more than one plastic grocery bag per child, please!) Please bring in all contributions by Sunday, October 30. Kids and adults of the parish can shop the Market from October 30 through November 13. All donations will go to support our 2017 parish budget, as our kids’ contribution to our church’s ongoing life. Thanks for your participation!

International Potluck, Saturday, November 5, 5pm: Diversity comes in many flavors, and our congregation has a wide range of ages, sexual orientations, and nationalities.  The Diversity Potluck is a get-together intended to showcase and celebrate our beautiful diversity, whatever that word means to you.  Bring a dish that you feel celebrates your own personal diversity.  You can bring artwork, music, or poems (original or not) that celebrates it as well!  Feel free to dress up to celebrate it!  Dinner will start at 5:00.  Please, bring a small card telling us about your dish/art, and note if the dish is gluten free/ vegetarian/ peanut free.  Please sign up with what dish you are bringing in the Gathering Area.

“Breaking all the Rules: A Byzantine Princess Writes History”, Sunday, November 6, 9am: This fall we are starting a new 9am opportunity: a time for some of our members who are scholars, educators, and thinkers of deep thoughts to talk about things they love to talk about. Leonora Neville, one of our newer members, is a professor of history at UW-Madison. She’ll tell us about Anna Komnene, a fascinating figure who is the subject of Leonora’s most recent book.

All Saints’ Day, Sunday, Nov. 6: We will celebrate this holy day with an opportunity to remember the faithful departed; renewal of our baptismal vows; and, at our 10am service, a kids’ saint procession.

Remembrance Station: Consider bringing in a token of one of those saints whom you remember with love and respect, as an extension of our All Saints commemorations. Our Remembrance Station this year will include a place to hang pictures or notes, and a table where you may place a photo or other memento. Please don’t bring in anything precious or irreplaceable. On Sunday, November 20, we will commend these faithful departed to Christ our King.

OPPORTUNITIES TO SERVE…

Christmas Cards for Jail Inmates: St. Dunstan’s has been invited by our sister parish Grace Church to join them in writing Christmas cards to the inmates of the Dane County Jail. Christmas is a bleak time for these men and women, and even a simple message of kindness can bring some joy and hope. Our goal is to complete at least 100. Right now we are asking for donations of Christmas cards – odd leftovers from past years, ones you don’t really like enough to send, cheap ones from the thrift store. Once we have some cards, we’ll set up a Card-Writing Station where people can pause to write a message while they’re at church, or take a few cards and the guidelines for card-writing to do their writing at home. Cards will be delivered to the jail before Christmas.

Become a Mentor to a Local Student! The mentoring program at Kromrey Middle School aims to help kids who may face barriers due to their background or educational challenges, to be well-supported and high-school ready. If you enjoy working with young people and have wondered how to make a difference in our community, this may be a perfect opportunity for you. The initial training will be October 28. Application forms are available at St. Dunstan’s and should be sent in by October 24th.

 

Current Events, Sermons

Sermon, October 16

This was a week when I wished we had that sign board out front for sermon titles, like some churches do, because I actually had a title before I had anything else: How We Know the Good. How We Know the Good – how we recognize good things, good thoughts, good choices, good paths. It’s a fundamental issue in religion and ethics – we can have the best intentions in the world to act rightly, but if we can’t somehow identify or discern what is right and good, we can’t follow through on our intentions.

Today’s lectionary texts point us at two ways that we can know the good. The first is the human conscience. Conscience is the word we give to our God-given capacity to know the good. Like a compass pointing to north, our conscience points to the right path, to what is true, and just, and good. It guides us in uncertainty, goads us when we are wrongly comfortable, and reminds us when something in our lives is amiss, in need of amendment, change, or healing. In our text from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, God speaks through the prophet to tell the people: No longer will the law of holiness, your way of living as God’s people, exist outside of you, a Law that must be written and taught. Instead I will put my law inside of you; I will engrave it on your hearts; and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. No longer shall the people have to teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD.

Jeremiah’s image of God’s law of goodness written on the hearts of God’s people, so that we simply know God’s ways without being taught – that idea becomes a central concept in Anglican theological anthropology. Theological anthropology just means, how we think about humans in light of how we think about God. And Christian traditions vary widely in their theological anthropology. For instance, it’s one of our areas of difference from our Lutheran brothers and sisters, with whom we otherwise share a great deal. Among Christian traditions, Anglicans and Episcopalians have a relatively positive view of humanity. For Anglicans, knowing good from evil is a fundamental part of human nature, one of the ways in which we were created in God’s likeness, revealed and redeemed in Jesus Christ’s incarnation as a human being. While other Reformation theologians stressed human sinfulness, the Anglican reformers saw humans as possessing reason and conscience, God-given capacities for moral knowing, which make it possible to see and choose the good. True, we see wrongly and choose badly, often; but in spite of our failings, humans are capable of acting rightly. The 16th-century Anglican theologian Richard Hooker wrote, “Reason… may rightly discerne the thing which is good.” And the 20th-century Anglican theologian Kenneth Kirk wrote, ‘”The Soul, however tainted or corrupted by sin, retains an innate power both of perceiving what is good and right, and of aspiring to it.”

Listen, talking Anglican moral theology may seem scholarly and abstruse. But I think that sense of a human capacity to know the good is in the DNA of our faith in a way that you’ll recognize once you start to look for it. Our shared conviction that the human heart is not a traitor leading us to damnation, but can actually be a faithful compass pointing us towards God’s desires, that conviction is what’s made it possible for us to re-examine and revise the the church’s historic teachings on ordaining women and gay people, for example.

So, we Episcopalians, Christians in the Anglican tradition, believe that conscience is inborn, a birthright. But conscience is also formed and nurtured by community. You might think of it like our capacity for language – we are hard-wired for it, it’s fundamental to our nature, but we still need a linguistic community to activate it. Our conscience is shaped and developed in the context of our moral communities – family, church, and society. Of course, as people of faith, we see the church as a primary site of moral formation; and of course as liturgical Christians, we see regular participation in our rites of word and sacrament as the key to our ongoing growth as moral agents.

The liturgy we’re using right now, for example, teaches us to notice and celebrate the small blessings of life – those loud-boiling test tubes! – and give thanks for them. To look to God as the Source of all things. To pray and strive for the welfare of others, near and far, and to work and pray for the good of the city where we dwell. To be mindful of our failures of love, and to seek healing and amendment of life. To be people of peace. To be people of generosity, who offer back a portion of what we are given. To hold before ourselves Jesus’ example of courageous self-giving love, and his passion for the redemption of the world. To be people of forgiveness. To trust God for what we truly need. To recognize and treasure our unity, even in our differences. And to serve God in the world with strength, courage, gladness, and singleness of heart. And that’s just the words of the liturgy, apart from the Scriptures and the sermon of the day, which occasionally makes a worthwhile point.

There is indeed some rich moral teaching in our liturgies, to be absorbed week by week, year by year, decade by decade. But it’s all rather broad-brush, isn’t it? Not a lot of specifics about how to apply these principles. Those of you who have come to the Episcopal Church from other branches of the noble tree of Christianity may have noticed that we are not real heavy on teaching particular moral rules. That’s not just 21st century Episcopal wishy-washiness. It’s actually part and parcel of that basic Anglican theological anthropology. Instead of teaching moral rules, what you ought to do in such and such a situation, we focus on forming a moral community, in which individuals develop their capacity to recognize the good and do what is right. We proclaim a few bedrock commitments, but when it comes to how we live them out in given cases, we tend to trust reason informed by conscience. As the former Archbishop of Canterbury once wrote, “Only I can answer the question, ‘What ought I to do?'” (Rowan Williams, p. 296).

Listening to your conscience takes effort. Otherwise we’d never do anything wrong. It takes mindfulness and self-knowledge. It’s easier when we’re not stressed or angry or exhausted – though sometimes clarity can strike like a lighting bolt in those moments, too. We’re apt to ignore that still small voice inside us because we’re comfortable, or busy, or anxious, or prideful, or because we feel too responsible … But if we look inside ourselves, the compass is there, needle faithfully pointing the way even as we cast about for a path.

But. But.

Let’s look at this Gospel parable. Jesus says, In a certain city there was a judge, who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'” Luke, our Gospel writer, sees this as a story about our call to be persistent. He introduces it as “a parable about the need to pray always and not to lose heart.” And he adds a coda to the story itself – a couple of sayings of Jesus: God will grant justice to God’s chosen ones who cry to God day and night; yet when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

This whole section of Luke, these parables and sayings, is unique to Luke’s Gospel. Bible scholars think that he had access to a collection of Jesus’ sayings and teachings that the other Gospel writers didn’t have. He had to figure out how drop them into his account of Jesus’ life, which he does, in part, by just stringing a bunch of them together here in chapters 17 and 18. It’s possible – and in some cases seems likely – that he was trying to match up parables and sayings, so that it all made sense to him and to his audience. I visualize him with a bunch of index cards on his desk…

So. Maybe this is a parable about being faithful in prayer, even when it seems like you’re not getting results. Sure. That call to holy persistence would be in keeping with the message of this portion of the second letter to Timothy: Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. Read from that angle, the story invites us to identify with the widow. Keep making noise. Be the squeaky wheel. Don’t give up. You will be heard, and answered.

But. Part of how the parables work is that they can be read from multiple angles. I fully believe that was Jesus’ intention, and that a lot of the time, in the Gospels, when a parable comes with a little explanation about what it means, that explanation comes from the Gospel writer. I suspect Jesus mostly just told the stories and left people to puzzle over them.

So in that light, think on this story again, and ask yourself, what if I’m the judge? …

Jesus points us towards the question of conscience in the way he describes the judge: he neither feared God nor had respect for people. So in contrast with the developed conscience of a practicing Jew or Christian, this guy doesn’t care what God thinks about his actions, and he doesn’t care about what happens to other people. And he’s a person in authority; his decisions influence the lives of others on a daily basis. And he has walled up his inner moral compass. He just doesn’t care.

But the widow makes him care. Because she won’t shut up. She keeps pressing her case, insisting that there’s an injustice that needs attention, until she wears him down. He finally hears her, and responds to her call, because she is so persistent – or to put it another way, because she is so annoying.

What if I’m the judge? What if I’m the one whose ears and mind and heart are closed, until someone’s persistence wears me down so that I finally, finally listen?

We are formed and nurtured by moral communities – our families, schools, churches. They train and calibrate our consciences for compassion, understanding, empathy.

But the human world is bigger than our moral communities. There are people whose lives we don’t easily understand. The constraints that bind them, the struggles that bear down on them, the griefs and needs that exhaust and frustrate them. Sometimes we look at others’ lives and find it hard to their motives and choices. Sometimes we look at others’ lives and know we should feel pity, but instead, feel judgment. We think, in our inmost hearts, I wouldn’t have let that happen to me. Why didn’t they make better choices? He brought it on himself. She should have known better.

Those thoughts are a sign that our conscience is overwhelmed, swamped by a situation that’s outside our moral universe. The communities and experiences that formed us didn’t prepare us to understand and respond to the full scope of human lives, needs, wrongs and injustices.

This is the second way we can know the good: by listening, when a person or community is persistently telling us that something is deeply wrong. What’s banging on the door of your conscience? Coming around every day to remind you that some situation you haven’t yet begun to care about still hasn’t gone away?

Here’s something that’s been nagging at my conscience. On September 21st, five days after police in Tulsa shot Terence Crutcher, one day after police in Charlotte shot Keith Scott, a new hashtag showed up on Twitter. A hashtag is a way to link people’s comments and posts, to have a broad conversation about the same issue or event. This hashtag was, WhiteChurchQuiet. The conversation it defined was a conversation among African-American Christians about feeling unheard and uncared-about. And it felt like a punch in the gut to me, and to many other white Christians.

Here are a few of the tweets, “Do you all really want social justice, or do you just want to talk about diversity so the good Lord knows you mean well? #WhiteChurchQuiet” “We ask, How long, O Lord? Maybe God is asking us the same question. #WhiteChurchQuiet” A quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. #WhiteChurchQuiet” A quotation from the Epistles, from 1 John: “If you don’t love the person you can see, how can you love the God you can’t see? #WhiteChurchQuiet”

The #WhiteChurchQuiet hashtag is a persistent widow for me. I’m not like the Unjust Judge; I might be worse. I do fear God and respect other people, but I’m still ignoring my brothers and sisters who are shouting for change, shouting for justice. I believe that, among the forces that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, systemic racism is among the most vicious and powerful. My brothers and sisters, for whom Christ died, live in a very different Madison and a very different America than I do as a white person. My kids’ Black friends are growing up in the shadow of statistics about massive disparities in educational outcomes, future employment, and involvement with the criminal justice system. It’s not just and it’s not right. But talking about systemic racism has become so polarized that it’s scary to talk about it in church. I’m worried right now about who I’m upsetting. And so I become a poster child for WhiteChurchQuiet. Because I’m fearful, and because I don’t know what to say. I don’t have this figured out yet. Far from it. But I hear #WhiteChurchQuiet as the holy botheration of the indignant widow, for me. There’s something here that’s calling my conscience to re-calibrate, so that it can guide me in right response to the divisions and disparaties of our common life.

But there are plenty of persistent widows to go around. This past week a lot of American men have had a rude awakening to the commonplace realities of life as a girl and woman. Our political conversation has gone some places nobody expected or wanted it to go. And that’s uncorked the bottle of women’s stories of having their space invaded and their bodily autonomy violated. Author Kelly Oxford tweeted about her own experience of sexual assault, and invited other women to share theirs. She got millions of responses. At the peak she was receiving fifty per minute. I think women knew that these experiences are commonplace, though maybe we didn’t know just how commonplace, or how egregious they could be, or how young we are when it begins.

But a lot of men didn’t know. Most men don’t do stuff like that. And they had no idea that most women experience stuff like that. And it’s been genuinely heartening to see America’s men responding to this particular persistent widow – taking on board realities that were invisible to them before, and saying, That’s not okay. We all need to do better. We need to teach our daughters to yell, and our sons to ask, and we need to convince, rebuke, and encourage one another to treat every child of God with respect and care.

We know what’s good, what’s true, what’s just, first because God gives us the gift – and burden – of a conscience, born inside us, nestled against our beating hearts, nurtured by the people and communities around us. And when we run up against the limits of our moral knowing, of what our conscience has encountered, we can come to know the good by a second path: through the persistence of another’s voice, from outside the walls of our zone of comfort and familiarity, that breaks through the limits of our capacity for concern and compassion, and bother us into a broader view of the goodness God wants for all God’s children.

Announcements

Announcements, October 13

TONIGHT…

Liturgy and Music Planning Meeting, Thursday, October 13, 7pm: We’ll meet to plan ahead for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, and to discuss some new liturgical possibilities. All are welcome!

THIS WEEK…

Caregivers’ Support Group, Saturday, October 15, 9am: The sessions are planned for the 1st and 3rd Saturdays of the month. This will be a safe space to share concerns with others who have similar situations and to offer support in return. For more information, contact John Rasmus, Bonnie Magnuson or Joseph Wermeling.

Men’s Book Club, Saturday, October 15, 10am-12noon: The book is The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. The story follows Hetty “Handful” Grimke, a Charleston slave, and Sarah, the daughter of the wealthy Grimke family, who went on to become a feminist, suffragist and an abolitionist.

Creation Care meeting, Saturday, October 15, 12-1:30pm: We will discuss how to move ahead with living into our Creation Care Mission Statement. Members of the parish who’d like to get involved are welcome to attend.

Special Collection for Haiti, Sunday, October 16: Our diocese has a partnership with the community of Jeannette in Haiti. In the aftermath of the destruction of Hurricane Matthew, and at the request of our bishop, we will hold a special collection for Jeannette this Sunday in place of our usual collection for the Rector’s Discretionary Fund. Half the cash in our collection plate, and any designated checks, will go towards our Haiti partnership. To learn more, visit haitiproject.org . Thanks for your generosity!

Episcopal 101, Sunday, October 16, 9am: An ongoing exploration of the Episcopal Church for new and long-time members. All are welcome!

Sunday school, Sunday, October 16, 10am: This Sunday, our 3 year olds to kindergarten class will be learning about the Great Family, while our Elementary classes explore the parable of the Unjust Judge.

Spirituality of Parenting Lunch, Sunday, October 16, 11:30am: All who seek meaning in the journey of parenthood (at any age or stage) are welcome to come for food and conversation. Child care and a simple meal provided.

Children’s Choir, Sunday, October 16, 11:30am: The Children’s Choir will gather for our first rehearsal. Kids need to be able to read English (not music), and to focus and learn with a group. Please talk to our Organist & Choir Director, Martin Ganschow, with any questions.

Crop Walk 2016, Sunday, October 16, 12:45pm: St. Dunstan’s will send a team of walkers; all are welcome to grab a T-shirt & walk along! Last year over $36,000 was raised to support the work of many local food pantries and international relief agencies. The goal for this year is $40,000. You can give to our team online at https://www.crophungerwalk.org/madisonwi/Donate ; click on “Donate to a Team” and search for “St. Duntan’s.” Thanks for helping us make a difference!

Evening Eucharist, Sunday, October 16, 6pm: Join us for a simple service before the week begins. All are welcome.

Young Adult Meetup at the Vintage, Sunday, October 16, 7pm: The younger adults of St. Dunstan’s are invited to join us for conversation and the beverage of your choice, at the Vintage Brewpub on South Whitney Way. Friends & partners welcome too.

Parish Map & Regional Groups: Last year we created a map of our parish, by having members put pins in a map for their home and workplace or other places where they spend time. (If you didn’t participate, but we have your home address, we have added you!) We are sharing the Map back to the parish, with some tentative Regional Groups outlined. Take a look, and get to know your St. Dunstan’s neighbors!

THE WEEKS AHEAD…

Vestry meeting, Wednesday, October 19, 6:45pm. Any members are welcome to attend. The draft agenda is posted outside the Meeting Room.

This year’s Parish Talent Show will be Sunday, October 23! What will you share? A poem, a song, a dramatic monologue, a unique skill, a dance? A sample of art, craft, tinkering, building, study or science? Group acts are encouraged. Sign up anytime, even if your act is still in the works!

Grace Shelter Dinner, Sunday, October 23, 7pm: Every fourth Sunday, a loyal group of St. Dunstan’s folk provides dinner for residents at the Grace Church shelter, and breakfast the next morning. See the signup sheet in the Gathering Area to help out. To learn more, talk with Rose Mueller.

Spooky Sandbox, Thursday, October 27, 5:30pm: All are welcome to a special edition of our weekly Thursday evening worship. We’ll share some spooky Bible stories, with appropriate music and crafts. Dinner will follow our inter-generational worship service. All are welcome!

Ladies’ Night Out, Friday, October 28, 6pm: Join our monthly get-together as we dine at area restaurants and enjoy good conversation among women of all ages from St. Dunstan’s. This month we will meet at Sa Bai Thong at 6802 Odana Road, in Madison. For more information or to arrange a ride, please contact Kathy Whitt or Debra Martinez.

Fall Giving Campaign: Kids’ Market: As the Kids’ portion of our fall Giving Campaign, the kids of St. Dunstan’s (and their parents) are invited to contribute used toys or other unwanted but useful items to our Kids’ Market, which will run from October 30 through November 13. Kids are encouraged to go through their rooms and bring in some small, good-condition items that are ready for a new home. (No clothing, and no more than one plastic grocery bag per child, please!) Please bring in all contributions by Sunday, October 30. Kids and adults of the parish can shop the Market from October 30 through November 13. All donations will go to support our 2017 parish budget, as our kids’ contribution to our church’s ongoing life. Thanks for your participation!

Naming our Saints: In anticipation of All Saints Day, please fill out one or more Saint Slips, available in the Gathering Area. Tell us about a saint, well-known or known only to you, whom you remember with love.

All Saints’ Day, Sunday, Nov. 6: We will celebrate this holy day with an opportunity to remember the faithful departed; renewal of our baptismal vows; and, at our 10am service, a kids’ saint procession.

Remembrance Station: Consider bringing in a token of one of those saints whom you remember with love and respect, as an extension of our All Saints commemorations. Our Remembrance Station this year will include a place to hang pictures or notes, and a table where you may place a photo or other memento. Please don’t bring in anything precious or irreplaceable. On Sunday, November 20, we will commend these faithful departed to Christ our King.

International Potluck, Saturday, November 5, 5pm: Diversity comes in many flavors, and our congregation has a wide range of ages, sexual orientations, and nationalities.  The Diversity Potluck is a get-together intended to showcase and celebrate our beautiful diversity, whatever that word means to you.  Bring a dish that you feel celebrates your own personal diversity.  You can bring artwork, music, or poems (original or not) that celebrates it as well!  Feel free to dress up to celebrate it!  Dinner will start at 5:00.  Please, bring a small card telling us about your dish/art, and note if the dish is gluten free/ vegetarian/ peanut free.  Please sign up with what dish you are bringing in the Gathering Area.

OPPORTUNITIES TO SERVE…

Christmas Cards for Jail Inmates: St. Dunstan’s has been invited by our sister parish Grace Church to join them in writing Christmas cards to the inmates of the Dane County Jail. Christmas is a bleak time for these men and women, and even a simple message of kindness can bring some joy and hope. Our goal is to complete at least 100. Right now we are asking for donations of Christmas cards – odd leftovers from past years, ones you don’t really like enough to send, cheap ones from the thrift store. Once we have some cards, we’ll set up a Card-Writing Station where people can pause to write a message while they’re at church, or take a few cards and the guidelines for card-writing to do their writing at home. Cards will be delivered to the jail before Christmas.

Become a Mentor to a Local Student! The mentoring program at Kromrey Middle School aims to help kids who may face barriers due to their background or educational challenges, to be well-supported and high-school ready. If you enjoy working with young people and have wondered how to make a difference in our community, this may be a perfect opportunity for you. The initial training will be October 28. Application forms are available at St. Dunstan’s and should be sent in by October 24th.

Current Events, Sermons

Sermon, Oct. 9

How shall we seek the good of the city where we dwell?

We use this phrase in our Prayers of the People – Work and pray for the good of the city where we dwell, for in its peace we shall find our peace. Today the lectionary brings us those words in context, late in the book of the prophet Jeremiah. Jerusalem and the whole land are conquered by Babylon, as Jeremiah had predicted, and many of the people are taken into exile in Babylon. This passage is part of a letter that Jeremiah sent to those exiles. He was writing to counter the words of false prophets, who were telling the Jewish exiles that Babylon would soon be destroyed and they would be able to go home. Instead, Jeremiah says, You’re going to be there for a while. Build houses. Plant gardens. Have families. And seek the welfare of the city where God has sent you, for in its welfare, in its peace, you will find your own.

I’m glad to have the chance to explain the text and its context. I want to make sure we understand that the city mentioned there isn’t necessarily Madison. Maybe it’s Middleton. Verona. Mount Horeb. Maybe it’s Dane County. Or Wisconsin. Or the United States. It’s … wherever we find ourselves. Where we live and work, rest and play. Where we abide. Where we know the struggles, and have the chance to be part of the solutions.

How shall we seek the good of the city where we dwell? I added these words to our weekly Prayers maybe 18 months ago. Before that we had prayers for the world and the nation, but I noticed how much our prayers and actions were focused on local issues, local needs, and I thought, We need a particular place for those prayers and intentions. These words from Jeremiah came to mind, and fit so well. I treasure this text because it holds up the paradox of belonging and not belonging that’s central to life as a person of faith. Our loyalties are first and foremost to God’s kingdom and God’s ethics, which are often in tension with the ethics and norms of the world. Yet we’re called to engagement, not disengagement; to love, not condemnation.

Jeremiah wrote these words in a very particular moment; but I think I can defend using this random snippet of Old Testament prophecy as part of our weekly intercessions in Christian worship. Because what Jeremiah says here about how the exiles should live in Babylon is a lot like the way Jesus and the Apostles direct the first Christians to think and live: Be not conformed to the world, know yourselves as a people set apart, a people whose homeland is elsewhere, not even of this world; but live in this world as Jesus did: loving, grieving, celebrating, helping, healing, feeding, showing up, speaking out.

It was pretty easy for the earliest Christians to remember this because they felt like exiles; their way of faith put them at odds with other religious groups and with the cultural and political order around them. The Old Testament tells us that the people Israel, the faith-ancestors of both today’s Christians and Jews, had times of peace and prosperity when they were tempted to forget that they were first and foremost God’s people, not as a self-made and self-sufficient nation. Times when God had to remind them that they didn’t belong where they were in any deep or lasting way. The books of the Torah remind the Jews again and again that they were aliens and slaves in the land of Egypt. And the great festivals of the Jewish calendar, Passover, Sukkoth, Purim, remind them too of their times of being outsiders, wanderers and exiles.

Jews living today carry the collective memories of millennia of living – and dying – as an oppressed minority. They are not likely to forget that their loyalties are never simply to any earthly kingdom. But we Christians, well, our faith became the religion of empire 1600 years ago. That chapter of unquestioned dominance for our way of faith is waning now, and we’re struggling, in many respects, to remember – to reconstruct from the wisdom of our faith ancestors – how not to belong. How to be outsiders, exiles, whose identities and loyalties come from somewhere else than the place in which we find ourselves, but who work and pray faithfully for the good of the city where we dwell.

I think that’s why Jesus in his wisdom gave his followers so many stories and examples of strangers and outsiders being the ones who truly recognize God’s power and mercy. Like the Samaritan in today’s Gospel. Please note, the other nine guys are all doing what Jesus told them to do – going to show themselves to the Jewish religious authorities, to be certified as healed and clean from their disease, and free to resume normal life. Familiar rites, institutions and theologies take over. We have no reason to believe that they thought much about Jesus, after that day. The Samaritan is outside of that religious system. So where does he take his gratitude? He takes it back to the man who seems to him to have brought about his healing: Jesus. It’s his very outsiderness that makes him able to see clearly how God is at work.

The theme is familiar because Jesus tells it, and shows it, again and again. Listen to those on the outside, and remember, hold onto, your own outsider-ness; you often get the broadest view from the cheapest seats.

How shall we seek the good of the city where we dwell?

It’s pretty hard sometimes, and exhausting. We’re in one of those seasons right now. There’s so much going on in the life of our nation, let alone the larger world, that makes people feel angry, fearful, confused. Overwhelmed. Outraged. Despairing. We can be tempted to disengage. To think, like the exiles in Babylon: I don’t really belong here, and this place and its problems are just not my problem.

I read a short essay on this topic a few months ago that I really, really loved. And I’m going to share a little of it with you now. It’s written by a bear, who blogs and tweets regularly. Well, okay. It’s probably actually a person, but it sure sounds like a bear. She wrote this essay in response to the Pulse nightclub shooting back in June. And she’s basically reflecting on the struggle to keep striving for the good of the forest where she dwells. Listen.

“I wish doing things to make everything better for everyone in the forest was as easy as thinking about doing things to make everything better for everyone in the forest. It is not, though. In fact, it is actually very difficult for me to do things in the forest that feel like they affect anyone or anything beyond [me] or my immediate forest surroundings…I have tried, certainly, but the things I want changed seem to stay the same, no matter how much effort and dedication I put toward the changes I want to see. That is one of the more frustrating aspects of this: the one thing I do have control of [myself and my surroundings] are the only things I can effectively change. However, changing [myself] does not make the terribleness of the bad things that can happen in the forest change, go away, or get better. What I can change does not matter for the things I want to change. Sometimes I wonder if I should mind [my own bearness] and nothing else. I wonder if it is possible that all creatures of the forest are meant to simply mind their own personal creatureness… I am a bear, and I can only control my bearness, and I just have to accept that and move on with my bearness. But… I do not like that.  Some [creatures] fight just to make others feel like their otherness is wrong, bad, and worthless… And some [creatures] actually hurt and destroy [others], which is not fair or nice or necessary… I have to be a part of all of those relationships of the forest. I cannot just tend to my own bearness while [others] are hurt or hindered or hushed… If another creature cannot be the creature it is or wants to be because it is being unfairly stopped or even hurt, how could I not intervene? … [pause] I know that not everyone can tend their everyoneness, and sometimes they need help with tending their everyoneness.”

It’s a funny phrase: Tending our everyone-ness. But it’s the phrase I’ve kept thinking about, over the months since I first read the bear’s musings. Tending our everyone-ness. Our capacity to recognize the other, the stranger, the outsider, as also a child of the forest and a child of God. In our Discipleship Practices, we call this Reconciling: living as people who know that we are all one in God’s eyes. That there is no such thing as other people.

There is a paradox here, for the exiles in Babylon and for us: it’s our otherness, our commitments as people of faith, that drive us to tend our everyone-ness, to respond to our neighbors in love. It’s the paradox of Jeremiah’s call to the exiles: Remember who you are, but don’t keep yourselves apart. Strive for the welfare of the city where you live as exiles. Be an active part of the common good, wherever you find yourselves. Tend your everyone-ness.

How shall we seek the good of the city where we dwell?

Of course, the biggest thing straining our capacity to tend our everyone-ness right now is the election season. Some of us are angry, hopeful, fearful, determined, defensive. All of us are weary. How does Jeremiah’s call speak to us right now?

Some of you probably feel tempted to say, A pox on both their houses!… You’re so fed up that you’re ready to disengage entirely. I believe that faithful stewardship of what God has given us as citizens of a democracy, however flawed, involves informing ourselves and voting. If the candidates and the process make you queasy, try thinking past the election; look at the candidates’ policy priorities, think about the vision for the country they’re promoting, and weigh that against your values and convictions as a Christian. Make your choice on that basis. People of good conscience may arrive at different conclusions. But striving for the good of the city where we dwell demands that we take the impact of our votes seriously.

Some of you are deeply engaged, and fiercely passionate, for your candidate and/or against the other candidate. Tending your everyone-ness is even harder for you, friends, than for those who are just exhausted and ready to tune out. Because for you, it means trying to keep loving those on the other side. Setting aside judgment in favor of curiosity and compassion. What brought them to stand where they stand? How is their path like and unlike the path that brought me to stand where I stand? It is hard to look at someone who holds views you find hateful and tell yourself, This is a human being whom God loves. It’s hard. But it’s not optional.

On November 9th we will be the United States. We will still have to live with each other. We are going to need a lot of active, intentional, loving tending of our everyone-ness, after this divisive and exhausting season. In times of struggle, threat, anger, fear, uncertainty, it’s tempting to pull back into ourselves. To hunker down in the places where we feel safe, with the people who’ll affirm our opinions. To mind our own bearness.

But the hopeful, the faithful response, is to keep pushing outwards. To keep reconciling. To tend our everyone-ness. To work and pray, faithfully, for the good of the city where we dwell. For in its peace, friends, someday, somehow, we shall find our peace.

The bear’s wise words may be read in full here:

https://helloiamabear.com/2016/06/13/i-do-not-want-to-feel-helpless/

6205 University Ave., Madison WI

St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church