Category Archives: Stewardship

Big Questions, Giving Campaign, Sermons, Stewardship

Sermon, Nov. 10

There’s a strong theme that runs through our readings today. 

And that’s a little bit of a surprise, because these readings don’t belong together. 

The Gospel we just heard is the Gospel assigned for this Sunday. 

The Leviticus reading comes from the Our Money Story materials we’re using this season, in conjunction with our giving campaign. 

And the Ruth lesson was supposed to be last week – but we did All Saints on Sunday instead of the regular Sunday readings. So I bumped this reading forward because I love the book of Ruth!

So these are very assorted readings. But somehow they hang together better than the assigned readings often do. And the thread – or maybe it’s a rope! – that ties them together is the question of how we tend to the needs of the vulnerable. 

Leviticus is one of the books of the Torah, the Law, telling God’s people how to live as holy people of a holy God. Leviticus has some hard and weird stuff in it, and has kind of a bad reputation. But there’s also a lot in Leviticus about justice and mercy and ecological wholeness. 

The parts we heard today lay out the practice of gleaning. If you are growing food, whether it’s wheat or grapes or olives or whatever: at harvest time, you don’t have your workers take everything. You leave the corners of the field untouched; you leave some bunches of grapes on the vine. Then those who need it can come and harvest, too. That’s what gleaning is. 

The text goes on to talk about the year of Jubilee – how every fifty years, everybody’s supposed to get their ancestral land back, and you’re supposed to let the land rest, and just eat what grows naturally. And celebrate a year of human and ecological restoration. 

This week’s theme in the Our Money Story materials is reimagine. These passages invite reimagining our relationships with land, work, resources, neighbors, God. What if our bounty is meant for everybody? What if the land’s health matters more than what it can give us? What if there is enough? 

In the happy little accident of our readings this week, we get to see gleaning in practice in the book of Ruth. The book of Ruth begins with an ending – and not a happy one. Naomi loses her husband and sons. She has no grandchildren, and her daughters-in-law aren’t even Israelites; they are from Moab, a long-time neighbor and sometimes enemy of ancient Israel. This is the end – of Naomi’s family; of her happiness and hope; of her wellbeing, without male family members to provide for her. She decides to go home to Israel, even though there’s nothing for her there, either. But then… Ruth insists on going with her. Ruth pronounces this beautiful oath, by which she makes herself Naomi’s daughter, and a Jew. And so – a story begins, after all. 

But the women still have nothing and nobody, except apparently a place to stay, some rickety ancestral hut. So Ruth goes gleaning. “Let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain, behind someone in whose sight I may find favor.” Ruth and Naomi will fend off starvation, because at least some of the farmers and landowners of the region follow the laws of Leviticus, and leave some grain for the poor, at harvest time. 

Next week we’ll hear how Ruth’s story turns out. (It’s only four chapters long, if you want to just sit down and read it!) What I want us to notice right now is that within their time and place, in a starkly patriarchal society, these women are incredibly vulnerable. Naomi and Ruth are both widows, and within the Biblical world, widows are seen as one of the the most socially and economically vulnerable kinds of people, lacking male protection and provision, and without the ability to own land or wealth. They are at risk of desperate poverty; of starvation; of sexual assault. That’s why, again and again and again, the Hebrew Bible defines mercy, justice, and righteousness in terms of making provision for outsiders, orphans, and widows. 

Which brings us to the widow in our Gospel, giving two copper coins to the great Temple in Jerusalem, while Jesus watches. This story has too often been treated as the jumping-off point for a stewardship sermon, with this woman’s self-sacrificial generosity praised as an example for all of us – “Give till it hurts!” Now, listen! This church’s continued existence depends on y’all’s generosity. But I can’t preach that sermon. Jesus is angry, here. The Temple, as the religious headquarters of society, is supposed to be gathering donations from those who have enough, or more than enough, and using those gifts to make provision for those with little or nothing. Instead, Jesus accuses the religious leaders who hang around the Temple of “devouring widows’ houses.” The implication is that they’re preying on the lonely and desperate, perhaps telling them that if they just give a little more, then surely God will favor them and turn things around for them. 

Jesus’ words here do point to something important about how we measure gifts – or, in this season, pledges. In our fall pledge drive we always have goals to meet and bills to pay. But we also know that a $20 a month pledge from one household may be a bigger sacrifice than a $500 a month pledge from another household. And we honor all gifts, and the care and the hope they represent. 

But Jesus is not glad to see this woman give away the money she might otherwise have used to feed herself that day. If a church or faith community is encouraging someone to give to the point of not being able to care for themselves, that is spiritual abuse. That’s not how any of this is supposed to work. Mieke Vandersall writes, “Widows and the perennially dispossessed were to be cared for through safety nets…, yet the systems weren’t working and needed reimagining. This widow gives all that she has and the system fails her. What would it mean if Jesus tells this story to use her act of giving as a way to highlight the corruption of the economic system in power?… How can we reimagine systems of charity that… fail to provide true transformation and liberation?”

The through-line in these readings is the question of how societies or communities tend to the needs of the vulnerable. It’s one of the more consistent themes across the complexity and diversity of the Bible: God judges us on the basis of how we, together, care and provide for those at greatest risk. Sometimes God’s expectation of care is for a whole society or people, as with the laws of Leviticus. Sometimes it’s for the church at large, or for a specific local faith community. It’s a theme in many of the Epistles, letters to the first churches. How y’all doing at caring for one another, especially the most socially and economically vulnerable among your members? And as you have capacity, how y’all doing at extending care to the same kinds of folks in your wider community? … 

That’s been the work, beloveds; that will always be the work.  

It’s not all of the work; there’s other stuff too, like learning and living God’s story, and cultivating joy, and so on.

But it’s a core part of the work. Yesterday. Tomorrow. Always. 

This week we elected our next president.

There are a lot of big feelings in the room about that. 

And a lot of big fears. 

We wonder how, as this next chapter unfolds, our society will end up treating the most vulnerable. 

Some folks have justified fears of being forgotten.

Some folks have justified fears of being targeted. 

Some folks think it’ll be fine… maybe better than fine. 

Regardless: We are almost certainly facing big changes.

I’ve read and heard so much wisdom this week. And not passive “it is what it is” wisdom. Brave wisdom. Fierce wisdom. Kind wisdom. And one big theme – for those in deep distress, grief, and fear, and for those seeking to respond to them – one big theme has been: don’t rush. Take time. 

Take time to feel. To grieve. To lick your wounds. To rest, if you can rest. To do things that bring you back to yourself. To connect and reconnect, because community, mutual belonging, is going to keep being really important.

One of the voices that stuck with me this week is Ethan Tapper, an ecologist who has a book called How to Love a Forest. He was talking about resilience. Now, the word “resilience” has gotten used and overused in reference to marginalized communities. It sometimes gets used to shame or silence suffering or struggle. “Just be more resilient!” 

Resilience doesn’t mean that big changes or big challenges don’t affect you. Tapper says, “Resilience is not capitulation. It’s not just accepting whatever happens.” 

Rather, he says, “In ecosystems, resilience is… the ability of these systems and all the species that comprise them to respond to adversity.”

Being resilient doesn’t mean you don’t take damage or get knocked down for a while. It means that there’s capacity in the organism or the system to come back, somehow. To rebound and rebuild. Even if it takes time, to rest and gather strength. Even if the new looks different from the way things were before. 

And that got me thinking about our jack pine. You may know that we have a variety of conifers on our grounds, including some that don’t usually grow around here. One is a jackpine, which does OK here, but really prefers the western mountains. Jackpines are interesting because they are adapted for the inevitability of forest fires. They have cones that hold their seeds, like any other conifer. And some of their pinecones look pretty much like any other pinecone, like the pinecone that you’re imagining right now.

But some of their cones stay closed. All those little scales don’t open up. Here’s what that looks like. 

It looks a little like a dragon toe – or some kind of poop. It doesn’t smell like a poop, though. It smells like summer in a pine forest. 

START BASKETS GOING AROUND. TELL PEOPLE: take a cone and a bean. 

Why does the jackpine make these strange closed cones? Well: The jackpine has a deal with time and fire. Like a phoenix, jack pines are reborn through flame. These cones last a long time. They can lie for years on the forest floor. They will finally open when they’re exposed to heat. So when a fire tears through a forest – as it will – and kills most of the mature trees, those jackpine cones are ready. They open, and release their seeds. The soil is newly enriched by ash, and there’s plenty of sun, with the big trees gone. Jackpine seedlings become one of the first species that help a landscape recover after fire. Resilience lives in these weird little knobby cones. 

I knew this in theory but then I did it by accident, once. I had a batch of assorted pinecones from around our grounds for some craft project, and I put them in the oven on low heat for an hour, like you’re supposed to, to kill any bugs. And when I came back, the jackpine cones had opened. The hidden surfaces between the scales were the most beautiful dark reddish-brown. 

The Our Money Story materials offer us a little prayer practice, today. It goes with filling in the next circle of our circle prayer. You can see there are motifs of wheat and seeds, representing the crops left for gleaning, for sharing, and the bounty of Jubilee.

I’m supposed to give you two beans, a red one and a white one, to hold while we receive a prayer about reimagining. 

You’re supposed to give back the white bean, putting it in the offering plate – those will get added to our banner – and take home the red bean, as a reminder of our capacity to reimagine. Or maybe our capacity for resilience – those aren’t the same thing, but they definitely overlap. 

Instead of the red bean, I’m giving you jackpine cones. Our tree lost a branch this past summer, and I collected a bunch of cones from the branch at the time, not knowing what I would do with them. Turns out this is what I’m doing with them. 

Let’s take a moment now for an embodied prayer, holding your bean and your cone. Let us imagine what Jubilee could look like, in our community, our nation, our time. 

I’m inviting …. To lead us through the prayer from our Money Story materials, with a few minor edits! …  

Anglicanism, Church Seasons & Holy Days, Stewardship

Easter Sermon, 2023

This is the day when the church proclaims most boldly and joyfully its most absurd and improbable convictions: That Jesus, murdered by the state, came back to life; and that this unlikelihood points towards an exponentially greater unlikelihood: That Love has conquered Death. That Death no longer has dominion over us – in some mysterious and ultimate sense, since people continue to die on a regular basis. 

I know that people have questions about it all. Not just little questions but big questions. And not just visitors or seekers, but people who worship here every week. Is this true? Does it matter? Does the church take this seriously? Does Rev. Miranda really believe it? Am I supposed to really believe it – and if so, which parts are most important?  And what does it mean if I don’t, or can’t? Or if I have to cross my fingers or edit the Creed a little, when we read that ancient statement of faith together on Sundays? 

There are people here, too, who do believe, at a deep level, even though a lot of it is hard and weird. We have the full range in the room today. We have the full range in the room every Sunday. 

And that’s fine! Nobody has to believe anything; that’s not how Episcopal and Anglican churches work. By design, we are a way of faith that defines membership and belonging by what we do together – by our participation in common worship. If you find meaning, comfort, peace, insight, purpose, beauty, connection, truth, joy in what we do together when we gather for worship, enough that you come back, regularly or when you can, then congratulations! You’re Episcopalian. 

But that doesn’t mean your questions and struggles don’t matter. And there is a particular kind of pressure on Easter Sunday. When the church preaches Christ crucified and risen – which is, as the apostle Paul noted two thousand years ago, a scandal and foolishness to those who don’t or can’t believe it. 

I mean, that’s just facts. It’s not news that this is hard to swallow. It was hard to swallow for the first Christians and those around them, too. 

People sometimes ask me if I believe it. And the answer is: Yes, I do. Partly, the miracles just have never bothered me that much. It’s not that I’m not a scientific thinker. But I guess … my brain just doesn’t catch on that. I don’t have a hard time believing that the God who invented DNA could reverse decay, for example.The fact that my faith doesn’t trip over the notion of a literal bodily resurrection, or the other miracles of the Gospels, doesn’t mean my faith is stronger than anybody else’s. I think that’s more a matter of personality and wiring. 

But actually: Whether or not I find this particular physical process credible is… not that central for me? Religious faith is not intellectual agreement with a list of doctrinal statements. One issue is with the word “believe”, as used in English. We use that word both in a religious sense and in a more everyday sense, meaning that we think something is true, factually speaking. That’s a confusing conflation of two rather different things. Many scholars say that the “belief” of the Bible is better translated as trust, loyalty, solidarity. Choosing your allegiances for the work and struggle of life. The word “belief” points too much towards the head, and not enough towards the heart and the gut. 

I resonate with what Francis Spufford says in his book Unapologetic: “I am a fairly orthodox Christian. Every Sunday I say and do my best to mean the whole of the Creed, which is a series of propositions… But it is… a mistake to suppose that it is assent to the propositions that makes you a believer. It is the feelings that are primary. I assent to the ideas because I have the feelings; I don’t have the feelings because I’ve assented to the ideas…” 

My faith is made up of a lot of things, and the fact that I’m able to tolerate the mystery of the resurrection flows out of those other things, rather than the reverse. My faith is made of the times when I’ve heard God speak to me to guide, challenge, or affirm, and the times when I have experienced divine mercy – consolation – clarity. My faith is made of my own lifelong experience of being embraced, cared for, raised up by faith community. Made of the witness of the church and the saints, living and dead; of my ongoing conversation with Scripture, loving and lively and contentious. 

My faith is made of the moments when I can look at the world around me and see that, in the words of a favorite prayer, God is working through our struggle and confusion to accomplish God’s purposes on earth. There is much cause for dismay, anxiety, grief in the world today. I am never one to downplay the seriousness of our shared circumstances. AND: I am 48 years old, beloveds. When I was born, women couldn’t yet legally be priests in the Episcopal Church. In my not quite half a century, so much has changed. When I hang out with our youth group, I’m staggered by everything they know about neurodiversity, mental illness, diversity of gender expression and sexual orientation, racial diversity and systemic oppression…  They know so much more about all the different ways to be human, and what we owe to one another, than I did at their age. If you believe, as I do, that one of God’s purposes on earth is for people to be able to be fully themselves in public, and to share their voices and gifts and skills, and access the things that help them flourish – then God IS working through our struggle and confusion – a LOT of struggle, a LOT of confusion, to be sure – but God IS working through it to accomplish God’s purposes.

My faith is made up of lots of things. And the fact that I can tolerate the perplexing idea of Christ’s victory over death flows out of all these things, rather than being the precondition for them. 

But I cannot talk you into that in three more pages of sermon.  Faith can’t be transplanted. Each of us is on their own path. 

And how do I know that my capacity to have faith – to believe that we are held in love, that an active power of good works in and through us – isn’t fundamentally because I was born into a family where I was able to form secure attachments? Because I’ve always had enough money to be able to feed myself and my children? Because I’m white and middle class and most doors have opened for me, over the course of my life? How can I know that my capacity to have faith isn’t simply a symptom of my privilege? Why should you take my word for it? 

Those are great questions! I’ve wondered about them myself. And the fact is that I don’t fully take my own word for it. The witness of a lot of other people is really important for me. Some are living individuals whose faith and way of being in the world sustain and inspire me. People who’ve lived through loss, pain, struggle, and need, and bear witness that God was in it with them; people who have spent far more time in contemplation, prayer, study and seeking than I have, and have found that the Holy met them on that terrain. I trust their testimony. 

Others are more public property – names you might know. Jon Daniels of blessed memory, a bright, complicated young man from New Hampshire who grappled his way into faith, then heard Martin Luther King Jr. and Mary the Mother of God calling him to join the protests in Selma in 1965. His journals of his time in Alabama show him second-guessing his own motives, mocking his own white-saviorism, learning, growing, seeking, submitting himself more and more fully and finally to God’s purposes. That path led him to death on a dusty road on a hot August day when he stepped between a young black friend and a racist’s gun. 

King himself, who delivered the famous Mountaintop speech 55 years ago this past Monday. He wasn’t scheduled to speak that night, and was exhausted and ill. He spoke frequently of death, that evening; he knew how much danger he was in, moment by moment. Evoking the story of Moses’ death, he told the crowd that he’d been to the mountaintop and seen the promised land; that their journey would continue even if he didn’t get there with them. That his eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. King was assassinated the next day; he was 39 years old. 

Sophie Scholl, whom I preached about a few weeks ago, and another martyr of the Nazi regime, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer’s resistance to white supremacist thought was shaped by the experience of studying with African-American theologians and worshipping with a Black church. Bonhoeffer thought deeply about grace, purpose, right and wrong. His faith led him to active resistance to the Nazi government – resulting in his execution as a threat to the state, just like Jesus. 

And it’s not just people who died for their faith, though their witness bears a particular weight; but people who live for their faith also encourage and ground my faith. 

Desmond Tutu – the first black African bishop in the church in South Africa during Apartheid – who embodied holy joy and holy courage for so many. Once, in August of 1989, Tutu held an Ecumenical Defiance service at the Capetown cathedral, a church counterpart to the anti-apartheid protests outside. When military police entered the cathedral and lined the walls, weapons in hand, Tutu addressed them directly: “You are very powerful, but you are not gods and I serve a God who cannot be mocked. So, since you have already lost, come join the winning side!” 

Pauli Murray, born black, poor, female-bodied and queer in North Carolina in 1910, who fought their way to a distinguished legal career and important work advocating against both racial and sex-based discrimination— and then, late in life, felt a call to the priesthood, becoming the first female-bodied African-American to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. 

Core to both Pauli’s activism and their priesthood was a commitment to reconciliation among humans and between humans and God, with the goal of transforming the world. 

Our own Martina Rippon, who went on ahead last fall. Blocked from pursuing her chosen career as a doctor, Martina spent her life nonetheless in service to others – disaster relief, chaplaincy work, and community organizing. Martina had that Jesus-like quality of being able to talk with anybody – and not just superficially but about the real stuff. She told me, near the end, that she didn’t need anybody with her when she died. That was between her and God, and she was ready, and not afraid. 

When I second-guess myself and wonder if I have faith because my life has been easy, or because I’ve just never really thought it all through, I look to the saints I’ve named here and others. They were able to place their trust in the life and love made known to us in Jesus Christ because of their experiences of divine consolation, clarity, and courage. 

And in thinking of these people, naming these people – I’m not marshaling examples to prove some point to myself or others, as you would in an academic paper.  I’m calling my faith community around me. Just as when it’s been a long time since I last had a clear word from God, or a strong sense of that bedrock of love under my feet, or of the tug of a purpose larger than my own… then a friend, or a colleague, or sharing worship with this community, sustains me and keeps me on the path. Because not only is faith not really a head thing; it’s also not really an individual person thing.

Your struggles and questions – and mine – they do matter, but they also… don’t? This whole – thing – what we do and proclaim today, and every Sunday – does not depend on your personal capacity to assent to a list of propositions. Or mine! It doesn’t depend on it because in the Episcopal Church believing is something we do together. The Creed, the church’s statement of faith, begins, WE believe. (Though for some reason the version in the baptismal liturgy we’ll use today says “I believe” – breathe through it! It’s OK!) We place our trust, our loyalty, in this holy story and what it says about humanity and God and the world, together. As a body. That’s deep in our way of faith as Christians in the Anglican way. It’s why Episcopalians don’t do altar calls, beloveds. Because we don’t believe one by one, like that. We believe together. We trust, we claim, we commit, together.

And the other reason not to be too weighed down by whether you can say a hearty Yes to any given line of the Creed, beloveds, is that if any of us are right about any of it, it doesn’t depend on our believing, on our knowing. This holy story, and the One at the center of it, doesn’t need us to be fully clear and fully convinced to be able to offer us grace, joy, consolation, purpose or possibility through the story and its work within and among us. 

Sixteen hundred years ago or so, the theologian and bishop John Chrysostom wrote a sermon for Easter.  Orthodox churches read it every year; we read parts of it at the Easter Vigil. It’s a wonderful, playful text about how the Easter celebration is for everyone. You who have been part of the community for a long time, and you who showed up at the last possible minute – You who are hard on yourselves, and you who are easy – You who have kept a Lenten fast faithfully, and you who have not –  Celebrate! Rejoice in this glorious feast of feasts! You are an invited and honored guest. 

That’s what I want to say, dear ones. The things the Church proclaims today – the absurd, beautiful Easter Gospel: Christ is arisen, Death is defeated, Love wins – the things we sing and shout, with joy and hope, today, are for everybody. Not forced on you or drummed into you, but offered with welcome and delight. 

You for whom this is so familiar, your umpteenth Episcopal Easter, that you struggle to find refreshment here; and you for whom it’s all so new and strange that it’s hard to keep your feet under you –

You who have seen resurrection enough times that it doesn’t faze you in the least, and you that have seen so much death and loss that the Alleluias come heavy – 

You that came here driven by memory, seeking the past, and you that came here looking for hope, seeking the future – 

You that came here for the music or the sound of voices raised together, and you that came here in hope of a little holy silence – 

You who haven’t been to church for a while and are disappointed by how much has changed, and you who haven’t been to church for a while and are delighted by how much has changed – 

You that want to believe and can’t quite get there, and you that believe almost in spite of yourself –

You that find faith easy but church hard, and you that find church easy but faith hard –

All of you, all of us, nevertheless: Welcome! Rejoice! The banquet is prepared and you are invited! The Kingdom belongs to us all! Christ is risen and Love reigns! Alleluia! 

Announcements, Finances, Stewardship

St. Dunstan’s Amends funds – an update…

On Tuesday, August 16, I attended the quarterly meeting of the WITRC (Wisconsin Inter-Tribal Repatriation Committee) at the Three Clans Conference Center in Green Bay to present St. Dunstan’s voluntary land tax payment. We set aside $3000 in our 2022 budget as “Amends” funds, and some additional designated gifts brought the total to $4000. Committing these funds is one outcome of the work of our Land Acknowledgment Task Force. It was approved by the Finance Committee and Vestry, and supported by the congregation by approving and funding (through your pledges and offerings) our 2022 budget.

The WITRC coordinates work to preserve Native cultural heritage, including mounds and grave sites, in the state of Wisconsin; many of its members are Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPO) for their respective tribes. In addition to WITRC members, the meeting included representatives of partner organizations like the DNR, DOT, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. The Rev. Kerri Parker, executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Churches, and WCC staff member Breanna Illene were present as well. Diana Lucas, the co-leader of our parish Land Acknowledgment Task Force and member of the Diocese of Milwaukee task force, accompanied me to help represent St. Dunstan’s.

Ben Rhodd, THPO for the Forest County Potawatomi Community, opened the meeting with an invocation. He greeted everyone present as “my relatives”- reminding us that we are all branches of one tree of humanity. He described the work of the WITRC:  “We’re dealing with the ancients, the ones who were here before us, and we’re very careful and cautious, asking ‘What would be best?’” Then he invited us to stand and prayed to Creator, in Potawatomi and English, for our unity, our work, and for everyone who needs help in the world.

The matter of donations to the WITRC was addressed first on the agenda. Kerri Parker spoke about the WCC’s commitment to trying to heal relationships between the churches and the WI tribes. She described St. Dunstan’s work as an example of what can be done in terms of restorative actions, and mentioned the WCC’s hope to work with the Wisconsin tribes to create a fund to which any church or other organization can contribute, to make this kind of thing more widespread. 

Bill Quackenbush, current president of the WITRC and THPO for the Ho-Chunk Nation, spoke about an ongoing collaboration with the WCC on developing some land acknowledgment resources that could be used by churches statewide. He mentioned that too often people speak about Native peoples as if they were the “roots of that tree of humanity, when in fact we are all alive together.” He explained that when Kerri approached him about the best way to use St. Dunstan’s Amends funds, he thought of having the funds go to the WITRC – rather than the Ho-Chunk Nation – because that way, the funds can support cultural preservation programs across Wisconsin. He described the WITRC as “a title for us working together” to protect, preserve and share Native cultural heritage.

Quackenbush said that this funding for the WITRC helps address a chronic shortage of money, staff and time for their important work. He described St. Dunstan’s payment as “both a healing process and a stepping stone.”

I presented the check in a purple envelope, which I explained is the color of repentance in our tradition. I also presented a small book of our photos and reflections about loving and learning from the land, and a jar of the black walnut syrup we made from our black walnut trees this spring. Those present were excited about the syrup! 

Ben Rhodd spoke again to say that it’s hard to do things without “white metal” – money. “We have to help each other. We’re happy that you helped us. You gave us something to work with.”

Over the next few months, we at St. Dunstan’s will begin work on our draft parish budget for 2023 and undertake our fall giving campaign, when we invite members and friends of the parish to make a pledge stating their anticipated financial support for St. Dunstan’s in the coming year. We will have to decide together whether to include an Amends budget line again in 2023, to continue this practice of voluntary land tax payments. We will need to decide whether it’s something we intend and expect to put in our budget year by year, as we do with our other property expenses and Outreach funds – or whether this was a one-time restorative action. I invite your prayerful reflection on this question. In either case, as a parish, we hope to discern additional steps we can take to make amends and be allies to our Native neighbors. 

Coronavirus, Giving Campaign, Sermons, Stewardship

Sermon, Oct. 18

Today we are kicking off our fall giving campaign – what many churches call a pledge drive. We invite members and friends of St. Dunstan’s to make a pledge, which is a statement of your intended financial gifts to the parish over the course of the upcoming calendar year. Those pledges allow us to form a budget, since members’ pledged giving makes up the vast majority of our income. We do this every October and November; it’s a standard part of  how St. Dunstan’s, and most other Episcopal churches, function. 

Usually, on the first Sunday of the giving campaign, I preach about it, one way or another. To offer some context… some theological grounding… some reassurance and encouragement. 

There have been years when that felt hard. The year we decided to stop running $30,000 deficits and balance our budget. The year when we had just started a capital campaign – and we really didn’t know how many households were able and willing to do both. 

And then there’s this year. 

I can’t even imagine what October 2019 Miranda would have thought if I’d had the opportunity to tell her about the realities of October 2020. It was hard for me to even start thinking about this year’s giving campaign. It’s hard to imagine asking for your attention amidst the clamor of so many alarms – the pandemic, the election, the environment. Many of us feel chronically distracted and/or overwhelmed, and with good reason. It’s hard to imagine asking for your generosity amidst so much uncertainty and scarcity, when even those of us who are doing OK financially tend to add, “for now.” 

The wilderness journey stories from Exodus have been a strange blessing, over the past six weeks. We’ve listened to the Israelites, our long-ago faith ancestors, struggle with fear and frustration, hunger and thirst, boredom and weariness, uncertainty about where it’s all going and how long it will last, yearning for what they had before, struggling to trust that God is working for good through it all.

And their struggles have been our struggles, and, maybe, made us feel a little less alone – reminding us that humans have walked through many a trackless wilderness before. 

The book of Exodus took its more or less final form about 600 years before Jesus, in a time when the Jewish people had been conquered and dragged from their homeland to live among strangers. During those fifty years of exile, God’s people drew on ancient stories and traditions to create a set of holy books laying out their history and way of life. I’m sure that just as we do, those long-ago editors saw parallels between the wilderness journey and their own circumstances. 

Maybe that context can help us understand God’s sometimes-destructive anger, in these stories. Perhaps it simply reflects ancient memories of how people made sense of the hardships of their journey. And/or – for the exiles, God’s anger may have served as a reminder to stay faithful to their heritage and faith, on their own long journey. 

In today’s Exodus text, God does what every parent whose rage is spiraling out of control should do: God gives Godself a time out. Or tries to, anyway. God tells Moses, Look. You all should continue your journey; but I can’t go with you. For you are a stiff-necked people – a wonderful Hebrew idiom. Pause a moment and feel that in your body, that stiff neck; then release it, let your head fall. To bow your head in humility or to nod in agreement – both begin with releasing that stiff neck. 

God says, If I continue to travel with this people, stiff necks and all, we’re going to keep having these situations…. and one of these days I might actually destroy you all. 

If we think about it, we might find Moses’ and the people’s responses surprising. Why not take this deal? God has gotten them out of Egypt and provided food and water. Surely the onward journey would be easier without this demanding, terrifying Being traveling with them. Please note that by this time they have received the Ten Commandments; they have some idea of God’s expectations about how they’re supposed to live. Why not say, Thanks, God, it’s been great, we can take it from here? 

I don’t know why not. But that’s not what they say. The people’s reaction to the idea that God might leave them is grief. And Moses ARGUES with God –  “Oh no you don’t. These are YOUR people. And you told me that I found favor in your sight! Now you’re going to leave me to handle this on my own?”

And God relents, and agrees to stay with the people, and accompany them and protect them and provide for them as they continue their journey.

It is not all smooth sailing from here on out. Next week we’ll hear about that. But I think this is a really important moment in the long arc of the wilderness journey. It’s a moment of mutual choosing. Moses, and the people, didn’t get a lot of choice at the beginning of all this. But now, presented with an opportunity to shake hands and walk away, they choose God. They choose to keep being God’s people, even though it asks a lot from them. And God chooses to keep being their God. And they continue their holy journey together. 

Our text from 1 Thessalonians talks about choosing, too. This is the beginning of the letter, when Paul usually offers some encouragement and praise. To the church in Thessalonica, he says, Knowing of your choice…  The New Revised Standard Version, our usual Bible translation, renders that as, “knowing that Christ has chosen you.” But the syntax in the original Greek is unclear. It could be Christ’s choosing of these people, this church; or their choosing of Christ. Either – or both. But the choosing matters. 

When I’m preaching a giving campaign sermon, I usually find some thread that ties the Scripture texts to the campaign. Generosity. Commitment. Gratitude. Et cetera. This year, what jumps out at me is the choosing. 

It’s there in the texts, for sure, but maybe it stands out for me because I’ve also heard it from many of you in these months. That this has become, like it or not, a clarifying time, a season of discernment. The enforced limitations of our lives, and perhaps too the pervasive sense of risk and loss, has led to a lot re-evaluation of what matters and what we actually want.

I’ve heard about job changes and relationship changes. Changes in how people organize their time, who we stay in touch with, what commitments we keep, even our deep sense of personal direction and purpose. They are not all comfortable changes, to be clear! Some have brought a lot of anguish… even when it’s the right choice. Some of you are still hanging in the uncomfortable space between the old passing away, and the new taking shape. 

It turns out that we were all on auto-pilot about a lot of stuff. We kept doing it because we’d done it before. And when we had to stop and think, we un-chose some things. And we re-chose some other things. 

If you’re hearing my voice right now, that probably means St. Dunstan’s is one of the things you chose again. Or, in a few cases, chose for the first time – which is just amazing to me; such a blessing. 

The giving campaign is an opportunity to choose, again. To choose this faith community as one of the things that’s worth your time and resources and heart,

in this strange season and beyond. To choose to help St. Dunstan’s keep being here, for us and for others.  

Let me say just a few words about this year’s campaign. In recent years we’ve presented a detailed draft budget as part of the fall giving campaign, explaining why particular budget lines went up or down. That kind of work assumes stability. That next year will look a lot like this year, with some tweaks here and there. 

Well – 2020 blew that kind of thinking out of the water. We didn’t know what 2020 would be like. We don’t know what 2021 will be like. We know we’ve lost some beloved saints this year; we know some folks’ jobs and family circumstances have changed. So this year we’re asking for your pledges first, and then we’ll budget for 2021 when we’ve seen what we can do, together. 

This doesn’t mean your parish leadership bodies are slacking off!The Finance Committee and Vestry folks have looked at our numbers and talked about different possibilities. But it seemed both kinder and more responsible to start with what we are able to give, and build our budget from there. 

I am hopeful, beloved friends. I’m hopeful that we’ll keep broadening and deepening our practices of fellowship and prayer when we’re not in the same physical space. I’m hopeful that advances in understanding, prevention and treatment of Covid will allow us to begin to gather in person again in the coming months, in both familiar and fresh ways.

I’ve looked around at what other churches are doing, and we have done a good job of keeping being St. Dunstan’s. There have been costs to this season – no question. I know we have members who love this parish and just don’t connect with online worship. I ache for them. This long fast from Eucharist, and our beloved building, takes a toll. There have been blessings to this season, too – deepening connections within the parish family, building new habits of praying and reflecting on Scripture together, exploring ways for our kids to plan and lead worship. It has been a heavy lift. It will keep being one. But we’re doing pretty well. I’m proud of us. 

Keeping on keeping being St. Dunstan’s takes financial resources. That’s why we have to have a fall giving campaign, even though it’s hard. If you’ve pledged in the past and you’re able to sustain your pledge, please do. If you’ve pledged before and you’re able to increase your pledge, even a little, I hope you’ll consider it. If you’ve pledged before and things have changed and you can’t pledge at the same level – we understand. No shame, please! So much has changed, for so many people, this year. 

If you haven’t pledged before and you’d like to start, to help St. Dunstan’s plan ahead, that would be a tremendous blessing. New pledges are always cause for celebration – even more so this year. I also want to hold up the folks who pledged for the first time last year and plan to pledge again this year. What a time to join a church. Thanks for sticking around. 

Along with your pledge cards, we’re asking for two other things. First, please share your thoughts about what’s most important to sustain and build, with your Vestry and Finance Committee. This is a season of discernment for St. Dunstan’s, too. Let us know what matters, from where you’re standing.

Second, please share your hopes. Each pledge packet this year includes a couple of index cards. They’ll come with an explanation, but the gist is: Use a card to write or draw a hope you have for 2021. It can be a church hope or a life hope or a world hope. It can be a big hope or a little hope. It can be a general hope or a very specific hope. You can do several if you want – let us know if you need more index cards!

One of our members, Kate, suggested this, because, she said, holding hope together is one of the most important things we do as a church in a difficult and frightening time. I think there’s real wisdom in that. So, share a hope, or two, or five. Send them back with your pledge card. We’ll put them all together and share them at the end of the giving campaign. 

In the wilderness journey in Exodus, God’s people chose to keep being God’s people. God’s people in Thessalonica chose Christ and were chosen by Christ, to continue the work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope.

Beloved friends: I am so grateful that you, each and all, chose St. Dunstan’s and keep choosing St. Dunstan’s.That you chose, and keep choosing, the blessings and challenges of life together as a faith community. That you chose, and keep choosing, to walk this wilderness journey together. May the God who has brought us this far protect us, guide us, and give us wisdom and courage for the road ahead. Amen. 

Current Events, Sermons, Stewardship

Sermon, Jan. 21

This is what I’m saying, friends: Our time is short. From now on, married people should not be preoccupied with their partner, family and home. Those who are sad should look beyond their sadness, and those who are happy should look beyond their happiness. Everyone should not be so concerned with how they make or spend money. Those who make use of the world and its opportunities should be like people who are detached from the world. Because this world in its present form is passing away.

That’s today’s Epistle, from Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth. (1 Cor 7:29-31) A few verses earlier, leading up to this passage, Paul writes, “In view of the impending crisis…”

Those are words you really don’t want to hear from the rector of your church in her annual meeting address: “In view of the impending crisis…”

In preparing sermons, I often use a wonderful webpage called The Text This Week. It compiles and presents commentaries and reflections and sermons and liturgical resources for every reading on every Sunday, following the Revised Common Lectionary. The Text This Week has a long list of commentaries and articles on this text – but not a single sermon. So apparently people have LOTS to say about this passage, but nobody cares to preach on it.

Well. Here goes.

One of the reasons it’s a difficult text to preach is that Paul seems to expect, in this passage, that Jesus will return soon – like, next week soon – so Christians really can detach from this world, because there’s no point in saving for college or setting up autopay on your mortgage.  And we shrug off the passage because, well, Paul was wrong. We’re all still here.

But Biblical theologian Alastair Roberts says that’s missing the point. What Paul says here isn’t that the world is passing away, but that the present form of this world is passing away. The Greek word is “schema”, the shape or appearance of the world as it is. Paul wrote this letter perhaps a decade before the first Jewish revolt against Roman rule, which led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the great Temple. It was a world-changing event for early Christians – and Paul may well have seen it coming; Jesus certainly did. So: Paul wasn’t wrong. When we stop being 21st-century observers and put ourselves in the shoes of 1st-century Christians experiencing the upheavals of that time: Yeah. The schema was passing away, bigtime. As many, many schemas have passed away in the two millennia since then.

Furthermore, Roberts says, Paul’s point here isn’t just about historical changes and endings. It’s also about theology – how we see the world in light of our understanding of God. You don’t have to believe that the world is literally going to end soon, to see the world through the lens of the expected fulfillment of God’s promise to transform and renew the whole cosmos.

Roberts says that the New Testament expresses the first Christians’ sense of eschatological imminence – the sense that God’s Kingdom is just over the horizon. And that sense arises from the Church’s experience of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The first Christians understood that reality had already been fundamentally transformed by the events of Good Friday and Easter. Roberts writes: “Life after these events is characterized by a radical relativization of the current world order and an intensified sense of its penultimacy.”

Let me try to rephrase that. Christians living after Easter and before the Second Coming should believe and know that the way things are is not the way they are meant to be – or the way they will be when God brings God’s purposes to fulfillment. “Relativization” means being able to see whatever is most familiar and seems most natural to us, as only one option among many, and not necessarily the best.

And the world as it is – even in its best and grandest moments – is not yet what it will be. Penultimate means, Next-to-last. Not final, complete, or ultimate, but whatever comes before the final, the complete, the ultimate. So: Life in the time of the church – 2000 years and counting – is marked by a sense of relativization and penultimacy: a recognition that things are not as God would have them; that we live and die, work and pray, hope and strive, in the crepuscular glimmer of God’s future, just beyond the horizon of our limited sight.

Bringing that lens to this text, Paul’s guidance to the Christians of Corinth doesn’t sound like the rantings of a prophet whose doomsday predictions missed the mark. Paul is reminding the Corinthians not to take the world-as-it-is for granted. To hold it lightly. Everything is provisional, everything is temporary – both the things you hate and the things you love. Don’t take anything too seriously; don’t lose yourself in the preoccupations of everyday life in the here-and-now.

Read in this light, Paul’s words don’t feel distant and irrelevant. They feel like good advice that I don’t really want to take,either as Miranda, a wife and mother and friend and citizen who wants a safe, stable, predictable future for those I love, or as Rev. Miranda, Rector of St. Dunstan’s Episcopal Church.

Across mainline Christian denominations right now, the ethos is anxiety bordering on panic. Membership numbers have fallen sharply since their high point in the 1950s – for a variety of big, sweeping historical reasons. Mainline Protestantism’s position of cultural and institutional centrality in American life is long gone. Churches and denominations are struggling to adjust to the changed religious, economic and social landscape, making tough choices about how to use decreasing resources to maintain what they have or to cut their losses and try something new. Look up the current struggle over the Episcopal Church’s budget for a lively case in point. We all know – in our best moments – that the Church and the Gospel will outlive the forms of institutional church that took shape in the mid-20th century. But we live in those forms, and love them, so there is grief and fear and struggle in this season, across American Christianity. A schema is passing away.

But St. Dunstan’s is growing. Slowly, but surely. I don’t know why. I don’t understand it. I’m grateful, and puzzled, and sometimes overwhelmed. But here we are.

During my seven years here, the treasured, committed, active, long-time members of the church have been joined by many treasured, committed, active new members. We’ve reached the point where we actually need to bring some energy and intention to making sure people know each other – that’s the impetus behind the Neighbor Dinners you’ll hear more about later. And though we’ve lost some folks to jobs in other cities or to the nearer presence of God, there continue to be enough of us to sustain this fellowship of faith, with the needed resources of time and skill and heart and, yes, money. For each of the past three years, we’ve modestly expanded our budget, to accommodate needs and areas of growth. The Vestry and the Finance Committee ask for what we think we need, and the congregation steps up. It’s amazing. Sometimes, honestly, it’s a little hard to talk with my clergy colleagues, when my challenges are things like too-small Sunday school classrooms and improving our capacity to integrate new members.

BUT, but, but: Growth doesn’t mean we’re exempt from the changing times. That we get to keep the schema of the present world. At best our current flourishing is a temporary reprieve from having to reckon with the tectonic shifts in American religion;  at worst it may prevent us from seeing and adapting to the ways in which those tremors have already shifted our foundations.

I’m going to resist diving headlong into the sociology of 21st century American Christianity, but here’s an incomplete list of some of the ways that epochal shifts in the cultural and economic landscape have an impact on how we do church.

Let’s start with committees! In 1960 – the boom years for American mainline churches – 70% of American households had a man who worked, and a woman who stayed home. Our images and memories of churches busy day in and day out with committees and guilds and service projects and craft sales reflect that era. Most women didn’t work outside the home; they were, let’s face it, bored and lonely; church was one place to take their energy and skill. Today, over 60% of American households are dual-income households, in which both adults work. What that means for churches is that people have fewer hours to offer to church committees and ministries. People still want to commit their time and skill – but often in more specific, targeted ways.

And people are, simply, tired on the weekends. What’s more, the loss of cultural centrality for Christianity means that sports and other events happen on Sunday mornings now. For folks with kids at home, Saturday and Sunday are a jumble of activities, laundry, and trying to snatch a little rest and togetherness. I get it. I’ve become pretty protective of my Saturdays, because during the school year it is my only day home with my family. So when people whom I know are committed to this church, and love God and love this community, are not here every Sunday – I miss you, but I sympathize. Life is really full, and pretty exhausting.

And that shift in work patterns is just one factor among many. The rise of the Religious Right in the 1980s began an era in which Christianity increasingly associated with hard-line moral conservatism. I know we have members who struggle with toxic Christianity, in its public manifestations or in their own past. Being church in the 21st century means both being inevitably tainted by Christianity’s brand issues, and continuously having to remind ourselves and each other that we follow Jesus, but not in that direction.

Another big shift is in patterns of institutional loyalty and giving. People don’t join and give as a normal, default behavior anymore; a church or nonprofit has to earn peoples’ loyalty and generosity. I think that’s a good change, but it is a change.

And outside of evangelical Christianity – which is having its own struggles right now! – church has really shifted from the center of American life. Many people not only don’t belong to a church, but honestly have no idea what it’s all about, or why anyone would want that.  There’s a tendency to pin that shift on GenX or the Millennials, but it actually started with the Boomers, with the freedom they felt to walk away from inherited norms – including church attendance – and chart their own path in life. The result is that for a huge swath of the American public, we are quaint and peculiar. I recently ate lunch at a restaurant that seemed to be a re-purposed church building – a cute little white country church. You could still see organ pipes up in the loft. You see that a lot – churches that have closed being turned into cafes or condos. But my friend told me, This building is new. This is not a former church; this is a hip restaurant built to look like a former church. That’s where we are in the life of American Christianity, friends.

OH, and ALSO, the fundamental epistemological shift from modernity to postmodernity means that people are no longer certain that there’s any such thing as truth! ….

“In view of the impending crisis…”

We do church – we gather, pray, and sing, welcome, share, and nurture, feed and work and serve – we do church in a new time. In a changed and changing schema. We do church in the shadow of profound change, and profound loss, in the faith landscape of our nation. We are growing here – but even the growth comes with the ache and uncertainty of change. New members bring ideas and energy and heart; but they don’t necessarily want to put their efforts towards maintaining existing structures and habits, extending the past into the future. They didn’t come here to help us maintain the schema. They came here to find a community with whom to follow Jesus.

The gist of it all, friends, is that even though St. Dunstan’s is flourishing right now, if we are wise, we still hear Paul’s call to hold it all lightly. We still live with a sense of relativization and penultimacy. Even the most familiar or most sacred of our acts are experiments, approximations, rough drafts of God’s future. Everything we do is provisional – the things we’ve been doing for decades, or centuries, as much as the things we try for the first time.

This is a terrible Annual Meeting message. Especially for a year when we’re actively talking about a capital campaign. I am supposed to be telling you that this church could be your everlasting monument. That if you endow a brass candlestick, your grandchildren will be able to visit St. Dunstan’s in fifty years and read your name on the plaque. I’m supposed to be telling you that if you commit your time and treasure to this church, it will keep being the exact thing you love right now, forever. This sermon I’m preaching, about how everything is changing and the future is unknowable: this is opposite of the sermon I’m supposed to preach today.

I’m preaching it anyway because I think it’s true, and I don’t want to lie to you. The past half-century has brought epochal changes in American culture, society, economy, and faith. Big stuff has changed, and is changing, and will yet change.

And I’m preaching it anyway because I actually find some freedom and grace in remembering that both the church and the future belong to God. Not to us. There are choices and challenges before us at St. Dunstan’s – the good kind. The choices and challenges of growth; of wisely and lovingly integrating old and new, received and emerging; of having, for the moment, enough, and discerning how to best to use what we have to further God’s purposes among and around us.

This past week at our Vestry meeting, our senior warden Shirley Laedlein read us a prayer which says, in part, “Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us… We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.” I like that image of planting seeds, as a metaphor for the work of the church – but, friends, the seed packet is NOT labeled. We do not know what’s going to grow, nor what ecology the young plants will become part of, nor what they’ll have to withstand, nor what they will produce when they mature.  But we ARE planting seeds. And providing light, and water, and good soil. I believe that. And God gives the growth, and blesses the harvest. I believe that too.

May we have the courage and faith to experience provisionality as freedom, and uncertainty as opportunity. To commit our resources and our efforts towards God’s future with hope and trust. And when we witness the schemas of this world passing away, may we lift our eyes to the horizon, to see what holy possibilities are dawning.

Alastair Roberts’ post about this 1 Corinthians text: 

http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-politics-of-eschatological-imminence-1-corinthians-729-31/

The full prayer that is the source of the excerpt about seeds:

http://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/prayers-and-devotions/prayers/prophets-of-a-future-not-our-own.cfm

Capital Campaign, Sermons, Stewardship

Sermon, January 22

Nadia Bolz-Weber is a pastor. She’s also an author and a celebrity, at least the closest thing to a real celebrity we have in mainline Protestantism. Her books and writing and conference talks have made her beloved by many, and her church, the House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, sounds like truly remarkable place. As you might guess from all that, they get a lot of visitors and new members. I mean, really a lot. People who think maybe this church, this spiritual leader, is finally the Right Thing for them, home after a long journey, solace after a long struggle.

So Nadia has developed a little talk she gives to those seekers, those new members. She tells them, Look, we’re not perfect. Churches are made of human beings. Someday, we will disappoint you or hurt you. Someday, I will disappoint you or hurt you. It’s a matter of when, not if. The church, this church, WILL let you down. And then she says, Please decide, right now, right up front, that you’ll stick around when that happens, and let God’s grace do its work in the cracks left by the brokenness of human communities.

I admire the honesty of that approach. And it seems to me that it neatly captures the tension between our New Testament readings this morning. In Matthew, we see the enthusiastic, ready response of the newly-called: Immediately they left their nets and followed him! And in 1 Corinthians we get a glimpse of a church community, a group of people who know each other well – maybe too well – who are in conflict. Divided. Forming factions and judging each other. Not a compelling witness to the gospel of Christ.

At first glance those readings seem to grate against each other, a mismatch; but really they’re just different moments in the lifetime of faith. There’s the moment of call, claim, curiosity or conversion, the moment when we first say, Yes. Yes to Jesus, God, and/or church. When we say, This is for me. I want to be part of this. And then there’s the ongoing life of discipleship and community, which gets messy. Even within a broadly unified and loving fellowship of faith, people have different understandings and priorities. They always have.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul is writing a letter to a community that’s struggling with conflict. Those of us who make a vocation of tending a church are often encouraged to reflect on the ways in which a church functions as a system, and we would name this as disequilibrium.

Equilibrium is a scientific term. It refers to a state in which the forces acting on something – an object or a system – are balanced. The thing isn’t static or still, there’s stuff happening inside and/or around it, but the stuff all adds up to keep the the thing pretty much the same. A push this way is balanced by another push that way, and so the thing stays in a kind of dynamic stability. Make sense? Okay.

So, disequilibrium is – not that. It’s when one of the forces in or around the thing gets stronger or weaker, or a new dynamic enters the system, and the system is no longer in equilibrium. No longer settled, balanced. That doesn’t mean that the new factor, whatever it is, is going to win – is going to shift the system in its direction. Systems are complex; the other forces acting on and in the system will respond to the change; you’d have to understand the system very thoroughly indeed to be able to accurately predict the eventual outcome. But the point is, there was equilibrium, and now there isn’t. Instead, there’s change.

Paul is addressing a situation of factionalism and conflict. But conflict is only one kind of disequilibrium. There are others. And many of them are things we think we want. Growth causes disequilibrium. Stretching ourselves to be and do more causes disequilibrium. Positive change is still disequilibrium. It unsettles our stability, our balance. Even though it’s a good thing in the abstract, it’s uncomfortable, stressful. It creates anxiety in the system. It can lead to conflict, which is often a symptom, rather than a cause, of disequilibrium.

That’s why your vestry spent several meetings last year developing our Community Covenant document, a statement of how we want to treat one another when we disagree, or when conversations get intense. We didn’t do that work because we were in conflict, or because there was conflict in the parish. We did it because when you shake up a system, anxiety can erupt in surprising ways, and it’s best to be ready for that, instead of being blindsided.

And we are shaking up our system, friends. We are talking about a capital campaign. We are choosing disequilibrium, taking it on intentionally, by asking ourselves what calls and charisms – remember, a charism is a gift given for a purpose – what calls and charisms God has bestowed upon us, and in what ways our building and our property reflect and accommodate all that, and in what ways they don’t.

I believe we are ready. I believe we can handle this. I believe that because I trust God, and I trust you. And because we have really taken our time getting here, talking and listening and noticing. Waiting for the moment to ripen, for the opportune time. I have literally been thinking about a capital campaign here for five years. Not because I came here as your new rector thinking, Boy, I can’t wait to lead a capital campaign!… Yeah, no. But because within my first year here, I already heard and felt – from you, among you – the places where the building chafed, didn’t fit who we are and what we do.

Your Vestry, your elected board, has literally been talking and thinking and praying about a capital campaign for two solid years. It took us eight months to choose a consulting firm to lead us through this work. I’m sure there are folks here who feel like this has come out of nowhere; I ask you believe me: we have really, really taken our time, letting this possibility emerge and mature. We have not taken a single step forward without a unanimous Yes among your leaders – the Vestry and Finance Committee. And we’ve floated the idea out to the congregation, and listened, as part that discernment, too. And so far, those Yeses have come, easily, and clearly. Yes, let’s take the next step down this road. Let’s keep exploring. Let’s keep wondering. Let’s see where this leads. We may still come to a No, or a Not yet. But so far, the Spirit among and within us has led us to Yes.

All those Yeses make me hopeful, and excited, for the prayerful conversations and work ahead. But I’m also bracing myself to deal with the stresses of disequilibrium. To take an example deliberately chosen for its triviality: The microwave in our church kitchen, built-in over the stove, is TERRIBLE. It’s so old it doesn’t even have a turntable; you end up with one lukewarm spot in your bowl of food…. We either use it and curse it, or avoid it. It’s easy to limp along with this inadequate piece of equipment. Replacing it is another whole story. That means assessing our needs; looking at how the whole kitchen functions; who uses it, and when, and for what; while we’re replacing the built-in, should we do something about the cabinets, which are also starting to fall apart; you get the idea.

Tolerating something less than ideal is easier than making it better. It just is.

I feel some anxiety in our parish system already. Not about the microwave, but about the possibility of a capital campaign. It’s not a lot of anxiety, it’s not intense, but it’s there. It’s there because money worries people. It’s there because we have both amazing, gifted, engaged newer members and amazing, gifted, engaged long-time members participating in this work, and not everybody knows and trusts each other yet. It’s there because the congregation’s memory of the last big building project here, in the 1990s, is that decisions were made from the top, without truly taking the parish’s needs and desires into account.

There’s anxiety about transparency – will everyone be heard? will decisions be made fairly and collaboratively? There’s anxiety about scale – are we going to set overly ambitious goals, and either end up disappointing ourselves, or overreaching our capacity? There’s anxiety about how to plan and design for the future, which is always and inevitably unknown. There’s anxiety about doing this NOW, when things seem so right in the life of our parish, but so uncertain in the life of our community, nation and world.

One of the things that happens in an anxious system is that the thing is never just the thing. Small issues take on disproportionate emotional energy. That conversation about the microwave is a conversation about how we gather; the conversation about how we gather is a conversation about who we are; the conversation about who we are is a conversation about whether we are who we’re supposed to be, and whether there’s room in that “we” for others who need to be here; the conversation about whether there’s room for others – and which others? – is a conversation about the survival of mainline Protestantism in the 21st century. So the microwave can become a big deal, fast.

How do we handle the anxiety? Well: your leaders can offer some assurances. We WILL give everyone a chance to be heard. We WILL do our utmost to make reasonable and sustainable decisions. We WILL do our best to follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit as we discern our path forward into the unknowable future. I absolutely mean all of that. But I also know I could say those things till I’m blue in the face and folks will still be anxious, because the system will still be anxious. Unsettled, both literally and figuratively.

Then there’s prayer. You could do worse than today’s Psalm, Psalm 27, a psalm of trust and assurance. “God is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” “Your face, Lord, will I seek.” “Surely I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” “Wait for the Lord. Be strong, and let your heart take courage.” I spent some time this week collecting some prayers about seeking God’s will and trusting God in a time of uncertainty. I posted a few on our parish website; take a look sometime, if that would be helpful to you.

Another way to handle the anxiety is remind ourselves and each other of the touchstone of who we are, together. That’s the approach taken by the Apostle Paul, addressing the conflicted Corinthians: Be united in the same mind and the same purpose. In a way Paul is calling the Corinthians to think back to that first Yes moment. He asks them to step back from the tangled messy present and remember the fresh joyful urgency of the initial call. To remind themselves why they became part of a community that strives to follows Jesus together.

Be united in the same mind and the same purpose. What’s the mind, the purpose, the intention, that unites us? Recently I happened to look back at a document from 2012 – five years ago! How many of you weren’t even here yet? – A document about who we are, at St. Dunstan’s, and what we’re good at, gathered from the congregation. And what astonished and honestly delighted me is how familiar it felt. The things we named back then were things that we’ve grown into even more, in the intervening five years.

We love music, and singing together. We love drama, and a good story well told. We love to make stuff, to craft, tinker, build, and fix. We love our grounds, and we’re continually working to care for them and learn from them more faithfully. We love to do things for others, together. We love to feed each other and to eat together. We love to learn and wonder and reflect together. We love our kids. In fact, that sentence doesn’t even work, because at St. Dunstan’s, kids are part of the We. Not some separate group that we do things for, but full members of this household of faith. We love the holy moments when we’re able to be companions for one another in times of pain or struggle; when we’re able to sing and pray and preach courage in the face of the world’s hurt. We love being a place of welcome, of safety, for those who’ve been bruised or battered by other churches, or by the world; and we’re committed to maintaining and broadening that welcome. We love it when people can offer the things they’re good at and the things they love to do as their ministries here, and we trust that the capacities and enthusiasms of our members are leading us somewhere together – are indeed charisms, gifts given for a purpose.

Be united in the same mind and the same purpose. Well: I’m not sure we’re ever all going to be of the same mind, here, exactly. Too many opinions! But the same purpose, the same intention, the same heart, the same sense of direction, the same love and longings for this place, this fellowship – I think we really do share a lot, there. I think there’s a core that will hold us together, and lead us forward. Help us manage the anxiety of disequilibrium, and keep loving and striving and building together, even when we don’t see eye to eye.

Remember Nadia Bolz-Weber’s speech to new members? Well, most of you aren’t brand-new here – though a few are. The newness in our midst is a project – this project of discerning possibilities, and then, perhaps, of actually following through to make it so.

But I’d like to say what Nadia says. Right now, this new thing among us is kind of exciting. So far it’s all possibility, and no reality; what’s not to like? But. But. You will be disappointed or hurt, at some point in this process. There will be moments when people’s priorities or preferences are at odds. Someone will think your pet project is unimportant, or flat-out stupid. (Though I think we’d get a LOT of use out of a climbing wall!) Cruel financial realities will kill a possibility that you’d built hopes around. This work will – at some point – piss you off.

I am asking you: Decide, now, to stick around. Decide, now, to bear with it. To bear with us. To bear with God, in what God is doing here among us. To remind yourself why you’re here to begin with, and of the common purpose and heart that unites us, even if we sometimes feel divided. To trust in God’s good and gracious intentions for this outpost of the Kingdom here at the corner of University and Allen. And to let the Holy Spirit work through the spaces left by our inadequacy, short-sightedness, and anxiety, to accomplish God’s purposes on earth.

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/

Giving Campaign, Sermons, Stewardship

Sermon, Jan. 24

Today is Annual Meeting Sunday, the Sunday in January when we pause to take stock of what we’ve accomplished in the previous year, and where we’re feeling led to growth in the year ahead. It’s my custom, as it is for many Episcopal clergy, to have my sermon also be my Annual Meeting address – my reflection on where we’ve been and where we’re going. It’s always a bit of an awkward hybrid, this thing that is both sermon and State of the Parish address; but I do really value the way the exercise keeps me grounded in Scripture. This year, the struggle was, WHICH Scripture? The lectionary hands us a bunch of powerful and relevant texts, today. They each have a word or two for us, I think, at this moment in the life of St. Dunstan’s.

The first word is… Time. The year of the Lord’s favor. Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. In our Gospel today, Jesus is talking about time – about a particular kind of time. The Greek used in the New Testament has two different words for time. The first is Chronos, which is clock time, calendar time, linear, predictable, orderly, ordinary. It’s the kind of time that tells you when to leave for work, or when your car will be paid off.

The second kind of time is Kairos. The word points to a special kind of time – often translated as “the opportune time.” It means the right moment, the moment that fizzes with potential, when everything falls into place or when new possibilities emerge. The time when things are brought to crisis; the decisive moment we’ve all been waiting for. In today’s text from the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is talking about kairos-time as he quotes chapter 61 of the book of the prophet Isaiah, and then says, This is the moment; and I am the man. Jesus doesn’t use the word “kairos” here, but he uses it elsewhere, all over the Gospels. It’s one of themes of his teaching, really: recognizing, discerning the right time. Reading the moment and knowing, This is it. The moment to act, to step up, to respond, to make a change. It’s almost as if this were one of the gifts, one of the challenges he offers to those who follow him… reading the signs, recognizing the moment, carpe-ing the diem.

I started to get the feeling that maybe a particular kind of kairos moment had arrived at St. Dunstan’s sometime last summer. Let me back up and offer just a little bit of history. When I came to St. Dunstan’s, we were running some pretty substantial budget deficits – between $40 and $70,000. It made my stomach knot up just to look back at it all, preparing these remarks. In 2013 we used $52k of our reserves to meet our expenses. That was what we needed to do – and we had the funds to do it.

But that year we also decided it was time to make a change. Our reserve funds were getting low and it just didn’t make sense to go on like that.  We called a Budget Repair Task Force to make sure we were using our financial resources as wisely and effectively as possible. We did some hard, hard work, and were able to present, adopt, and, though your pledges, achieve a balanced budget for 2014, and again in 2015.

I’ve been rector of St. Dunstan’s for five years – five years and 21 days, to be exact – and for basically all of that time, I’ve been caught in the tension of wanting to keep expenses tight and live within our means, and wanting to build, add, develop, enhance – which often requires some investment. We’ve done pretty well – we’ve been creative, resourceful, and patient; and diocesan grants and special funds within the parish have allowed us to invest in Christian formation, youth and young adult ministry, a new worship service, and more.

And then, this past summer, I started to get this feeling. This feeling that maybe we were entering a new chapter. That maybe it was time to ask the parish to commit to a budget that would sustain and expand all the good things that have been developing here.

I am – you are – so blessed in our parish leadership. Your wardens and treasurers and vestry are, without exception, open-hearted, thoughtful, committed, both wise and smart, both compassionate and playful. I asked the Wardens and Treasurers: What if we presented a budget for 2016 that asks for more – not just because we think we could do more, but because we’re already doing more, and need the parish’s support to keep it up? And the Wardens and Treasurer said, Yeah. It’s time.

So we took it to the Finance Committee – I’m so grateful for our Finance Committee, for those smart, skilled people who oversee the financial life of our parish. And the Finance Committee said, Yeah, it’s time. And we took it to the Vestry, and the Vestry said, Yeah, it’s time.

And so, friends, we took it to you, in the fall Giving Campaign. We asked you to raise our pledged giving by almost 10%. It felt audacious and terrifying. And you said, Yeah, it’s time. You did it. Our pledged income in our 2016 budget is fifty thousand dollars more than it was in our 2011 budget.  A 25% increase. I don’t even have words for that. I’m just staggeringly grateful – and humbled, and hopeful.

We’re not going to run out and buy a Porsche. We’re going to be just as watchful and mindful in a season of growth as we were in the seasons of scarcity. We’ll keep a close eye on our budget this year, make sure we haven’t overcommitted ourselves, and strive to plan wisely for the future. But I think it’s OK to take a moment here to just … exhale, and smile.

That kairos moment of Jesus, that moment in the synagogue, was of cosmic importance; but he teaches us that we should expect kairos moments in our lives and our institutions and communities, too. Moments when God’s will is fulfilled in our hearing, before our eyes. Moments when God’s purposes take hold, when human impossibilities give way to God’s possibilities.

I want to be clear that, while I’m talking about money, I’m absolutely not just talking about money. Money stands for something. You absolutely wouldn’t have stepped up the way you did if your parish leadership had just said, Hey, guys, we’d like some more money, please. You give, and many of you have increased your giving, because you believe in our common life, in what we’re doing and building here together. And I want to be clear, too, that while I’m talking about money, I’m absolutely not just talking about money, because there is no way we would be where we are without your contributions of time, energy, skill, food and art supplies, and so, so much more. We couldn’t be St. Dunstan’s if all we had was the money.

So, I keep talking about doing more; what more? Our 2016 budget doesn’t include big dramatic changes. It’s a budget that invests in the body. That’s the second word for today, from our second reading, Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth: Body.  Paul uses this wonderful metaphor of the body to explain to the church in Corinth, the way you might explain it to a four-year-old, that their church is a body, that all the parts matter for the body’s healthy functioning, and that they really need to work together to get anything done.

The increases in our 2016 budget are investments in areas of our common life that will bind the body more closely together, and serve some of its assorted parts. We’ve increased the hours – not a lot, but some – for our Organist & Choir Director, an investment in developing our life together as a people of song, one of the deep and formative ways we experience ourselves as a body. We’ve increased the hours for our Office Coordinator – not a lot, but some – an investment in developing our parish communication systems, the ways we know what’s going on in the body, and hear about ways to participate, contribute, and be nurtured; and ways that that those who are not yet part of the body may find, and be found by, St. Dunstan’s.

We’ve taken several ministries that had been launched with the support of grants or designated funds, and made them part of our budget, because they’re not experiments anymore – they’re part of who we are. Our Sandbox Thursday evening service, our monthly young adult nights at the Vintage, our Middle High youth program – all serve different parts of this body, and help to sustain and connect those who participate.

We’ve boosted our budget lines for a couple of key areas that help hold the whole body together. Think about what it feels like to be hungry: low-energy, headachy, cranky. We don’t want to be Hangry Church. We want this body well-fed. Sharing meals is powerful; we learn that from Jesus himself. Eating together isn’t just pleasant and practical – it’s a sacrament of sorts. It builds community, helps people gather and focus, and makes it easier to integrate church into daily life. Many of our best and deepest conversations take place over shared meals. And while the occasional “potluck” is wonderful, often people just need to come get fed – in every sense. Our Fellowship budget line provides the funds to make sure we can keep table fellowship central to our common life.

Also this year, we’ve funded a budget line for Welcome and Integration ministry. The people who’ve become part of St. Dunstan’s over the past few years are really amazing, interesting, gifted folks. We’ve got two of them standing for election to vestry right now. It is a tremendous sign of health to have people actively involved in the life of this parish whose time at St. Dunstan’s ranges from fifty years to less than one. And to be a body that is able to incorporate – that word literally means, to make part of the body! – the needs and interests and gifts of newer members. Funding that Welcome & Integration line in our budget ensures that we have resources to do that work well, but it’s also a statement to ourselves that this work matters.

Finally, this year’s budget inches up our investment in Outreach, the ways we support service and advocacy work in our city, our state, and the world. This year we raised the percentage of your giving that we pass on to others to 6%. Of course, monetary gifts are only one way we contribute; we’re seeing broader hands-on participation in some of our Outreach ministries, too. Watch this space! It’s my conviction and hope that, the stronger and better-connected the Body grows, the more we’re able to act together to serve our neighbors and join in God’s work of healing and transforming a broken world.

One last word on the church as Body: It’s important to keep asking, Are any of the parts neglected? Is there an ear or a pinky toe that’s not feeling connected, or getting what it needs? Let’s keep striving to be a Body in which all the parts respect and care for one another, and work together.

One more Scripture passage, with two words for us, church. The passage is this scene from the Old Testament book Nehemiah. And the words are, Celebrate and share.

This story needs a little context. A century and a half earlier, Babylonian armies had conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the great Temple, and taken most of the people away from their homeland, into exile. Fifty years later, the Persian empire conquered Babylon, and the Persion emperor, Cyrus, gave the Jews permission to go home. But being allowed to go home is not the same as having a home to go to. Jerusalem was in ruins, and other tribes and peoples had taken over the surrounding territory. Many Jews stayed in exile, where they had built lives for themselves, waiting to see whether they would someday have a homeland again.

Now, Nehemiah was one of the Jewish people living in Persia. He served in the court of King Artaxerxes, who was king after Cyrus. He was grieved by word from Jerusalem about how bad things were, and he asked the King for permission to go and help rebuild.  So Artaxerxes sent Nehemiah to Jerusalem to be its governor, with wood and other resources to support the project. The Bible tells us that Nehemiah and his people rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in 56 days.

The scene in our reading today is a moment of rebirth, a true kairos moment. Nehemiah the governor and Ezra the priest have called together all the people of Israel who have returned to begin life again in their homeland – men and women and even children old enough to understand. Ezra reads aloud from the books of the Law, the Torah, that tells them how to live as the holy people of a holy God, the customs and practices of their faith that had been largely forgotten during their time of exile. And the priests and Levites walk among the people, helping them understand, explaining, interpreting. And the people are weeping and mourning, because they have been so far from God, so far from the ways of their people and their faith.

But their leaders tell them, It’s okay. Don’t weep, don’t grieve. You’ve lost many years, and suffered much, but we’re home now, and we’re beginning again. This is a holy day, a kairos time, and God is with us. Celebrate! Go on your way rejoicing, eat rich foods and drink wine, and share from your bounty with those who have nothing.

Our thin years here hardly compare with the great exile. But this Body has been through some hard and anxious times, and we’ve arrived with hope and humility at the threshhold of a new chapter, a koinos time. Let’s take this day, and this season, to celebrate – and to share from our blessedness, in every way we can.