Breakfast Club

The following article by St. Joseph's member Emily Leonardy originally appeared in the Duke Chronicle on November 11, 2009. Her column appears in the Chronicle every other Wednesday.

“Oh, John-boy, you’d be running! You’d run so fast! You’d be chasing Emily in her car!” A friend of mine was telling me how to get John-boy off the couch and out to exercise. The secret is to drop him off in Walltown around dusk.

Only a few blocks off East Campus, Walltown, as my friend describes it, is not somewhere my fellow female first-year should ever run—she just moved to Trinity Park—and somewhere that “John-boy” should only venture if he has a car full of friends he’s chasing.

Durham can be a scary place. It’s a place that can really use our help, though. We can tutor kids for an hour a week at the community center and we can volunteer once a month at the soup kitchen. In my time here, I’ve even helped clean up a not-for-profit consignment shop. Durham is really lucky that it has a major research university that provides lots of jobs and lots of money—we really sustain the local economy. We have a lot of gifts to offer Durham.

Pop quiz: Do you have any idea where Walltown is? Did you know there is a name for the neighborhoods beyond the walls of East Campus and the Gothic spires of West? Of course you know, but that doesn’t mean you have to go there. The Duke administration has sanctioned your isolation, requiring on-campus residence three out of four years. Not that you become more part of the Durham community when you move to Duke 2.0—The Belmont or Partners Place—for your senior year (your humble columnist points the finger at herself too, former resident of A22 that she is).

A few seniors boldly branch out to the neighborhoods off East Campus where there is a long tradition of uneasy relations with neighbors. In these cases, at least there is enough interaction to prove that students venture outside the Duke bubble and try to live life alongside our fellow Durhamites. These sometimes strife-filled relationships have more potential for the rewards of community than do meager attempts to “cure” or “improve” Durham by quick spurts of volunteerism.

I’ve never lived near East Campus, nor have I ever been particularly friendly with those who live in the myriad apartment buildings I’ve inhabited during my tenure in Durham. The convenience of the Trinity Park and Walltown communities, among others close to East, is not lost on me, though. Walking to class, walking to the grocery store, walking to restaurants—one can save gas and root yourself in a not-quite-so-transient neighborhood community.

About a year ago, I started to stumble around what community meant and looked like in Durham. The church I was preparing to join required “service to the poor” once a week. I had visions of driving to the soup kitchen every Saturday for the months it would take to finish my training. Instead, I joined fellow church members in eating breakfast with the homeless guys who live on the church property and anyone else who showed up. There was very little “service” involved—no lining up as the givers and the needy, assuming the positions of the server and the served. Because we all need to feed our bodies breakfast, whoever shows up first starts coffee and we sit around one table and eat the same scrambled eggs. I’ve found that I am just as needy as anyone else around that table.

Just because I have a degree from Duke (and in a few years, two) doesn’t mean that I have no needs to be fulfilled by others. We’re trained to be self-reliant, but we really aren’t. By thinking that we are all independent beings, we’re robbing ourselves of the rich experience of learning how to sit with others in awkward breakfast circles, or laughing around that same table about the best way for John-boy to jump start his fitness training. The way to build community—the way to reap the rewards of investing in others and them in you—is not to put yourself in a place of strength, but to allow yourself to be served and taught by those you think need your help.

It doesn’t take living near East Campus to experience life with our fellow Durhamites, but it does make it easier. Students spend all day together in classes—wouldn’t it be instructive, even invaluable, to experience the rest of our time outside the Duke bubble, in the real Durham community? Many graduate students have the opportunity to do just that.

Since when do the graduate students have all the fun?

Your present abundance and their need

The following is a message from Mick Capon, our senior warden, to St. Joseph's on the First Sunday of Advent.

At a recent Vestry meeting, Rhonda mentioned that we needed to plan our 2010 Stewardship campaign. She asked members if they wanted to volunteer to make presentations at our Sunday morning Eucharists during Advent.

The following day, Gail and I were reading the Scriptures as part of our “Bible reading plan”. As often occurs we felt the Holy Spirit was guiding us. Our New Testament reading for the day just happened to be 2 Corinthians 8. Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, wanting them to know that the grace of God had been granted to the churches of Macedonia, and told them that their “abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part”.

Like most Episcopal churches we spend most of our money on salaries, property and outreach. Okay, we do get help from the Diocese on the first of these, but an increasing cost is our property upkeep, and our outreach ministries are expanding, more than ever in the current economic climate. St. Joseph’s buildings are old and need constant care. Even with our small band of volunteers we still occasionally need to call in the professionals. For example this summer we installed a new heating unit in the parish hall – insuring no more cold meetings during the winter. We are extremely fortunate that our housekeeping and administration is staffed entirely by volunteers. However, the more important reason for talking openly and extensively about money is theological, not practical. Jesus talked about money. In fact, next to the Kingdom of God, money was Jesus’ most frequent sermon topic.

The Biblical tithe (10% of one’s pre-tax earnings) is traditionally the starting point for giving. This is not a requirement for membership or to get a front seat at Sunday Eucharist (nearer to God perhaps?), but is meant to help us be who we, and God, want us to be: generous people who are known for our charity and desire to give.

To return to Paul: “For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has – not according to what one does not have. I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there be a fair balance.”
Amen.

Stand up and raise your heads

The following is a sermon preached by Vicar Rhonda Lee on the first Sunday in Advent, 29 November 2009.

Luke 21:25-36

As a transplanted Canadian, I have a long history of complaining to anyone who will listen—admittedly, not very many people—about the timing of American Thanksgiving. For me, it’s clear that Thanksgiving should fall on the second Monday in October—what Americans call Columbus Day, or in some parts of the country, El Día de la Raza. Celebrating Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday in November, only a month before Christmas, creates far too long a wait for a holiday after the Labor Day long weekend.

Now that I’m ordained, my grudge against U.S. Thanksgiving has intensified. Too often, like this year, the holiday falls just before the first Sunday in Advent. Clergy expect smaller congregations than usual on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, as people straggle—and struggle—back to town after visiting family across the country.

Those who do make it to church may be surprised not only by the news that it’s already Advent, but by the urgency of Jesus’ tone: “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness…Be alert at all times…”

Be alert? Hasn’t our Lord heard about tryptophan?

Avoid dissipation and drunkenness? Does he make exceptions for crucial football games?

If we needed further evidence that the church calendar is out of step with secular festivals, this year’s juxtaposition of Thanksgiving and Advent is it.

While the secular year drags—or rushes, depending on your perspective—to a close, the first Sunday in Advent ushers in a new church year. While advertisers clamor for our attention and our money, urging us to buy things that provide at best a fleeting sense of satisfaction, the Advent season draws our eyes and our hearts toward eternity. We’re all looking forward to welcoming the Christ child on Christmas Eve, but that night’s still four weeks away, and this morning’s Gospel reading contains a sobering reminder about him.

In it, the baby is all grown up, and he’s headed for the cross.

Jesus is in Jerusalem, teaching and gathering larger and larger crowds around him as the feast of Passover, and his arrest, draw closer. His teaching is becoming increasingly urgent until, in today’s passage, he echoes the biblical prophets to turn his listeners’ attention to the only things that endure. Sounding like Isaiah, Joel, and Zephaniah, Jesus speaks, not of the end of his own life, but of the end of the age and the dawning of the reign of God. His language is terrifying: “There will be…on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory.”

Immediately, however, Jesus offers comfort in the form of a strange command: “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

How can Jesus ask these things of us? Daring to stand, heads held high, before God, who’s coming among us “with power and great glory”? Living without fear in a world that seems to be teetering on the brink of apocalypse?

His words make sense only when we interpret them through the cross: the life that led him to it, the death he died there, and the resurrection that transformed it from a symbol of death to a sign of unquenchable life.

His life makes sense only in light of salvation history. He’s the One who fed, healed, and loved everyone as God does, telling them the truth that would make them whole and set them free. The One who gave up everything he had for the sake of everyone but himself. Who wandered homeless as his ancestors the Israelites did, in order to lead us all into the promised land.

His death is inseparable from his life—a final act of self-giving in the face of the world’s brutality. And his resurrection is inseparable from his death—witness to the immeasurable power of God’s love, and the first sign that the new age of God’s reign had begun. That sign was far more dramatic on a cosmic scale than an eclipse, meteor shower, tidal wave, or any of the other signs human beings take as evidence that an era of history is coming to its end, and another preparing to be born.

For most people, the signs of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection went unnoticed, their import not understood. But his disciples saw, heard, and slowly realized that the new age had begun, and they shared that conviction with anyone who would listen—and many who wouldn’t. The resurrected Christ gave them grace to speak and to write the record of his life, and those are the words that will not pass away.

The words of Scripture point to the living Word that is Jesus Christ, and he is the lens through which we look at everything that is, and see it transformed. When we see the world through that lens, we become alert to signs that the old—the order that put Jesus to death on the cross—is passing away, and the new—fresh life—is coming into being.

Here at St. Joseph’s, we see that new life in the fellowship meals that follow prayer services and Eucharists.

In toilet paper and diapers offered at the altar along with the bread, wine, and money, to be blessed and taken back out into the world as a sign of God’s compassionate love.

In a house that’s a home for friends, supported by a larger network of friends.

In a church economy based on gift-giving and mutual sharing, rather than commerce and calculation; where people are welcomed for their inherent worth as children of God, and offered what they need, not judged by how deserving, or grateful, they—we—appear to be.

The value of the relationships that the Holy Spirit weaves among us can’t be measured. They can only be marveled at, for their incarnation of generous, even reckless love. That love is the reality that will endure, and deepen endlessly, after everything else has faded away.

Relationships grounded in God’s love are the place where we stand, heads raised and hands outstretched, in the expectation of Jesus Christ’s return; and when we stand in them, he has already returned. Amen.

I am not generally a big fan of Martin Luther, but this week the German Reformer’s definition of sin struck me as perceptive. Sin, he said, is “a person turned in on oneself” (homo incurvatus in se). And lately I’m impressed with just how much of my life I spend protecting and pampering me.

I think about me. What’s the next step in my life? How can I get the most out of my opportunities? I hope that person likes me. I can’t believe what that person said to me. Am I happy? Do I think about myself too much?

I decorate myself. I worry about being over-dressed, or under-dressed. Or wearing the right colors, or the right things for the season. And certainly I can’t wear the same outfit twice in one week!

I talk about me. I hate it when people just want to talk about themselves!

I am self-centered, and so I avoid dependence on others: independence gives me the time to do what I need to do for me.

So I secure myself. I spend most of my time running far away from anything that might control me, that might limit my freedom and self-expression. But perhaps most of all, I am running away from anything that might make me dependent upon others. For utter dependence is humiliating.

Worst of all, I separate myself from other members of the church and from God, assuring myself that I don’t really need those other messed up people. Surely these are not the people Jesus prayed for me to be one with!

But I am also self-centered because I avoid dependence. After all, I rationalize, its only the responsible thing to do to spend all my time making sure I am maximizing the potential God has given me.

I spend my time making sure that I am self-sustaining so that I need charity from neither others nor from God nor, heaven forbid, from others in the name of God. I will not be a charity case! I will be a self-made man.

So I avoid dependence because I am self-centered, and I am self-centered because I avoid dependence.

Locked in a cage of narcissism and unable to get free, I realize that I am obsessed with myself!

But then the Gospel is read: Do not worry. Look at the birds and the lilies. Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be given to you.

Jesus paints for us here one moment in his stunning vision of a life of mutual, worry free, dependence for those who seek God’s kingdom before all things. While we do this Jesus promises that God will clothe us, feed us and give us to drink. I don’t think we should hear Jesus saying that, if the - for us - unthinkable happens and we run out of food, God will deliver food from the sky. Rather, Jesus hits much closer to home. As we seek the Kingdom, he says, God will feed us with all that we need by means of one another. This mutual dependence is confirmed by what Jesus says in the immediate context of our passage:

Give to him who begs. Don’t refuse one who wants to borrow.

Ask and it will be given to you; knock and the door will be opened; seek and you shall find.

If a child begs bread or fish he will not be given a stone or snake.

So don’t worry, if God knows how to take care of the lilies and the birds, he surely knows how to take care of us.

And he will feed us, clothe us, and give us to drink, I dare say, both literally and metaphorically.

For God takes care of us not just by people’s gifts, but by the gifts of people. God makes us dependent upon others and others upon us in order to redeem us, in order to shape within us the virtues of his Son. For how can we learn to go the second mile, if we’ve run far from anyone who might ask us to bear her burden in the first place? And how will we learn to turn the other cheek, if we are never in danger of being struck?

As Mother Rhonda said to me this week, "we are each other’s spiritual disciplines." We are each other’s hope of becoming Christ-like.

Only if we realize and live into our deep dependence on one another, will we give thanks the way we should – now, and each time bread is broken and wine poured out.

--Colin

Breakfast 9.21.09

Morning Prayer on the Feast of St. Matthew was well attended, including our Sr. Warden and Treasurer, B, a homeless man, Betty of Blacknall Presbyterian, who had brought her usual casserole for breakfast fellowship, and a few other regulars. I talked to B after the service about the room he has been trying to rent. I’ve been trying to make a partial payment on his security deposit but things keep getting in the way. “Tuesday,” he told me, “’cause its gonna start gettin’ cold out here.”

B and I walked over to the Parish Hall for breakfast, though he said he didn’t want any. Slowly a few others gathered, a couple inside and a couple on the picnic tables. We warmed up some of the casserole Betty had by this time brought in and we had a few takers. One of the guys said he was looking for a cheap room and that he had money but wanted us to help find him a place. So B offered the list of rentals he had in his pocket.

It dawned on me to check email and I found that, after some negotiation, the place we wanted to be the new locale of our hospitality house for our two guys was being offered to us. This was good news. It’s at 920 9th Street and hardly a half-mile from St. Joseph’s. It’s a little more rent than we might have preferred to pay but all discernment pointed in this direction. I’m learning that such (relatively trivial!) insecurity is surely part of the evangelical poverty to which Christ directs us, however trained I have become to take refuge in a sort of worldly prudence. Isaiah told us this morning not to call conspiracy everything that the culture does and not to fear what they fear (Isa 8:12). The same must be true of what the world calls “responsible.”
--Colin

Celebration for a Home

Almighty and everlasting God, grant to this home the grace of your presence, that you may be known to be the inhabitant of this dwelling, and the defender of this household; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
(“Celebration for a Home,” Book of Occasional Services, Church Publishing, 2004)

Yesterday evening, 24 of us gathered to bless the new home of Lisa and Colin, which they share with Concrete, and with other guests from time to time. The blessing was a joyful event, culminating in a celebration of the Eucharist, and followed by supper provided by our hosts.

Everyone there knew that Colin and Lisa have asked for their church family's help to discern what form God wants their ministry of hospitality to take. This is appropriate: we all need each other’s prayers, listening ears, thoughtful questions, and love as we seek to live out our vocations. I’ve accompanied Lisa and Colin in this phase of their discernment for several months now, and I believe they are called to offer hospitality in their home. What form that hospitality will take over time, none of us knows, but we trust that will be revealed.

This ministry is one of the ways our sister and brother are called to live out Jesus Christ’s command to each of us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength….and your neighbor as yourself.” This ministry is deeply personal, affecting Colin and Lisa’s marriage and daily life, but it isn’t individual, or private. It’s an outgrowth of the ministries of fellowship and hospitality which I found at the heart of St. Joseph’s when I arrived in 2006, and which have grown since then. And so it involves all of us.

Our involvement may take a variety of forms. I hope you will all include Lisa and Colin’s process of discernment in your prayers for our parish family. Pray that they, and all of us, may answer God’s call faithfully, whatever form that call may take—and then let Colin and Lisa know what you hear in response to your prayers.

You may be moved to support this ministry in other ways: lending DVDs for guests to watch, dropping off a container of soup when you’re making some for your own household, or stopping by to check on the household while Colin and Lisa are away next month.

Wayne and I provide a modest amount of material support for the house, as a way of affirming its beauty as a sign of God’s in-breaking reign. That support doesn’t reduce our contributions to the St. Joseph’s budget, the poor plate, the flower fund, or any other collection through which our ministries are funded. It’s our response to a call, in a conversation that will continue. Thanks be to God.
--Rhonda

Musings on a week lived in faith

Looking back over the past week I am reminded of "the curate's egg" - good in parts.

Ups and downs, peaks and troughs or whatever you want to call them, are part of life. It's how we cope with not only the low points, but even the highs, that can make all the difference to others. Both Gail and I experienced unrelated frustrations towards the end of last week. Talking to friends not only helped both of us get past these difficulties (as minor as they were, in hindsight), but hopefully gave those friends a sense of helping and of being "wanted". It's a reminder that we all not only need, but rely on, one another. Seeking help is not always easy, but is generally rewarding for both the seeker and helper. Thank God for the family of friends we have and love.

As this wonderful world continues to turn, a dear friend's younger brother died on Saturday and yesterday another friend gave birth to a beautiful girl, Macy. Lows and highs, mourning and rejoicing, they are an integral part of life . . . and death.

As Gail says every morning "Good morning life . . . how can I make a difference today?"

--Mick Capon