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.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
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
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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
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
Saturday, June 20, 2009
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
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
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
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
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Patient Kingdom
The following is a sermon preached by Leigh Edwards, a parishioner of St. Joseph's, at Oriental United Methodist Church, on 14 June 2009. The text is Mark 4:26-34. We pray for Leigh as she serves her internship at Oriental UMC.
I lived last year in a neighborhood known by people outside of the community, and even by some inside, for its drugs, gangs, poverty, and violence. In fact, the house that we resided in used to be a boarding house – which was a veiled way of talking about a transitory location for those looking for some kind of comfort in drugs, sex, or just a roof over their heads. There is a lot next to our house that is long, skinny and weed covered – the neighborhood association is not sure what to do with it – and it is exactly the kind of lot that you would tell your kids to stay away from and that would necessarily bring down adjacent property value. People used it as a thoroughfare from further back in the neighborhood to the bus stop, and often probably for other sorts of business. Once in a while TROSA would come by and clean the lot, though its general state was weed and trash covered. A friend of ours from the neighborhood buried a dead cat that was found on our sidewalk there. In the process he discovered, or was reminded, that even feet down in the dirt it was filled with broken glass, cigarette butts, old tires, bottles, candy wrappers, and even the occasional appliance. The lot had seen the passing of years, and had a lot of stories to tell from the neighborhood. The lot was a mess.
One of my roommates, probably the most contrarian of them all, decided to build a garden, and to build one right there on that lot that we did not own. He spent a week filtering the dirt through the wires of an abandoned shopping cart, just to make it safe to grow seeds in. The plot was maybe 3 feet by 2 feet and framed by discarded white boards. Old bottles were used to help support the raised bed. Thanks to the labor of our housemate, near the end of spring our house was able to enjoy salad greens that were grown in the polluted dirty lot next to our house. It was an unlikely little ray of hope in the midst of abused and trashed land.
I see what my roommate did with that tiny garden plot as embodying the aspects of the kingdom that Jesus describes in the two parables of our gospel lesson today. In the first parable a farmer scattered seed on the ground. The parable says “he does not know how” the seed grows. However, what I suspect the parable is saying is what the farmer actually does know: that he can do only so much in the growth of the seed. It is the work of the earth, sun and rain to produce and bear the fruit of good wheat. The second parable of the mustard seed is meant to be read right in line with the first. In it a tiny seed, contrary to our notions of relative input and output, produces one of the most lush and helpful plants in the garden. The wheat is not so different for, like the mustard shrub and most other plants, it comes from a relatively small beginning. The mustard seed is the same as the wheat because, like the wheat, it grows not on its own but because of reasons not completely understood even by the most learned farmer: the richness of the earth, the heat of the sun, the work of the animals, and the biological inner workings of the seed. There are three aspects of the Kingdom of Heaven illustrated by these parables: faith, hope, and patience. The last one, patience, is probably the hardest one for us to get, as it rests upon hope and faith. It is also one of the most vital and one of the most reflective of who God is. At the end I will return to why I see a tiny garden in the middle of an abandoned lot may be such a patience filled endeavor towards the kingdom of God.
The farmer in the first parable does a completely unremarkable thing. He sows some seeds. It is a normal task for a large, though decreasing, part of the population. It is something that we take for granted as consumers of agricultural products. The farmer plants the seeds, knowing he is not responsible for yielding the whole product and with the knowledge that there are things that he simply cannot control. This is faith. Faith is to know that ultimately someone or something else is in control of the outcome, or in theological language, is omnipotent. We have a part to play – to plant the seeds. The farmer should plant the seeds well, deeply, with sufficient room to grow and in soil that has been properly rotated, lain fallow for a year perhaps, and is respectful of the many systems around it that sustain it. Still, ultimately, no matter what the farmer does the seeds will grow or not grow. There is something bigger.
Faith is a large burden off of our shoulders. Faith in God means that we believe that God’s plans have already been accomplished through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are not in charge of saving the world. Faith means that, guided well in how to plant our seeds, take care of the land we are given, and graciously care for our plots we are not burdened with the tasks of causing the inner workings of the seed to grow. If we live well, work well and play well we do our parts.
However, as the saying goes, even Satan believes in God. So what makes us so different as Christians? I would suggest that the mustard seed provides us with a pretty great response to that – hope. Hope seems to be a dangerous word these days, especially with so many people losing jobs. What, really do we have to hope in? When we daily see women who feel they cannot purchase milk for home, one quarter of this county in poverty, women and men scouring want ads for work, and violence ravaging many nations across the globe, we have to ask: is hope naïve?
It depends on what kind of hope you are talking about. One type of hope will tell us, given an apparently “bad” situation, that those particular bad things will magically get better. This type of hope tends to offer shallow words of comfort to victims of suffering, to downplay hardship, and to insist that there is some solution in grasp if only we can see it. I like to call this type of hope “optimism.” God is not optimistic, God is sure. God has a different type of hope, a theological hope. This is the hope of sitting with people who are broken hearted even if we cannot do a single thing for them. This is the hope that gives when asked, not knowing what really may come of it. This is the hope that befriends those in poverty if only because Jesus told us that is where he would find them. This hope is the planting of a mustard seed. It is a hope of certainty, a hope that when we act faithfully a shrub will emerge. Not any shrub, either, but a beautiful, lush, sheltering shrub that we, (remember the wheat?), may not know how it will grow. Hope is to not only know that you do not have control over the outcome but to delight in it! The outcome belongs to the most gracious, loving and just being that exists: God. This is good news!
Sadly, however, these words – hope and faith – easily become trite words cross-stitched on pillows and thrown around to shallowly try to assuage pain, justify inflicting undue harm, or suppose that being a Christian is only embodied in donating money to the far off hungry while ignoring how our way of life contributes to this poverty. This is what makes the latter portion of the first parable so important. Faith and hope are, in Jesus’ parables, different foundations of patience. Faith and hope tell us why we must be patient and humbles us into remembering that our plans are not God’s plans. Human success is not God’s success and our rewards are not God’s rewards. Patience is ultimately about trusting God to take charge of what God does best.
In the first parable the farmer waits as stalk, head and grain are produced out of the tiny seed that was planted. This is so important. The wheat, and by association the mustard seed, continues to bloom in different ways. The plant is not harvested immediately, nor is it expected to be harvested immediately. The stalk looks little like that the final grain will be! More so, ultimately, the stalk will be discarded, though it was a necessary part of the plant’s growth. What, in the end may seem extra or unneeded was actually fundamental to the product. What is more important to remember is that God is the harvester. We may not know exactly what the final product will look like or when it will arrive, but we know it will be good. Like the farmer, we are asked to wait in patience before the harvest, tilling and caring for the crops.
A young couple a few years ago felt a call to go do mission work in the Middle East in a place that saw regular armed conflict. The couple was traveling in a convoy when they saw the truck behind them blow up. Searching for their friends they came into a village called Rutba that was inhabited by native people. The doctors nursed and cared for the injured people, free of charge. Full of gratitude the young man asked what they could pay the doctor. “Nothing,” the doctor replied, “just tell people about Rutba.” Overwhelmed, the couple returned to the United States and opened a house of hospitality in a racially divided town in North Carolina, encountering the messiness of reconciliation there. The house, now called Rutba house, houses many without homes, facilitates friendship across racial boundaries, offers two free community meals a week to whomever wishes to come, and helped begin a network of these sorts of places all across the country. The doctor in Rutba planted a mustard seed. He was not trying to create peace between the two sides in the war, and he did not kid himself to think that this action did not meant that more of his friends would not be killed later. More of his friends were probably killed by American soldiers. The doctor never saw, and never expected to see, any reward or fruit of his labor. He never saw the Rutba House. What’s more, the Rutba House may not even be the full fruit.
So hope and faith do not necessarily mean searching for quantifiable results, striving for product or improving standard of living - though these things may be important at some point be a part of what we do. Rather, being faithful may just mean getting to know the people around us who are different from us, using the small seeds we have and rejoicing in what God makes of them. Like the five loaves and two fish, or the mustard seed, what comes of what seems like impossibly small resources used in faith can be miraculous. We tend to speak today of ideas of efficiency, size, the best for the most amount of people. In other words, we presume to predict the future based on what we think we may have observed before. This is what science has taught us. We try to do the best, and “best” is defined by our own ideas of what is good at some finite time in the future.
So it may be difficult to justify spending time with people, being with others without a particular task at hand. We have an inclination to only do things that see immediate results. We want to give five dollars to the girl in the grocery line instead of befriending her to wonder why she is struggling financially. We form committees with those “less fortunate” in order to empower and help them, or send the homeless off to shelters. Rarely do we simply sit with and befriend our neighbors simply because they are our neighbors – it goes against every inclination of efficiency and success that our world runs out. But the church, in the words of Mother Theresa, is not called to be successful, but to be faithful. Success will come at some point as a result of being faithful, but it is not that for which we ought to strive. To choose to be with others instead of doing for them plants mustard seeds that are solely based on strong hope and sure faith. They allow us to witness in the most important way: to live so that, were there not a God, our lives would not make sense at all.
This can be overwhelming still – some people forever question whether or not they are being faithful enough without having some sort of graspable result. But we’re not saving the world, and we don’t have to do it all. We should not want to do it all. God calls us to plant just one mustard seed with the confident hope of the coming kingdom – regularly inviting one man to dinner who lives and eats routinely by himself, befriending a man you often see on the street and later finding he has come to live with you and your wife, or planting a minuscule garden in a seemingly barren and wasted plot of dirt.
This is why I see my roommate’s garden as a pretty good in-breaking of the kingdom. The garden was not planted to feed the entire community, or give teenagers something to do in the afternoon – both very good things – but instead did something beautiful, time consuming and good. He transformed a small part of a dirty lot, in some sense against the rules of the neighborhood association, but with the hope that it would be used for good. He had faith that it would grow something, hope that it would come into something good and is still sitting with the patience of what will come of that tiny garden plot, in a week, a year or ten years. One of our Latino brothers uses the phrase “Paciencia Ardiente,” or “ardent patience. This is an eager patience that realizes our integral and loving part in the kingdom, but a kingdom that is ultimately brought about not through our work but through the infinite love, patience, healing and justice of a relational God. This means planting your garden now and loving the garden, the earth, and the people who surround it instead of holding your own expectations. God is not optimistic, God is sure, and God’s wisdom is not human wisdom.
You may be used to hearing faith and hope used with the word love. Love is supreme, but often misunderstood. God loves us with a love that does not expect specific outcomes, but enjoys imagining fruit of goodness. It endures things that do not make sense, and lives with hope even when hope seems completely undeserved. That is why I leave love out, not because it is unimportant but because if you embody faith the size of a mustard seed, patience that humbly endures while still hoping a hope that refuses to shut off the possibility of good, you may be pretty darn close to love. You may be pretty close to the kingdom of God.
I lived last year in a neighborhood known by people outside of the community, and even by some inside, for its drugs, gangs, poverty, and violence. In fact, the house that we resided in used to be a boarding house – which was a veiled way of talking about a transitory location for those looking for some kind of comfort in drugs, sex, or just a roof over their heads. There is a lot next to our house that is long, skinny and weed covered – the neighborhood association is not sure what to do with it – and it is exactly the kind of lot that you would tell your kids to stay away from and that would necessarily bring down adjacent property value. People used it as a thoroughfare from further back in the neighborhood to the bus stop, and often probably for other sorts of business. Once in a while TROSA would come by and clean the lot, though its general state was weed and trash covered. A friend of ours from the neighborhood buried a dead cat that was found on our sidewalk there. In the process he discovered, or was reminded, that even feet down in the dirt it was filled with broken glass, cigarette butts, old tires, bottles, candy wrappers, and even the occasional appliance. The lot had seen the passing of years, and had a lot of stories to tell from the neighborhood. The lot was a mess.
One of my roommates, probably the most contrarian of them all, decided to build a garden, and to build one right there on that lot that we did not own. He spent a week filtering the dirt through the wires of an abandoned shopping cart, just to make it safe to grow seeds in. The plot was maybe 3 feet by 2 feet and framed by discarded white boards. Old bottles were used to help support the raised bed. Thanks to the labor of our housemate, near the end of spring our house was able to enjoy salad greens that were grown in the polluted dirty lot next to our house. It was an unlikely little ray of hope in the midst of abused and trashed land.
I see what my roommate did with that tiny garden plot as embodying the aspects of the kingdom that Jesus describes in the two parables of our gospel lesson today. In the first parable a farmer scattered seed on the ground. The parable says “he does not know how” the seed grows. However, what I suspect the parable is saying is what the farmer actually does know: that he can do only so much in the growth of the seed. It is the work of the earth, sun and rain to produce and bear the fruit of good wheat. The second parable of the mustard seed is meant to be read right in line with the first. In it a tiny seed, contrary to our notions of relative input and output, produces one of the most lush and helpful plants in the garden. The wheat is not so different for, like the mustard shrub and most other plants, it comes from a relatively small beginning. The mustard seed is the same as the wheat because, like the wheat, it grows not on its own but because of reasons not completely understood even by the most learned farmer: the richness of the earth, the heat of the sun, the work of the animals, and the biological inner workings of the seed. There are three aspects of the Kingdom of Heaven illustrated by these parables: faith, hope, and patience. The last one, patience, is probably the hardest one for us to get, as it rests upon hope and faith. It is also one of the most vital and one of the most reflective of who God is. At the end I will return to why I see a tiny garden in the middle of an abandoned lot may be such a patience filled endeavor towards the kingdom of God.
The farmer in the first parable does a completely unremarkable thing. He sows some seeds. It is a normal task for a large, though decreasing, part of the population. It is something that we take for granted as consumers of agricultural products. The farmer plants the seeds, knowing he is not responsible for yielding the whole product and with the knowledge that there are things that he simply cannot control. This is faith. Faith is to know that ultimately someone or something else is in control of the outcome, or in theological language, is omnipotent. We have a part to play – to plant the seeds. The farmer should plant the seeds well, deeply, with sufficient room to grow and in soil that has been properly rotated, lain fallow for a year perhaps, and is respectful of the many systems around it that sustain it. Still, ultimately, no matter what the farmer does the seeds will grow or not grow. There is something bigger.
Faith is a large burden off of our shoulders. Faith in God means that we believe that God’s plans have already been accomplished through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are not in charge of saving the world. Faith means that, guided well in how to plant our seeds, take care of the land we are given, and graciously care for our plots we are not burdened with the tasks of causing the inner workings of the seed to grow. If we live well, work well and play well we do our parts.
However, as the saying goes, even Satan believes in God. So what makes us so different as Christians? I would suggest that the mustard seed provides us with a pretty great response to that – hope. Hope seems to be a dangerous word these days, especially with so many people losing jobs. What, really do we have to hope in? When we daily see women who feel they cannot purchase milk for home, one quarter of this county in poverty, women and men scouring want ads for work, and violence ravaging many nations across the globe, we have to ask: is hope naïve?
It depends on what kind of hope you are talking about. One type of hope will tell us, given an apparently “bad” situation, that those particular bad things will magically get better. This type of hope tends to offer shallow words of comfort to victims of suffering, to downplay hardship, and to insist that there is some solution in grasp if only we can see it. I like to call this type of hope “optimism.” God is not optimistic, God is sure. God has a different type of hope, a theological hope. This is the hope of sitting with people who are broken hearted even if we cannot do a single thing for them. This is the hope that gives when asked, not knowing what really may come of it. This is the hope that befriends those in poverty if only because Jesus told us that is where he would find them. This hope is the planting of a mustard seed. It is a hope of certainty, a hope that when we act faithfully a shrub will emerge. Not any shrub, either, but a beautiful, lush, sheltering shrub that we, (remember the wheat?), may not know how it will grow. Hope is to not only know that you do not have control over the outcome but to delight in it! The outcome belongs to the most gracious, loving and just being that exists: God. This is good news!
Sadly, however, these words – hope and faith – easily become trite words cross-stitched on pillows and thrown around to shallowly try to assuage pain, justify inflicting undue harm, or suppose that being a Christian is only embodied in donating money to the far off hungry while ignoring how our way of life contributes to this poverty. This is what makes the latter portion of the first parable so important. Faith and hope are, in Jesus’ parables, different foundations of patience. Faith and hope tell us why we must be patient and humbles us into remembering that our plans are not God’s plans. Human success is not God’s success and our rewards are not God’s rewards. Patience is ultimately about trusting God to take charge of what God does best.
In the first parable the farmer waits as stalk, head and grain are produced out of the tiny seed that was planted. This is so important. The wheat, and by association the mustard seed, continues to bloom in different ways. The plant is not harvested immediately, nor is it expected to be harvested immediately. The stalk looks little like that the final grain will be! More so, ultimately, the stalk will be discarded, though it was a necessary part of the plant’s growth. What, in the end may seem extra or unneeded was actually fundamental to the product. What is more important to remember is that God is the harvester. We may not know exactly what the final product will look like or when it will arrive, but we know it will be good. Like the farmer, we are asked to wait in patience before the harvest, tilling and caring for the crops.
A young couple a few years ago felt a call to go do mission work in the Middle East in a place that saw regular armed conflict. The couple was traveling in a convoy when they saw the truck behind them blow up. Searching for their friends they came into a village called Rutba that was inhabited by native people. The doctors nursed and cared for the injured people, free of charge. Full of gratitude the young man asked what they could pay the doctor. “Nothing,” the doctor replied, “just tell people about Rutba.” Overwhelmed, the couple returned to the United States and opened a house of hospitality in a racially divided town in North Carolina, encountering the messiness of reconciliation there. The house, now called Rutba house, houses many without homes, facilitates friendship across racial boundaries, offers two free community meals a week to whomever wishes to come, and helped begin a network of these sorts of places all across the country. The doctor in Rutba planted a mustard seed. He was not trying to create peace between the two sides in the war, and he did not kid himself to think that this action did not meant that more of his friends would not be killed later. More of his friends were probably killed by American soldiers. The doctor never saw, and never expected to see, any reward or fruit of his labor. He never saw the Rutba House. What’s more, the Rutba House may not even be the full fruit.
So hope and faith do not necessarily mean searching for quantifiable results, striving for product or improving standard of living - though these things may be important at some point be a part of what we do. Rather, being faithful may just mean getting to know the people around us who are different from us, using the small seeds we have and rejoicing in what God makes of them. Like the five loaves and two fish, or the mustard seed, what comes of what seems like impossibly small resources used in faith can be miraculous. We tend to speak today of ideas of efficiency, size, the best for the most amount of people. In other words, we presume to predict the future based on what we think we may have observed before. This is what science has taught us. We try to do the best, and “best” is defined by our own ideas of what is good at some finite time in the future.
So it may be difficult to justify spending time with people, being with others without a particular task at hand. We have an inclination to only do things that see immediate results. We want to give five dollars to the girl in the grocery line instead of befriending her to wonder why she is struggling financially. We form committees with those “less fortunate” in order to empower and help them, or send the homeless off to shelters. Rarely do we simply sit with and befriend our neighbors simply because they are our neighbors – it goes against every inclination of efficiency and success that our world runs out. But the church, in the words of Mother Theresa, is not called to be successful, but to be faithful. Success will come at some point as a result of being faithful, but it is not that for which we ought to strive. To choose to be with others instead of doing for them plants mustard seeds that are solely based on strong hope and sure faith. They allow us to witness in the most important way: to live so that, were there not a God, our lives would not make sense at all.
This can be overwhelming still – some people forever question whether or not they are being faithful enough without having some sort of graspable result. But we’re not saving the world, and we don’t have to do it all. We should not want to do it all. God calls us to plant just one mustard seed with the confident hope of the coming kingdom – regularly inviting one man to dinner who lives and eats routinely by himself, befriending a man you often see on the street and later finding he has come to live with you and your wife, or planting a minuscule garden in a seemingly barren and wasted plot of dirt.
This is why I see my roommate’s garden as a pretty good in-breaking of the kingdom. The garden was not planted to feed the entire community, or give teenagers something to do in the afternoon – both very good things – but instead did something beautiful, time consuming and good. He transformed a small part of a dirty lot, in some sense against the rules of the neighborhood association, but with the hope that it would be used for good. He had faith that it would grow something, hope that it would come into something good and is still sitting with the patience of what will come of that tiny garden plot, in a week, a year or ten years. One of our Latino brothers uses the phrase “Paciencia Ardiente,” or “ardent patience. This is an eager patience that realizes our integral and loving part in the kingdom, but a kingdom that is ultimately brought about not through our work but through the infinite love, patience, healing and justice of a relational God. This means planting your garden now and loving the garden, the earth, and the people who surround it instead of holding your own expectations. God is not optimistic, God is sure, and God’s wisdom is not human wisdom.
You may be used to hearing faith and hope used with the word love. Love is supreme, but often misunderstood. God loves us with a love that does not expect specific outcomes, but enjoys imagining fruit of goodness. It endures things that do not make sense, and lives with hope even when hope seems completely undeserved. That is why I leave love out, not because it is unimportant but because if you embody faith the size of a mustard seed, patience that humbly endures while still hoping a hope that refuses to shut off the possibility of good, you may be pretty darn close to love. You may be pretty close to the kingdom of God.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Celebrating Pauli Murray
On Wed., July 1, at 7 PM at St. Titus' Episcopal Church in Durham there will be a service to commemorate the life of The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray.
This will be a service of Holy Eucharist, with Bishop Michael Curry as the celebrant and Sarah Woodard as the deacon. The preacher will be Courtney Reid-Eaton, parishioner of St. Joseph's and Director of Exhibits at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke; she will compile and read selections from the sermons & writings of Pauli Murray.
Courtney testifies: “Pauli Murray has been a significant character in my life over the past few years. She was a Renaissance woman; a courageous person of action, intellect, and spirit, who used her gifts to further social justice and who strove to live as a fully integrated human being. She spoke her truths persistently. I am humbled to be invited to share her words and ideas with our community. Please hold me in your prayers over the next few weeks as I prepare.”
Please join in this celebration!
The following week, the General Convention of The Episcopal Church will consider a proposal to add The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray's feast day to the church calendar. The following biographical sketch was included in that resolution:
The Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray was a leader in the struggle for equal rights for women and African-Americans in the United States and throughout the world. She was also a lawyer, writer, poet, teacher, co-founder of the National Organization for Women, and the first African-American woman to be ordained priest by The Episcopal Church. Dr. Murray grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and on February 7, 1977, celebrated her first Eucharist in the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where her grandmother, Cornelia, had been baptized as a slave child. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Shori celebrated the Holy Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross on February 7, 2007, in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of that ordination.
This will be a service of Holy Eucharist, with Bishop Michael Curry as the celebrant and Sarah Woodard as the deacon. The preacher will be Courtney Reid-Eaton, parishioner of St. Joseph's and Director of Exhibits at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke; she will compile and read selections from the sermons & writings of Pauli Murray.
Courtney testifies: “Pauli Murray has been a significant character in my life over the past few years. She was a Renaissance woman; a courageous person of action, intellect, and spirit, who used her gifts to further social justice and who strove to live as a fully integrated human being. She spoke her truths persistently. I am humbled to be invited to share her words and ideas with our community. Please hold me in your prayers over the next few weeks as I prepare.”
Please join in this celebration!
The following week, the General Convention of The Episcopal Church will consider a proposal to add The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray's feast day to the church calendar. The following biographical sketch was included in that resolution:
The Reverend Dr. Anna Pauline (Pauli) Murray was a leader in the struggle for equal rights for women and African-Americans in the United States and throughout the world. She was also a lawyer, writer, poet, teacher, co-founder of the National Organization for Women, and the first African-American woman to be ordained priest by The Episcopal Church. Dr. Murray grew up in Durham, North Carolina, and on February 7, 1977, celebrated her first Eucharist in the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where her grandmother, Cornelia, had been baptized as a slave child. Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Shori celebrated the Holy Eucharist at the Chapel of the Cross on February 7, 2007, in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of that ordination.
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