Dumbstruck

As some of you know, I’m an only child.  If Ginger were contributing to this reflection, this is where she would add, “And that explains everything.”  It’s worse than that really.  On one side of my family, I’m also an only grandchild.  You can imagine what that meant.  Not only did I have my parents undivided attention, I had two grandparents for whom my wish was their command, particularly at this time of the year.  More about that some other time perhaps.

But for now, the point is more about my son Andrew, who had me beat.  Until his brother Matthew arrived, Andrew was the only grand child on both sides of our family.  This, combined with the fact that both my parents and Ginger’s parents felt like they had waited inordinately long for grandchildren, created the perfect storm of indulgence on Andrew’s first Christmas with us.  (He was still in Korea on his very first Christmas.  Not to worry; it got made up for the next year.)

As has become our custom, Ginger got Andrew his Christmas pajamas.  Best to do the truly humiliating while they can’t resist.  The first year night wear was a red and white striped night shirt with a matching night cap.  Very cute.  Pictures exist, which I plan to use in case of an emergency.

The first Christmas morning arrived, and Andrew toddled out of his room in his nightshirt and cap to see what Santa had brought.  Santa, that year, had been assisted by his four grandparents.  In addition to setting out to completely spoil him, there was no small amount of competition for his affection going on.  Ginger and I, at least, stayed out of the Santa event that year.  We knew there was no need, and so we contented ourselves with the embarrassing pajamas.

As Andrew entered the living room where Santa’s bounty was laid out, he stopped dead in his tracks.  There were toys everywhere.  They were on the floor and under the tree and stacked on the sofa.  So much stuff for one very little guy.  We were somewhat overwhelmed.  He was completely overwhelmed.  He was stunned.  It was just too much.  He was quite literally dumbstruck, unable to utter a sound.

The Christmas story, indeed the entire Gospel, begins in a very similar way, although it is a part of the story we usually forget to tell.  Before the Nativity, before the Annunciation, there is the story of another miraculous birth bringing great joy.  It is the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth.  The first chapter of Luke tells us that “[b]oth of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord.  But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years” (vv. 6-7).

And then Gabriel, the same angel who would shortly announce a second miraculous birth, this time to Mary, appears to Zechariah with some most unexpected good news.  “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayers has been heard.  Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John.  You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord” (vv. 13-15).

The news is completely overwhelming to Zechariah.  He is not inclined to believe it for, as he says, both he and Elizabeth are getting up in years.  And Zechariah, too, is dumbstruck.  Gabriel assures him of the veracity of all that has been said, and adds, “But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur” (v. 20).

The child to be born, of course, was John the Baptist, announcing the coming of the Messiah.  And with that, the story is set in motion.  One miraculous birth after another.  Grace upon grace.  And so it goes on.  It is all just overwhelming.  It leaves us, or maybe it ought to leave us, dumbstruck. There really is just nothing to be said.  It is just too much.

Now, in future years as parents, we learned to give specific instructions to the grandparents as to who bought what.  No more of the competition. We divided things out quite equally. And there was an overall limit.  Never again more than was possible to take in.  No more toddlers paralyzed by how overwhelming it was.

I sometimes wonder, though, if we missed the point.  God does not act in such a limiting way.  It just keeps coming.  The sun every morning.  The stars at night.  In truth, plenty for all of the creation to thrive, if only we would recognize it and stop living in fear of want.  Work to do and take satisfaction in.  People to love.  Dogs (OK, this is my personal prejudice about things to be grateful for, especially since Annie is at the office with me this morning).

And, above all of it, the most overwhelming statement of all.  God’s overwhelming love for creation, and particularly for humanity, in the Incarnation of God’s only Son, Christ our Savior.  It ought to leave us dumbstruck.

I wish you a dumbstruck Christmas this year.  Ginger, Andrew, Matthew, and the dogs, Annie and Abby, wish you such an overwhelming awareness of your belovedness that you are left completely speechless

Peace,

+Stacy

The Christmas Tree Angel

Star or angel?  That was the big question the first year Ginger and I were married as we prepared to celebrate our first Christmas.  With what should the Christmas tree be topped?  My family tradition was an angel; Ginger’s, a star.  The tradition did not run terribly deep on either side.

Growing up, my family’s tree had been topped with an angel.  It had not always been so, though.  The tradition was not inviolable.  After all, the Christmas tree in my earliest memories was aluminum with a color wheel.  Very modern.  Ginger, whose family always had a real tree, albeit the ugliest cedar tree that could be found, was appalled.  And the tradition at my grandparents’ houses differed.  One had a very fancy angel with a gold dress.  I think it lit up.  The other had a homemade star cut from cardboard and covered with aluminum foil.  Perhaps my mother, or aunt, or one of my uncles had made it in childhood.  I never really knew.  I suspect my grandmother was behind it.

Ginger’s family had a star.  It wasn’t a big deal to them, however.  No one can even remember now what it looked like.

That is a good thing.  Because I had my heart set on an angel.  Ginger was perfectly fine with that.  But no cheesy angels.  Nothing aluminum.  Unlighted was preferred.

So off we set that first December of our married lives in search of an angel.  There was not as big a selection in those days as I suspect there would be now.  We went to many stores in search of the perfect angel for the top of our first Christmas tree.  Nothing met the test.

Finally, we went to a little store we knew to have lots of interesting things, many of them imported, off the main street in Charlottesville, where we lived.  There we found a selection of beautiful angels.  I think they had been made in Germany.  That suited Ginger, who had been collecting ornaments from Germany since a trip there before we were married.  They had velvet dresses and hand-crafted faces.  Each had a candle in her hand.  Real wax.  They would do.

There was one problem, which was the price.  I was a student that year and money was definitely an issue.  We didn’t even look at the larger angels.  A smaller one would be fine.  The one we liked was $14.

Now, $14 doesn’t sound like a lot now, but to a student and his new wife in 1979 it was a fortune.  We debated a long time.  We knew we shouldn’t, but we bought it anyway.  Somehow, setting the Christmas traditions for a brand new family seemed like a very important thing to us.  I suppose it was an investment in Christmas.

That first Christmas together, we may not have been able to afford much to go under the tree, but we had a $14 angel with a red velvet dress and a real wax candle, and just as importantly without lights or anything aluminum, to go on top of it.  This year, that angel will be on top of its 33rd tree, which will go up this weekend by tradition.  (Don’t tell the Advent police.)

Christmas has always required an investment, quite often a very heavy one.  Mary and Joseph made a massive investment in the first Christmas.  Luke tells us that they left their home in Nazareth and traveled to Joseph’s ancestral home many miles away at a time when Mary was about to deliver her child.  It was an extravagant investment.

The angels announced the birth to the shepherds.  Though they were afraid, they left and went to see the child.  Extravagant investment.

The Magi set out from some distant place in the East in search of the child born to be king of the Jews.  They brought expensive gifts—gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  They would have made the $14 angels look, justifiably, like nothing.  Extravagant investment.

What I suspect is that making the investment itself made a great difference to the importance of that first Christmas to Mary and Joseph, to the shepherds, and to the Magi.  The $14 investment in the angel has obviously meant a great deal to Ginger and me.  The level of investment we make in something, including Christmas, always determines a great deal of what it will mean to us.  The more extravagant, the more it means.

Christmas now rolls around again.  What it will mean to us depends a great deal on the investment we decide to make.  It always has and it always will.  I think I’m of the opinion that an extravagant investment is well worth it.

As the days leading up to Christmas begin to pass us by, I’m hoping for extravagant investment of myself, something much more important than $14.  My wish for you is the same.

Peace,

+Stacy

(Alas, there is no picture of the actual $14 angel, so we'll have to make do with pictures of other tree-topper angels.)

The Griffin Christmas Parade

My wife Ginger and my older son Andrew were here for the holiday. He and I went to see the balloons blown up around the Museum of Natural History on Wednesday night. We staked out a pretty good spot to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade along 7th Avenue. It was actually our second time. The last one was 24 years ago. Andrew was four. I carried him on my back with his little brother, then six months old, strapped to my chest in a snuggly. It was my senior year at General Seminary.

           

The next year found us in Griffin, Georgia, which I like to describe as 40 miles and a hundred years south of Atlanta.  It was the smallest place I have ever lived.  And it was quite an adjustment from living in Manhattan.

           

However, Griffin, like New York, had its parade.  Griffin’s parade was not on Thanksgiving Day, but like the Macy’s event, it ushered in the holiday season, and it occurred during the first week in December.  Of course, Ginger and I took our boys.

It wasn’t as hard to find a place to watch.  There was no crowd.  There were no celebrities except for local politicians.  There were flatbed trucks, lots of them, decorated with crepe paper carrying one group or another throwing Christmas candy to the children. The junior cheerleaders marched.  There might have been a horse or two.  There was a fire truck.  The high school band played Christmas carols.  And, like the Macy’s Parade, Santa Claus came last. 

           

After Santa’s appearance, we got ready to go home.  Andrew wasn’t ready to leave.  I noticed he was looking up into the sky.  He was filled with hope.  “When do the balloons come?” he asked.   Andrew’s only experience of parades prior to Griffin was the Thanksgiving Parade in New York.  He had high expectations. 

           

To my surprise he accepted quite readily that there were no balloons in the Griffin Christmas Parade.  He accepted reality for what it was.  But it didn’t stop him from hoping.  One thing reality does not control is hope.

           

Advent is a season to hope.  It is not a season of shopping, Black Friday and Cyber Monday notwithstanding.  It is not a season of getting, or even giving.  It is a season of hoping, hoping in God, in God’s dream for us, in humanity’s basic goodness.  It is the season of hope, not for what might be under the tree, but that God’s dream will be made actual and real by our participation in it. 

           

It took 24 years, but Andrew saw the balloons again.  There were some he might have seen last time as well as some new ones.  As I discovered this weekend, Andrew doesn’t remember any of those two parades so long ago.  I don’t really care about that.  What I do care about is that his character be shaped by hoping.  That is what matters.  Hope.

Hoping is enough, I believe, to make things real enough.  “Endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us”  (Rom 5:4-5).   

           

Advent is intended to remind us of that.

Peace, 

+Stacy

The Foundation is Apostolic

We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. That is what we proclaim. Every Sunday. We place our faith in a Church that has four essential characteristics. It is one. It is holy. It is catholic. And it is apostolic. There is no stated hierarchy of those four qualities. Each is, at least, grammatically equal.

My experience as a pastor, though, is that apostolicity is the foundation of the others. It is the basis of the Church’s unity, its sanctity, and its universality. The reason is that of those four qualities, apostolicity is the one that necessarily requires us to turn outward. Without it, unity can be mistaken for isolation. Holiness can be mistaken for introspection. Catholicity can be mistaken for the exertion of power. Turning outward, it seems to me, is the essential quality for spiritual health, being outwardly oriented. The foundation is apostolic.

Apostolic is derived from a Greek word that means sent. The apostles were people who were sent out. Being an apostle wasn’t about their status, not even being one of the twelve. Paul, after all, was not one of the twelve but was most certainly an apostle. And what made him one? It was being sent out. Being sent is what all of the apostles share in common. They were all people who were sent out. See, e.g., . Lk. 10, Mt. 28:16ff., and Acts 1:8.

Being sent has a way of bringing people together despite differences of opinion. Being sent has a way of helping us reexamine what we thought were the orthodox absolutes in the light of lovingly meeting the real needs of real people. That is, after all, what someone no less orthodox than Paul found when he set out to meet the Gentiles where they were and how they were (Gal. 5:6). It was the same with Peter, who was sent to the home of Cornelius the centurion and found that what he had thought about what foods were clean and unclean no longer had the same importance it once did in light of the mission on which he was sent (Acts 10:28).

It is true now, too. Along the way I had an idea to use our diocesan camp to address a serious problem in our part of the country with literacy. We started a program called Reading Camp. The idea was to make a strategic intervention in the lives of third and fourth graders who were seriously behind in learning to read because children who cannot read proficiently by the fourth grade usually end up getting further and further behind until they are left behind altogether.

Reading Camp has proven to be extremely successful. What began as one camp serving 25 students in 2002 has now spread to several other dioceses and 15 or more camps serving several hundred children each summer. There are even camps in three African countries—South Africa, Liberia, and Cameroon. Kenya will soon follow, I hope. Reading Camp has become the epitome of what it means to be sent.

Here’s the point. Part of the miracle of Reading Camp is how the reality of being sent and turning outward overcame what seemed like a pretty significant theological divide. When I first proposed the idea, the two people who happened to respond (and it is difficult for me not to see God involved in this) came from opposite ends of the theological spectrum, about as far away from one another as one can get. This made me nervous, I will admit, but I trusted it. That turned out to be a very good thing. These two people gathered a committee and set to work to make Reading Camp a reality. They steadfastly refused to let the decisions of General Convention come between them despite considerable pressure to. Their work has made a huge difference in the lives of many children. And in their own. And in mine.

Now, to be sure, theology was not part of the work of Reading Camp so theological differences were not likely to surface. In fact, in order to work with the public schools, there was no religious teaching with the students involved (prayer and worship were very much a part of the experience for the volunteers, though). There was much more to this reality, I think, than the fact that the occasion for disagreement was just avoided.

I think it had to do with an ancient truth we see at work in the lives of Peter and Paul. Apostolicity, being sent, overcomes a lot of difference, and serving trumps division. Could it be, I wonder, that it is because being sent gives everyone, no matter what they may think or perhaps in spite of what they may think, a chance to meet Jesus on the same ground? After all, that matters more than anything.

Peace,

+ Stacy

Video: Where Is Your Place In Mission

Everyone, Everywhere 2011 Closing Sermon, October 16, 2011

Connecting the Separated

For several years now I have been greatly blessed to be associated with a mission project in Japan tracing its origins to The Episcopal Church’s fundamental identity as the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.  It was founded by a missionary from Kentucky, Paul Rusch.  Rusch first went to Japan answering God’s call to help rebuild YMCAs following the great Yokohama Earthquake of 1923.  He stayed to teach at the Anglican University in Tokyo and eventually turned his attention to the needs of the rural poor in the Japanese highlands in 1938 when he founded the Kiyosato Educational Experiment Project (KEEP).  Not long after he began that work, he was arrested, imprisoned, and deported at the beginning of the war, but he returned following it to take up his not only his work, but his life among the Japanese people. 

Today KEEP maintains Rusch’s vision and operates an experimental farm, an international conference center, and one of the most well-known environmental education programs in Japan in addition to a nursery school and an Anglican parish.  It has spread Rusch’s ideals to isolated parts of the Philippines, Bangladesh, and Tanzania, among other places.  It continues to do what Rusch started it to do, which is to “connect the separated.” 

A lot of good gets done by KEEP, but what continues to draw me to it and inspire me about it is Rusch’s vision of connecting the separated.  It was what Rusch devoted his life to, connecting the separated in a world where the chasm that separated Japanese and Americans at the time must have seemed insurmountable.  Yet, Rusch kept at it.  And he invested himself in it.  People in Kiyosato speak of him with obvious affection.  It is because, I think, Rusch did much more than do good.  He built relationships.  On my recent trip there to attend a board meeting of the American Committee for KEEP, I once again heard people speak personally about Rusch.  “He was my godfather.”  “He asked me to help rebuild KEEP after the war.”  “My father worked with him closely.”  “He introduced the church to my mother, and that’s why I’m a Christian.” 

He raised a lot of money for a lot of projects, too.  He was responsible for a lot of good, particularly in agricultural advances and healthcare.  He was a pioneer of what we know as sustainable community development.  He left behind a program that is completely operated by the Japanese.  But that, in the end, is not what really mattered, I believe, and it is certainly not how he is remembered by those who knew him best.  I never once heard anyone say, “Paul Rusch built this” or “Paul Rusch built that.”  The measure of Paul Rusch’s life is in the relationships he built, the fact that he lived out a life of connecting the separated.

The truth is, I believe, the world will not be permanently changed into God’s vision for it by any amount of doing good.  It will be changed only by building relationships in the process of doing good.  Transformation is accomplished relationally and, I am convinced, only relationally.  That is how unity overcomes estrangement, joy conquers despair, and the whole creation is ultimately reconciled with God.  It seems to me to be the essence of faith.  Faith, after all, is inherently relational, much more about relationships I engage than opinions I happen to have. 

That is why we Episcopalians, each one of us, also members of something the called the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, which is both our official corporate name and also a fundamental statement about our identity.  The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society exists to engage Episcopalians in mission, at home (wherever that may be in the 16 countries that are part of our Church) and abroad.  The staff of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society is entirely devoted to fulfilling that goal and helping our Church be what it was intended to be, fully missional and authentically apostolic (which means, of course, “sent”).  It is only in that that we are truly who we are, not only Episcopalians but disciples of Jesus. We are all about becoming, in the truest sense, a Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society.

Meeting Jesus in Mission

At first, the Gospel passage for today does not appear to have much to say about mission.  It appears to be about Jesus being a smart aleck, which is no doubt exactly how the Pharisees and Herodians saw his clever way of avoiding their question.  But everything has a context. 

The context for this passage is that just prior to this question about paying taxes to the emperor, Jesus had been talking about, you guessed it, mission.  He was telling one of my favorite parables, the one about the king who gave the wedding banquet but none of the invited guests would come.  The king’s creative response, after a burst of anger at those who had neglected the invitation, is to send his servants out into the streets to invite anyone they can find, as Matthew says, both good and bad, so that the hall could be filled with guests.  The context for this encounter about paying taxes is about going out into the streets and inviting everyone, good and bad, to enter the king’s banquet.  It is about inclusion of everyone.  It is about mission.

Now conversations about mission, especially ones that start with including people in the king’s banquet indiscriminately, do not necessarily make everyone comfortable.  I once had a parishioner in my former diocese, frustrated with my understanding on this point, who said to me that if the kingdom of God was as inclusive as I said it was, who would want to be a part of it.  Of course, it wasn’t I saying how inclusive it was.  Monica Vega  spoke yesterday morning about how central to mission it was that people be led out, even forced out, of their comfort zones.  That is, in many ways, the whole point of mission - to force us out of our comfort zone into a transformational experience. But that is not something everyone is always thrilled to sign up for.

Jesus was talking about mission, about including anyone who will come, the best people and the not-so-best people, and being more than a little critical of those who had failed to do so.  Sure enough, someone tried to change the subject.  That happens a lot when you try to direct the conversation to mission.  Someone will try to change the subject.  There’s something about mission that makes people quite uncomfortable, as transformation, which is just another word for change, often does.  You can see the scene.  When Jesus encounters the Pharisees, Jesus is talking about mission, about those on the margins being invited into the banquet and one of the Pharisee raises his hand.  “Oh, Jesus, Jesus.  Let’s talk about something that really matters.  Taxes.  Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

Fortunately Jesus had learned a very important lesson in life which I commend to you, which is this.  Just because someone asks you a question doesn’t mean you have to answer it.  And that is how Jesus dealt with the sabotage of the Pharisees with a question of his own.  He showed them a denarius and said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’  They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’  Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’”  And with this Jesus was back in control of his own agenda, and that agenda is mission.  It is always mission.  Here’s why.

If coins bear the emperor’s head and title and are the emperor’s, what then is God’s?  If coins that bear the emperor’s image are the emperor’s, what then bears God’s image and is therefore God’s?  We do.  Human beings do.  Theologians call it the imago Dei. It is one of the most basic principles of the Bible, coming as it does, in the very first chapter of the very first book.  Humankind is made in the image of God.  In exactly the same way that a coin bearing the emperor’s likeness belongs to the emperor, human beings belong to God because they bear God’s likeness.  In exactly the same way that a coin or a statue represents the emperor, we human beings represent God.

Jesus asks a very important question, not about ancient Roman coins, but about us.  Whose image do we bear?  Is it the emperor’s?  Or is it God’s?  And if it is the latter, that we bear the image of God, is it not the case that the image of God necessarily implies the imitation of God, that the imago Dei necessarily calls forth the imitatio Dei, that being the representative of God necessarily means acting on behalf of God?  And if that is the case, we have found what our mission is.  It is God’s mission.  It is simply to be ourselves, who we were created to be, God’s image, God’s beloved, God’s partners.  We exist to be the people of God’s mission.  It is simply who we are.

So this is an important question for us.  Whose image do we bear?  Whose are we?  To whom do we belong?  The answer has to do with being who we are.  For the wellbeing of our souls, which is another way of saying for the sake of our very identities, we must pay attention to this question and to what this question means.  What is God’s?  Who is God’s?  And what does that mean for us?

That is why mission is not about something we do.  It is about who we are.  It is not about doing good.  It is about following Jesus.  It is about following Jesus where he went and to whom he went and for the reason he went.  It is about doing that for this simple reason, to be with Jesus.  And if we want to be with Jesus, where he told us we would find him is with the poor.  If we want to be with Jesus, where he told us we would find him is with the hungry.  If we want to be with Jesus, where he told us we would find him is with the sick.  If we want to be with Jesus, where he told us we would find him is with the oppressed, the marginalized, the outcasts, the sinners.  It simply comes down to being who we are, followers of Jesus.  Nothing more than that.  Nothing less than that. 

God is eternally oriented to the other.  God has oriented Godself toward the creation from the first moment of time.  And God has affirmed that orientation in Christ, always outward, which is what the word apostolic means, to be sent out.  It is that outward orientation God invites us to take up because, it turns out, it is the very source of God’s own life, which God offers to share with us.  Thus mission is about reaching out to others, not to do something for them, but in order to be who we are, to be true to who were made to be, God’s very image.  If something gets done that is a good thing, but it is the means to building a missional relationship and not the end of it, and that sort of relationship cannot be without understanding that the really good thing we are seeking, to be with Jesus, is for ourselves.      

The point is to meet Jesus.  The point of it all is to be transformed by Jesus.  That is mission, to be transformed by Jesus, transformed by Jesus in the person of the poor, the sick, and the oppressed.  All the good done in the world will, in time, just pass away without the foundational reality that our mission is to be transformed by Jesus.  So give, therefore, to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s and to God the things that are God’s.  You. 

The Rt. Rev. Stacy F. Sauls
Chief Operating Officer, The Episcopal Church
Sermon: October 16, 2011, Everyone Everywhere Mission Conference 2011
Estes Park, Colorado