Christmas Magic

We like to think of Christmas as a magical time of the year.  That is particularly true for those of us in New York, where the season leading up to Christmas takes on a seemingly magical atmosphere.  It feels like winter.  There are ice skaters at Rockefeller Center, Central Park, and Bryant Park.  The store windows along Fifth Avenue tell stories of elves and reindeer.  Lighted trumpeting angels line the streets.  All we need is a little snow.  It is easy to fall into the magic, and who wouldn’t want to?

Among the things stolen from us last week was Christmas magic.  Nothing seems magical in a world where a disturbed young man could enter a school and shoot 26 people including 20 first graders reveling, no doubt, in the magic of the season of anticipation, and erasing visions of sugar plums with brutal permanence.  I have read that residents of Newtown, Connecticut have been taking down the so recently unveiled Christmas decorations.  Christmas has become difficult to bear.  The magic has gone out of the air.

In truth, though, Christmas has never been all that magical, even from the beginning.  We tend to overlook that the holy birth occurred in Bethlehem because of an act of oppression, and the threat of violence, when a man and woman were forced to travel from Nazareth to their ancestral home by the decree of an occupying army in the final days of the young woman’s pregnancy. 

And, although we tend to be only vaguely aware of it, the massacre of innocents, not at all unlike the one we experienced on Friday, is woven inextricably into the story.  Only three days after Christmas Day, on December 28, the Church’s calendar remembers the other children of Bethlehem, the ones left behind when Joseph fled with Mary and Jesus to Egypt for safety following an angelic warning, the ones slaughtered by King Herod in a fearful rage.

There is really nothing at all magical about Christmas or the birth of Christ.  No matter how much we might like to make it so, it has never been.  Though we may rarely come to terms with it as somehow we must this year, the Christmas story begins and ends in violence shockingly similar to that at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

We should not be surprised.  We should not be surprised that the incarnation of good, of which the innocence of all children reminds us, is not received either warmly or passively by the presence of evil.  Sometimes that evil finds its expression in armies of violence, sometimes in greed and fear and power, and sometimes in clouds of darkness that overtake and consume those among us most vulnerable to delusion left to their own devices by a society deaf to the needs of the mentally ill.

No, there is nothing magic about Christmas at all.  That is good.  Magic too easily lets us off the hook for the role we are called to play in the story, the story of goodness being birthed in the world, the story of light that the darkness would overcome, the story of innocence confronted by evil, the story of Christ.

The world is not magic, and Christmas has no special exemption from that.  Every single day, eight children in America are killed by gun violence.  That’s 56 children every week, almost three times the number of children killed at Sandy Hook.  Every single week, 75 adults in America are killed by gun violence, over 12 times as many as at Sandy Hook.  Half a world away, in Afghanistan, 10 little girls were killed yesterday by an explosion while gathering firewood, possibly the result of a new bomb or a decades-old landmine forgotten and left behind, now just part of the landscape in this troubled part of the world.  It is everywhere.  Why on earth would we ever think there was a Christmas vacation from violence and death?  There is no magic.  There never has been. 

No, there is no magic.  What there is is an age-old struggle with evil that comes in many forms.  Christmas comes into play, not because it represents even a temporary respite from reality, but because the birth of incarnate love lays bare the reality that it is the evil that does not belong here.  The birth of incarnate love lays bare that the slaughter of innocents in whatever form, child or adult, finds no place, no home, no tolerance, no business as usual in the world of which God dreams. 

And, once we are robbed of the magic of Christmas, we begin, maybe, to grasp its reality.  The reality is that the birth of the Christ child does not cast a magical spell rendering the presence of evil ineffectual.  It does not relieve humankind of the reality of the world we have made of the creation.  Rather, it invites us to participate in its redemption.  The birth of the Christ child is not a tool for us to use, like sorcerer’s apprentices, magically relieving us from doing the hard work that needs to be done.  It is a call to action.

The grace of the death of magic this Christmas may be that it has starkly called us to wake up and look around us, and to take part in the work begun when a babe was laid in a manger by its holy mother on a probably not-so-peaceful night many, many years ago.  We can disabuse ourselves of any notion that magic is going to save us, even at Christmas, and this year especially at Christmas.  What is going to save us is entering into the life of that infant, the Holiest of Innocents, the Christ. 

And, as we do, we can find a joy based on what is real surpasses even magic.  Our true joy is the assurance that in this particular child, Jesus, God has entered the world in a profoundly real, not magical, way.  And that in this particular child, light has come into the world and the darkness did not, and will not, overcome it. 

I wish you all a joyous, but not remotely magical, Christmas.  May your joy be as real as the light, as real as the goodness, as real as the Christ.

Peace,

+Stacy

Magic Words

I learned growing up that there were certain “magic words,” by which my mother did not mean hocus pocus.  She meant please and thank you.  To say please and thank you was the foundation of all manners.  And in Southern homes, knowing your manners was valued just about above all else.

And, as every Southerner also knows, they do not necessarily convey anything remotely sincere.  Manners are matters of formality.  They are social conventions that do not necessarily carry a very deep meaning. 

Somewhere along the line I picked up some other magic words, things you say to be polite that do not necessarily carry much meaning.  One of them was “how do you do,” which is the polite thing to say when introduced to someone for the first time.  There is no sincerity involved, of course.  I wouldn’t know what to do if someone actually answered.  It’s just something you say.  Somewhere along the way, I came to understand “I’m sorry” the same way, as just something you say, without really meaning very much at all.

Now, of course, sometimes I really mean I’m sorry when I say it.  At least sort of.  I do not mean to hurt others, and when I say I’m sorry, I’m really saying I regret that someone was damaged by my actions or that someone’s feelings were hurt.  And I actually mean that.  But if that is as far as my “I’m sorry” goes, it really isn’t good for too much.

“I’m sorry” doesn’t really mean very much unless it also means, “and I intend not to do it again.”  That comes closer to what we mean by repentance.  To repent requires a very high degree of sincerity that “I’m sorry” does not necessarily carry with it.

Any “I’m sorry” that matters involves more than mere regret and goes beyond intention.  It must also involve behavior.  In the words of the gospel for the Third Sunday of Advent, it must involve repentance. And repentance means bearing fruit worthy of repentance.  Any “I’m sorry” that matters involves behaving as if you really are. 

John the Baptist, who like Jesus preached a lot about repenting, doesn’t spend any time at all on how anyone feels.  He is preoccupied entirely with changing behavior.  “Bear fruits worthy of repentance.”  (Lk. 3:8)  And he has an urgency to his message.  Anyone who doesn’t bear such fruit isn’t worth saving.  “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  (v. 8) 

And he goes on to speak of what it means to be sorry, to repent.  He isn’t much interested in hearing tax collectors say they’re sorry.  Sorry only relates to the past, and no one can do anything about the past.  Being sincerely sorry has to do with behavior in the future.  To the tax collectors he says, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.”  (v. 13)

John isn’t much interested in hearing the soldiers apologize.  Apologies relate to the past, and it is impossible to change the past.  The issue is about behavior moving forward.  “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusations, and be satisfied with your wages.”  (v. 14)  He really doesn’t care whether they feel sorry or not, only that they do something about it.

And, of course, there are the crowds.  They are not tax collectors or soldiers, which were groups with particularly bad reputations.  The crowds are just regular folks, regular folks like us.  What is the fruit we should bear?  It is sharing.  “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.”  (v. 11)  John, I daresay, isn’t much interested in hearing confessions about what has been done.  He is interested in behaving differently.  Otherwise, we aren’t much worth saving.

Otherwise, all the “I’m sorries” in the world aren’t worth much at all.  I’m sorry, after all, are not magic words.  They actually mean something.  Or are supposed to.

Peace,
+Stacy

Bulldozers for Jesus

The ministry of John the Baptist, according to Luke, is explained by the prophet Isaiah.  We know the words from the soaring melodies of Handel’s Messiah and the resonance of a beautiful tenor voice.  “Every val-al-ley shall be ex-al-al-ted.”  The majesty of Handel’s music and the grandeur of the poetry of the King James Version obscure the reality that Isaiah is talking about road construction.  Only Handel could make road construction spiritually uplifting.  And Isaiah.

Isaiah foretells the coming of the Lord, the saving intervention of God in the world.  It is a grand idea to be sure.  Isaiah’s metaphor is about building a highway for a king’s journey.  The exalted valleys refer to filling in the low spots on a mountain road to make the passage level.  Likewise, the lowering of the mountains is about taking the tops off of hills to make the road less steep.  The twists and turns are to be straightened out.  The rough parts must be smoothed out.  The potholes must be filled.  The asphalt must be applied. 

More recent translations make this a little easier to see.  “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.  Every valley shall be filled.”  (Lk. 3:4)  We’re talking about dump trucks and serious earthworks.  Whatever the text says, though, I suspect we tend to hear Handel.  What we should hear is bulldozers. 

Isaiah is calling to mind the effort made for a royal visit in a day when travel was not by airplane but by painstakingly constructed roads.  He’s talking about thousands of people, slaves perhaps, toiling in the hot Middle Eastern sun with ancient tools to move dirt, nothing more.  There isn’t very much grand about it, any more than road crews in orange vests putting down a layer of asphalt on a baking hot summer day.

This, though, is how the kingdom of God comes in.  This is how we prepare for the coming of the Lord.  This is how we get ready for Jesus.  With bulldozers. 

John the Baptist is God’s bulldozer. And God’s bulldozer is encouraging the people who heard him to be bulldozers, too.  We have a role to play in the coming of the Lord.  Hastening the coming of God, of God in Jesus, requires effort, effort like a mighty bulldozer. 

John described that work as repentance.  What he meant was taking a bulldozer to the human heart.  That’s a pretty big effort. 

Why would we want to do that?  What makes us want to hasten the coming of the Lord?  It is this promise Isaiah foretold:  “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.” 

Rev up the bulldozers.  Jesus is coming!

Peace,

+Stacy

Paying Attention

Jesus told his disciples a parable:  “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near.

So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”  (Lk. 21:29-31)  The signs, Jesus said, will be there for us to know that God is coming near.  But you have to be paying attention.

Now, Jesus pointed to signs in the natural world.  He used a fig tree in the parable.  Just before that he had been talking about other natural phenomenon, some of a dramatic nature, sun and moon and stars and sea and waves.  We know something about the dramatic forces of nature as of late.  And, sure enough, whenever there is some horrendous force of nature that wreaks havoc on us, we begin to ask ourselves about signs.  What is God trying to tell us? 

I wonder, though, if the natural phenomena don’t distract us from the signs we ought to be paying attention to, no less apparent to those watching, but tending to be overlooked because we cannot so easily attribute them directly to the hand of God.  For those who are paying attention, though, they seem to be screaming out for attention.  They seem to cry out:  “Pay attention!  Watch!  Listen up!”  When such things take place, surely the reign of God must be about to break in.

I’m thinking about things like economic signs.  Corporate greed results in the near-collapse of the world economy.  The rest of us are held hostage and have no choice but to bail the whole system out or suffer the consequences of someone else’s greed even worse.  Something is terribly wrong with the signs, as the Occupy movement has tried to tell us.  Are we paying attention? 

The middle class lifestyle I grew up taking for granted is becoming harder and harder to maintain, almost impossible, without all the adults in a household working outside the home.  Does anyone notice that, all the gadgets in the world notwithstanding, life is getting harder and not easier to say nothing of the fact that it’s not getting better?  Something is terribly wrong with the signs.  Are we paying attention?

One of the first things we decide we can no longer afford is beauty.  The arts suffer.  Architecture becomes more utilitarian and less a source of wonder.  Can you imagine someone proposing to build something like Grand Central Station with its magnificent ceiling or the Chrysler Building today?  No one would put up with that sort of expense for a train station or an office building for a minute.  Things that touch on what it is to be truly human and that introduce that humanity to the rumbling of great machines or the conduct of commerce are the first to go leaving nothing to counterbalance them.  Is anyone paying attention?

In order to keep our country from falling off the fiscal cliff, we are all held hostage to what is emerging as a “compromise,” which means the trading of a greater contribution from the wealthiest toward the common good from which they so richly benefit in exchange for taking something away from the poorest of all.  Is anyone noticing that there is something wrong with this?  Is anyone reading the signs?

And then, of course, there actually are the sea and waves and wind.  Acts of God are one thing, but acts of God helped along by human degradation of the creation are another.  There are those urging us to pay no attention to these signs.  Will we?

The signs are all around us.  Signs these days, if they ever did, may not come right up and slap us in the face.  They take, and always have, paying attention.  That is what Jesus is saying to the disciples in this lesson for the first Sunday of Advent.  Pay attention!

And why pay attention?  Because God is coming.  This situation is going to be set right.  What I have no doubt of is that God does not will the way things are.  The way things are is God’s call to action—God’s action and ours in concert.  The promises of God will be fulfilled. 

We are reminded of that in this week’s reading from Jeremiah.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.  In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.  In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: “The Lord is our righteousness.”  (Jeremiah 33:14-16)If you’re paying attention, you’re going to see it happen.  If you’re paying attention, you’re seeing it happen now.  If you’re paying attention, you have an opportunity to be a part of it.  

Peace,
+ Stacy

(This week’s reflection is based on the readings for the First Sunday of Advent, Year C.)

Thanksgiving

This reflection on Thanksgiving began in an entirely different, and darker, direction.  What I had on my mind was what it meant to be thankful in a world as deeply troubled as ours is and in which blessings seem so unevenly distributed.  It was with that theme in mind that I boarded the subway this morning, not terribly happy to be going to work (which, believe it or not, is unusual for me) and dreading the commute on this cold morning.  It didn’t make me feel any better when I just missed a B train and had to wait a long time on the next one.

When my train did come, however, I noticed my mood start to lift.  The subways are not generally thought of as having a positive effect on one’s outlook on life.  Perhaps that is because we’re not paying attention.

Across from me were a young boy, perhaps 7, and his grandmother.  They were completely caught up in each other.  She was telling him a story while holding his hand and stroking his hair from time to time.  The words were Chinese, but I could tell the basic plot line.  The boy’s brow would crinkle in puzzlement.  Then his eyes would grow wide with surprise.  When the grandmother would imitate a mouse chewing on his hand, he would laugh and his eyes would nearly close.  It made me smile.  Thanksgiving.

A young mother and her baby in a stroller got on and sat opposite the boy and his grandmother.  The baby was perhaps 6 months old.  Very cute.  He mostly watched his mother, and she never took her adoring eyes off him.  Occasionally he would glance at other faces, once at mine.  When he started to make a sound, the young mother, perhaps out of concern for the other passengers, reached for the pacifier.  I admit I was a tad disappointed as the sound was sort of a cross between a gurgle and a coo.  When she placed the pacifier in his mouth, she shot him a peace sign.  That made me smile, too.  Thanksgiving.

On weekday mornings in the tunnel where I change trains there is a man playing the accordion.  He plays well, even if he does have a limited repertoire.  He makes me smile.  Thanksgiving. 

It all made me think back and remember how my morning had actually begun, which is how it does every day.  It is so regular that it is far too easy to take it for granted.  I remembered walking out of the apartment, which I never do without Ginger reminding me that she loves me.  This morning was no exception. And Annie wags her tail.  More smiles.  More thanks.

Then there is the man who hands out newspapers at the entrance to the station on 42nd Street.  He always greets me with a big, wide smile, “Good morning, Pastor.”  This morning I intended to greet him first by wishing him a happy Thanksgiving.  He beat me to it.  Then he followed me half-way to the street insisting that I give his own Thanksgiving greetings to my family.  “Have a blessed day,” he concluded.  “And a safe one.”  It made me smile.  Thanksgiving. 

By this point I was seeing things differently.  What had seemed a cold day now seemed fresh and crisp.  I could feel the energy of New York City.  Thanksgiving.

And at the end of the trip came yet another blessing—being able to walk into the Church Center and engage the tasks to which God has set me, tasks that challenge and delight me.  It made me smile again.  Thanksgiving.

I realize the problem with my first approach to reflecting on Thanksgiving is that I wasn’t really seeing what was really around me.  Perhaps it is a problem of working at this level of the Church that it may be too easy to be distracted by the big picture and miss the small ones.  Or maybe I just wasn’t really looking at all.   So now I can be thankful that God opened my eyes this morning to see what is always there. 

It makes me smile.  And it makes me thankful. 

Peace,
+Stacy

All Saints Day 2012

There is a lot to try and make sense of over these last few days.  Few of us can believe the pictures we see on television.  A great many of us realize we narrowly escaped something truly horrible.  I hope you might let me take the liberty of telling you about my day on Wednesday, which has provided a very helpful lens for me to look on what Hurricane Sandy means to me. 

I emerged into the post-Sandy reality of Wednesday morning with more than a little trepidation.  I feared what damage I might find.  I feared what losses my friends and colleagues might have sustained.  I feared news I had not yet (and never did) receive about those with whom I work. 

I also feared what I knew would be hassle getting to and from the office with no subways and only limited bus service.  The uneventful trip to 815 (two uncrowded buses with little traffic on the street) lulled me into complacency.  Getting home was a dose of reality.

               

I left the office at 6:00 and headed to Grand Central.  I was under the misimpression that some limited train service was restored due to an erroneous communication from the city.  Apparently not on the East Side I thought, but I was not disheartened.

               

So I walked up to Madison Avenue.  I’ll take the bus I thought.  It came right away.  Packed.  Not a problem.  But the traffic was absolutely gridlocked.  In 30 minutes I had gone three blocks.  I decided the West Side had to be better.  Actually, as I thought about it, it was the 8^th Avenue subway I had been told was running, so I decided to walk up to 50^th Street and then across town.  I did.  The station was closed due to severe weather the sign said. 

               

So I started walking.  Surely Columbus Circle would be functioning.  I walked by the crane dangling above 57^th Street.  Now I can say I saw it. 

               

Columbus Circle, however, was also closed.  I began to get skeptical about the train.  Buses didn’t appear such a good option there, either.  Columbus Circles was perhaps the worst traffic mess I’ve ever seen in my life. 

               

I got to Lincoln Center.  Still no subway.  I gave up on that.  It turns out I’d misunderstood that things had reopened.  I opted for the bus up Broadway.  A few came.  Impossible to get on.  Walking seemed the best option.

               

At 72^nd Street with its forlorn, closed subway station in the middle of Broadway, I waited on the bus up Amsterdam.  Still, no luck.  However, this is where circumstances began to be illuminated by my neighbors. 

               

I heard the couple behind me talking.  “Is he a real one?”

“No, it’s a costume.  This is Halloween.”
               

“Uh-uh.  He’s real.”  I realized they were talking about me.  I once had a similar experience at a Purim festival at the synagogue down the street from my church in Atlanta where I received numerous compliments on the ingenuity of my costume when I stopped in one Sunday afternoon after church. 

               

“Nope, I’m real,” I said. 

               

“I told you,” one said to the other.  At that point they both felt compelled to tell me where they went to church, which I could tell was not frequently.  The conversation proceeded through a collection of religious clichés.  Finally, a bus came.  It was packed beyond belief.

               

“Go ahead, Father,” they said as they tried to make room for me to board the bus. 

               

“No, thanks.  I’ll wait for the next one.”  Forty more blocks of that conversation on a severely overcrowded bus sounded like a donkey ride through hell.  I passed.

               

Several more packed buses came.  It was now 8:00.  I was tired and hungry.  I decided to go into a restaurant behind the bus stop, have dinner, and try again after things had, I hoped, cleared up a bit. 

               

Well, that was a good move.  The restaurant was a diner, classic New York.  People talking funny, but incredibly kind to one another.  I watched a table of three elderly women sitting next to the window and thoroughly enjoying watching the Halloween costumes outside.  They would waive to the characters they thought had the best costumes.  They had made it through the storm and were clearly enjoying each other’s company, which I suspect is a regular event. 

               

My strategy turned out to be a good one.  By the time I got back to the bus stop, things had gotten better, and the MTA had put on the extended buses making everything move a whole lot faster.  I had no trouble getting on the next bus.  The traffic was gone.  It took a normal amount of time to get from 72^nd Street to 110^th at 9:00 at night. 

               

It’s a story of minor tribulation that probably had a positive impact on my health, to be sure, but at the same time, it was a great privilege to share this experience with you all.  What impresses me beyond words is the resilience of the people who live and work here, and most especially the staff of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. 

I have heard from many of you, both before and after the storm.  I know of at least one person who was in an evacuation area.  I have heard from a number of people who had various kinds of property damage—lost fences, roof damage, car damage.  There is at least one flooded house among us, and even a car hit by a flying boat.  One of us had a hundred-year-old oak tree lift surreally from the earth and land gently right beside his house rather than splitting it in two.  Lots of us lost power, some now restored and some not.  A number are in the midst of significant devastation.  It is not uncommon for our colleagues to be living through very significant travel disruptions, or have no idea at the moment how getting to Manhattan will ever be possible or when. 

We will figure all of that out.  The main thing is that, at least at the moment, I am unaware of anyone injured.  I am very grateful for that.

And, despite what should have been a horrible day on Wednesday, you all made it something much different.  What I think about is a group of senior citizens who survived the storm enjoying streets filled with trick-or-treaters.  I think about a staff member who endured 4 ½ hours on a bus to get to work so that payroll could be done.  I think about a staff member who went to a neighbor’s house where there was power to charge her cell phone so she could stay in touch with the office.  I think about staff members who put together a car pool so they could get across the bridge over the East River when it was restricted to cars with high occupancy.  I think of staff members who walked so they could get here and staff members who stayed in constant touch when they couldn’t.  I think of a staff member who organized lunch for the skeleton crew who were able to come on Wednesday.  I think of staff members who made sure they took plenty of things home just in case they got stranded and couldn’t get back in for a while. 

There is devastation in what I have seen, but mostly what I see is resilience in the face of challenges, obstacles, hardship, and suffering.  In the midst of all the inconvenience, I experience you all, and the people of the city in which we live, being truly neighborly in the very best sense.  I experience you all as dedicated to your work and the people we serve.  On what should have been my worst day in New York City, you and the people of New York made it the best.  I am greatly privileged and blessed to work and live among you.

Now would be a good time to give thanks.  For many of us that will mean giving thanks to God.  For some, perhaps it means giving thanks to each other.  For others, perhaps giving thanks is a vague sense of relief.  I invite you to join in doing so together, whatever that may mean for you.

We will celebrate the first Community Eucharist (a word, after all, that means thanksgiving) in our effort to strengthen our chapel life on Wednesday, November 7.  I invite you to come and take this opportunity to be thankful together, to pray for those who are suffering, and to remember those who have died.  For myself, I will be thinking about my best day in New York . . . so far. 

Peace,
+Stacy

Εν Τούτῳ Νίκα

Sunday is an important anniversary in the life of the Church.  I suspect it will, for the most part, go unnoticed.  Perhaps that is just as well, except in the sense of George Santayana’s perhaps misunderstood maxim that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.  Still, Sunday is the 1,700th of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, the day the church made an unholy deal with power and lost its freedom in the Gospel.  It is an important anniversary to mark because the deal with power is unraveling before our eyes, and we have a better opportunity than we have had in centuries to be free once again.  

The official story is that on October 28, 312, the Emperor Constantine fought a decisive battle at a place called the Milvian Bridge that made him the sole ruler of the Roman Empire.  The details of the spiritual side of this event vary, but the basic idea is that Constantine attributed his victory to a vision of the cross, or maybe it was the Chi-Rho, appearing in a blazing light above the sun bearing a message from God, which read, “Εν Τούτῳ Νίκα,” in this sign you will conquer, which was followed by a vision of the risen Christ instructing Constantine to use that sign against his enemies.  As this story goes, so began Constantine’s purported conversion to Christianity.

Now, I have to tell you, that does not sound much like Jesus to me, but it does sound a lot like the Church.  It has had a lot to do with our life ever since. 

Not too many years later, Christianity, which had begun three centuries earlier in witness that power was made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9), became the established religion of the Roman Empire, the epitome of worldly power.  From then until now really, the Church, particularly the clergy, especially the bishops, became identified with power, prestige, and privilege.  Today we are more democratic perhaps about how we distribute power and privilege, but they are power and privilege nonetheless.  Instead of being the voice of truth to power, the Church justified the use of power in the name of God.  Instead of being an instrument of peace, it perpetrated violence and preached the crusades.  Instead of being the advocate of the poor, the oppressed, and the marginalized, it became the defender of the established order.  Instead of a posture of self-offering, it assumed a posture of self-protection.  Bishops became princes.  Pastoral cures became administrative units based on those of the Roman Empire, which happened to be called dioceses.  Episcopal ministry took on the trappings of legal jurisdiction to the detriment of diakonia or service.  And the imperial authorities insisted that the church, contrary to its nature up to that point, order itself for the good of civil society even though it had existed quite well without universal councils of any kind and certainly without the Vatican, the Curia, the so-called Instruments of Unity of the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Covenant, and, God forgive me for saying so, the General Convention.  In short, we forgot.  We forgot about God.  Our memory and our perspective became impaired by our own power, privilege, and prestige.

We are finding that power, privilege, and prestige are hard things to give up, but they are crumbling all around us nevertheless.  The fact that they are crumbling appears to be decline, which has resulted in a great deal of anxiety and acting out by those still trying to cling to the Church that once was, but we are no longer the established Church nor the Church of the establishment.  As we are freed from the trappings of privilege, difficult though it may be, we have an unprecedented opportunity to remember about God, to make Christ present, to be who we really are.  I think the world’s salvation may be in that.  I know ours is.

In a letter to the community at Rome long before Constantine became the emperor, St. Paul gave us a truer vision of what it means to conquer.  He asked, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?  Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”  And then he answered, “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.”  (Rom 8:35, 37)

It turns out Constantine was right, just not in the way he thought.  We are beginning to come to ourselves again, the way Paul saw us and not so much the way we let Constantine use us.  Εν Τούτῳ Νίκα

Peace,

+Stacy

Oscar

My good friend Bart grew up in a different time.  His mother had died when he was young, and his father, the county judge, was left to raise two children on his own.  Bart’s dad hired two people to help him with being a single parent, Oscar and Mary.  Oscar drove and did yard work.  Mary cooked and cleaned.  Together they looked after Bart and his sister.  Oscar and Mary lived in an apartment in the basement of Bart’s family’s home.  Bart grew up being cared for on a daily basis primarily by Oscar and Mary.  He loved them like parents, and they loved Bart and his sister as their own.  Both of those things were true even though Bart never referred to Oscar and Mary as anything other than Oscar and Mary but Oscar and Mary called Bart, “Mr. Bart,” the difference in age notwithstanding.  That was the custom in those days where Bart and I grew up.  Domestic servants, who were always of another race, were called by their first names, but the familiarity was not reciprocal.  Domestic servants always appended “Mr.” or “Miss” to their employers’ first names, and those of their children, too. 

Many years later, when Bart was grown up and Oscar and Mary had long since moved into a home of their own, Mary died.  Bart was heartbroken as if his own mother had died again.  He went to Oscar and Mary’s house to pay his respects, which were considerable. 

The house was filled with visitors.  Bart sat down in the living room with Oscar.  “Oscar,” he said, no matter what happened in my life, I always knew that you and Mary loved me.”

That’s when Oscar said something terribly profound and shockingly truthful.  “Mr. Bart,” Oscar responded, “I got paid to love you.”

Jesus talks frequently about being a servant.  In fact, servanthood and love are perhaps the New Testament’s very highest value.  This week’s Gospel (Mk. 10:35-45) is a case in point. 

So Jesus called them and said to them, You know that     among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.  (vv. 42-45)

Being a disciple of Jesus is about being a servant.  Servanthood, though, is a different thing depending on whether one looks at it from the perspective of the one serving or the one being served.  Servanthood looked different from Bart’s perspective than it did from Oscar’s.

Now here’s the curious thing.  Bart perceived nothing but love.  I have no doubt that Oscar loved Bart.  Still, Oscar’s love was not unqualified either.  Oscar got paid to love Bart.  Oscar loved Bart but recognized that things were a bit more complicated than that.

I don’t know quite what to make of this, but I think it is very much worth paying attention to.  For one thing, servanthood is not quite the simple thing we sometimes imagine it to be, at least from the servant’s point of view.  Most of us have a hard time imagining servanthood through the servant’s eyes.  I’m not sure Jesus would have.

For another thing, the things we do for love and the things we do for pay are not necessarily inconsistent.  In fact, justice sometimes requires just that.

But mostly it seems to me that the importance is where one stands to look at servanthood, the question of perspective, the perspective of the servant or the perspective of the one being served.  The servant has a fuller view of the reality, that things are not quite as simple as they may appear.  The servant has a view closer to what the truth, the complicated truth, actually is.  Could it be that that is what Jesus is hoping for, a fuller view of the truth, at least as much as the serving itself?

Peace,

+Stacy

Preferential Option for the Rich

Most of my ministry has been spent caring pastorally for people who by anyone’s standards are quite well off.  I have taken it as my responsibility to preach a fair amount about caring for the poor, not always to universal acclamation.  I remember once mentioning “redistribution of wealth” in a sermon.  Let us not get into how that went over!  In frustration, which I take to have been loving frustration, a friend in the congregation asked me exasperatingly, “Why is it that all Episcopal priests are Democrats?”  In an unholy moment of smart aleckness, I replied, “Well, that’s because we’ve actually read the Bible.”  (And, by the way, it is not in fact true that “Christian” and “Democrat” have any more to do with each other than “Christian” and “Republican.”)

Smart aleck or not, the theme of caring for the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed does run quite consistently throughout the Bible.  There are examples in both Old and New Testaments too many to cite.  One of the Old Testament options for next Sunday is an example. 

Therefore because you trample on the poor and take from them levies of grain, you have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them; you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.  For I know how many are your transgressions, and how great are your sins-- you who afflict the righteous, who take a bribe, and push aside the needy in the gate.  (Amos 5:11-12)

It is such a consistent theme that it leaves one wondering what hope there is for the rich. 

And the most disturbing reality is that those of us in the United States find ourselves quite rich by the world’s standards.  The disparities among us, which are growing, sometimes distract us from this reality.  Still, almost all of us find ourselves, simply because of an accident of birth, in the very top percentiles of affluence.  It is a reality well worth contemplating in this election year as a person of faith, Republican or Democrat. 

So in light of what Amos and so much else in the Bible have to say about the rich, those who push aside the needy, even if only by circumstance, and God’s priorities, where does that leave us?  There is reason for hope. 

The gospel reading for Sunday (Mk. 10:17-31) is about an encounter between Jesus and an unnamed character.  Based on the parallels to the story in Matthew and Luke we often refer to him as the rich young ruler.  In Mark, however, he is simply “a man.”  He has obviously been paying attention to Jesus’ teaching, perhaps following him around Galilee, maybe from a distance.  He asks, “"Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  (v.17)  I find myself wondering if, given his station in life, which Mark describes as having “many possessions,” he has not begun to get the message of God’s special care for the poor and wondering where that leaves him.

Jesus gives him two levels of response.  The first is like an introductory course.  Jesus refers him to the commandments.  When the man asks for more, Jesus gives him the advanced course, the fuller and more difficult answer, an elaboration on what it means to obey the commandments.  “Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’”  (v. 21)  The man’s response points out the difficulty of the teaching, at least for the affluent.  “When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”  (v. 22)

Jesus’ answer is indeed shocking, disturbingly so.  It is not difficult to hear the significance of what Jesus said for ourselves.

What may be more difficult, however, is to see the hope.  First, there is this important affirmation.  Jesus looked at the wealthy man and loved him.  God, I believe, has a particular concern for the poor and expects us to have the same concern and act on it.  But that does not mean God is preferential in love.  God loves us as well.  Indeed, Jesus is sent to seek the lost, and perhaps that indicates a certain preference for people such as us, at least in this regard.

It follows that the shockingly difficult teaching is offered in love.  It is difficult, but it is loving.  It is loving for one thing because it is true.  It is hardly ever loving to hold back the truth, and certainly not when life depends on it.  And it is more than loving.  It can be read as expressing a certain confidence.  The teaching is offered in the confidence that it is possible to attempt to live accordingly.  It is not dangling something before us to tease us.  Jesus would not offer what is difficult without some confidence in us.

When Jesus goes on to speak to his disciples about this encounter privately, things get even more hopeful.  He acknowledges the extreme difficulty of what he has asked.  “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”  (vv. 24-25).  Jesus knows he is asking something difficult.

Indeed, Jesus knows he is asking something more than difficult.  The disciples ask the obvious question for us, “Then who can be saved?”  Jesus answers with even more hope.  “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.”  (vv.26-27)  For God, even our salvation is possible.  All in all, that’s not a bad thing to have hope in.

And perhaps the final word of hope comes in the way the story ends.  Jesus reminds his disciples of that preferential option for the poor again in a saying he repeats with some regularity.  “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”  (v. 31)  It may not appear like the best news at first, but I wonder if that is because we’re looking at it from the perspective of people who are used to being first and missing the implication.  The implication is that, while many who are first will be last, being last means, at the end, being included.  Even the rich are included in God’s grace.  In the end, the preferential option is for humanity.

  Peace,
+Stacy

Approaching Issues Pastorally

The Gospel for this week (Mk. 10:2-16) has always troubled me.  When I was young and my parents had recently divorced, I found it very painful to hear.  I learned two important things from that.  One is that Jesus was more interested in truth than what might hurt someone’s feelings.  The other is to listen more carefully to what Jesus was actually saying. 

I have listened a lot to this particular passage in the last decade because it bears heavily on the pastoral responsibilities of a bishop, one of which is to approve remarriages after divorce.  In that context, too, I have found it troubling as I tried to be a mediator of holy living in difficult and very personal contexts. 

How to handle this particular problem has been problematic to the Church for a long, long time.  Indeed, it seems to have been a problem for the very beginning.  Anglicans, if anyone, should know a little about this.  It has its fair share to do with how we came to be.

Approving of remarriage after divorce is something of a problem because Jesus seems to make reasonably clear that he didn’t approve of it at all.  Speaking to his disciples, he said, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”  (Mk. 10:11-12)  The teaching is unequivocal, no exceptions.  And it is harsh.  The law’s penalty for adultery was death according to Leviticus (20:10).  That’s a quotation from Leviticus we hardly ever hear even when we might be quick to turn to it regarding sexuality in other ways.  It is not too surprising that it wasn’t long before the Church began to find the no remarriage after divorce to be a little too tough a standard to live by and start to make some exceptions.  Take a look at Mt. 19:9. 

We have been struggling with this one ever since.  The Episcopal Church began struggling with whether divorced persons were allowed to remarry in 1809.  It became an increasing pastoral problem as divorce became more common and affected more families.  Finally, but not until 1973, remarriage following divorce became universally permissible in the Episcopal Church with a bishop’s permission.  It was entirely a pastoral motivation presented by a new understanding of the pastoral needs of real people for whom divorce was becoming an increasingly more common part of life.  The Church made a pastoral exception to what appears to be the unequivocal teaching of Jesus.  It is very Anglican.  Practically pastoral.  And facing reality with honesty. 

Now, it seems to me, the Church is being called to make another pastoral exception to its theological understanding of human sexuality and marriage.  This time the issue is a little different and has to do with same-gender couples, gay and lesbian couples for whom marriage in the most traditional understanding has not been a healthy or completely honest possibility.  The question before us, I think, is an awful lot like remarriage after divorce.  Will we make a pastoral exception to the traditional teaching?  We can’t pretend we aren’t willing to make exceptions.  We most certainly are, even officially, to say nothing about unofficial actual practices.  In fact, we have been doing it since the very beginning.  Straight people have made a giant exception, directly contradictory to Jesus’ teaching in the New Testament, to benefit ourselves.  The question before us is whether we will have a similar pastoral sensitivity toward others.  It seems to me there are some other teachings of Jesus that might apply to that. 

Peace,

+Stacy

Getting the Job Done

Both Jesus in the New Testament and Moses in the Old, were asked to draw lines, lines that would draw some people out based on something that didn’t matter.  Both absolutely refused.

 

While Moses and the seventy elders were meeting with the Lord, two men named Eldad and Medad remained in the camp prophesying, which means, speaking on behalf of God.  Joshua, Moses’ right-hand man, insisted that Moses stop them.  Moses refused.  “Would that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!"  The problem was not that they were false prophets.  They weren’t.  The problem was that they weren’t authorized prophets.  Getting the job done is more important than having the right credentials.  

 

The situation with Jesus was similar.  It seems that there was someone going around casting out demons in Jesus’ name.  It isn’t that he was saying he could do something he couldn’t.  He could.  It isn’t that he was taking advantage of people, taking their money in return for selling them snake oil.  He wasn’t.  It was that the disciples didn’t know him.  This unknown exorcist’s offense is that he didn’t have the proper franchise from Jesus’ inner circle.  And so John complained, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” 

 

Jesus, like Moses, saw the fallacy of this.  Isn’t being against demons more important than making sure someone has the right stamp of approval from the “official” disciples of Jesus?  And so Jesus said to John and the other disciples, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” 

 

In Jesus we can stop bickering about who has paid their dues and start doing the work of God.  We can stop worrying about whether he’s part of the “right” denomination and start doing the work of God.  We can stop checking out whether we like someone personally or not and start doing the work of God.”

 

What matters is that the man was casting out demons.  He was even giving Jesus the credit for it.  Oh sure, his exorcism style may have been a little unorthodox.  He may not have used the right words in Elizabethan English right out of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.  He may not have worn exactly the right vestments.  Why do we care about that?  The point is the man got the job done.  People were being freed. 

 

When it comes to Jesus, what matters is getting the job done.  When it comes to casting out demons, what matters is not what words you use, but getting rid of the demons.  “Whoever is not against us is for us.”  That ought to be enough for us.

 

I learned this poignantly as part of a duly authorized and official delegation of The Episcopal Church seeking to bring our church into full communion with nine other denominations.  The sticking point had to do with credentials and authorizations, the historic episcopal succession in particular.  All of the churches there recognized the importance of this succession of laying on of hands as a symbol of the church’s unity across the ages.  Not all were so sure about the whole idea of bishops.  The Presbyterians had problems with the idea of a personal episcopacy.  The United Methodists didn’t particularly like it, but they could probably bring themselves to do it.  The United Church of Christ could go along with it as long as they could call the bishop something else. 

 

But the Gospel truth got put on the table by a Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  He made this point, which brought the Episcopalians absolutely up short.  He said, “You all say we have to have the laying on of hands in an unbroken succession stretching back to the apostles.  Back when we wanted it, you wouldn’t give it to us.  So we just went on about our business and God gave it to us.  What makes you all think we need it now or would want it now?”  It is an awfully good point.  What matters is getting the job done.  Joshua, John, and we should be ashamed of ourselves when we put anything else above that.

Peace,
+Stacy