May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
The temperance movement of the early 19th century was one of the most successful reform movements in our country’s history. Just about every scholar who has tried to work out the rough statistics agrees that alcohol consumption fell, and fell by a lot, between the 1820s and the 1840s. One leading historian believes that alcohol consumption fell in those decades from about seven gallons per person per year to about two.
That’s a huge decline. Some of it is attributable to other social changes. But the temperance movement does deserve a lot of the credit.
And who were its leaders? Mostly educated middle-class women, inspired by the enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening, the revival of religious sentiment that was sweeping through evangelical protestant churches all over the country.
Their tactics were simple and personal. Some of them used the term moral suasion, and modern historians haven’t found a better term for it. They reached out with emotional, personal appeals to individual drinkers, and won them over, one husband, father, brother, son, and neighbor at a time.
So energetic were they, and so successful in their organizing, that they became the seedbed of all the other great reform movements of the 19th century: Education reform, prison reform, asylum reform, the abolition of slavery, and of course women’s rights. The leaders of all these movements were inspired by the temperance movement, and many of them had taken part in it.
Now this was not the Prohibition movement. It was a movement for temperance. Many of these women favored Prohibition, but it was not their priority. Politics and legislation in the United States in those days were part of an exclusively male public sphere. Male allies of the temperance women were successful in pushing through Prohibition laws in a number of states starting in the 1850s, but those laws generally didn’t last. They were quickly found to be unenforceable and counterproductive.
But some Prohibitionist politicians kept pushing for them, and decades later, in 1919, they were able to ratify the 18th Amendment and bring about nationwide Prohibition.
I suspect you know disastrous that was. It had little if any effect on alcohol consumption; it provided a kind of perverse economic stimulus for organized crime; and it was repealed after only a decade and a half.
I heard one young historian present a paper on the differences between temperance and Prohibition, when the annual meeting of the American Historical Association was held in Boston about a decade ago. The gist of her argument was: “This is what happens when you take a perfectly successful movement, and put men in charge of it.”
I couldn’t help but recall that remark, and the stark differences between the historically mostly female world of moral suasion and the mostly male world of power politics, when I considered the contretemps between Mary of Bethany and Judas in today’s gospel reading
All three of the major figures in this gospel story seem to be aware that something momentous is about to happen. Shortly before this, they have witnessed Jesus raising Mary’s brother Lazarus from the dead.
Now Mary anoints the feet of Jesus. It’s an extravagant act, one that Jesus compares to the anointing of a body for burial.
Judas is beginning what will be about as bad a week as any human has ever experienced -- in a little more than six days he will betray Jesus and turn him over to the authorities. Here he upbraids Mary for wasting the valuable perfume. He knows exactly what it is worth – 300 denarii, about the equivalent of a year’s wages for an ordinary day laborer.
And Jesus rebukes Judas, in one of those startlingly sharp commands that he sometimes utters in the gospels: “Leave her alone.”
Like Paul in the letter to the Philippians, Mary is clearly ready to lose all things, to “regard them as rubbish, in order that [she] may gain Christ.” Now Paul, like us, knew only the risen Christ. But Mary knew Jesus, and she believed.
Then again, Judas knew Jesus, too, and so did Peter. In the harsh words Judas speaks to Mary in today’s gospel, he sounds a lot like Peter will sound less than a week later, when he complains as Jesus begins to wash the disciples’ feet at the last supper.
Neither Judas nor Peter has the patience to try to understand the significance of the ritual that Mary enacts in Bethany, or of the one that Jesus enacts in Jerusalem.
And yet, I have to admit, Judas makes sense to me. At first glance, Mary’s extravagant act of worship bothers me, too. It just seems so wasteful. The 300 denarii could have been used to help the poor. John seems to know that some readers of his gospel will react this way, too -- so much so that he has to warn us away, by making the charge that Judas was an embezzler. That’s not found in any of the other gospels.
But Judas and Peter make sense to me. Is this what happens when you take a perfectly good church and put men—men like Judas and Peter (and me, I guess)—in a position of responsibility?
Unlike Judas, Mary of Bethany, wiping the perfume from the Lord’s feet with her own hair, knows that the followers of Jesus are not a social service agency, that the strange and transformative human experience called worship is at the center of their community’s life.
Mary is the sister of Martha as well as of Lazarus, but in John’s gospel Mary and Martha are not the hands-versus-hearts opposites of Luke’s telling. Before the raising of Lazarus, Martha is one of the first to say to Jesus, “Lord, I believe that you are the messiah, the son of God, the one coming into the world.” That proclamation of faith seems to be a necessary precursor to Lazarus’s restoration to life, along with Mary’s simpler statement, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died”.
So many of the people in John’s gospel who share Mary and Martha’s faith, and their impulse to worship, are women! This culminates in the presence of four women (along with the unnamed beloved disciple) at the foot of Jesus’ cross – Jesus’ mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. I think the key for all of them, as for Mary and Martha, as for the temperance women of the nineteenth century, lies in a connection that is personal and emotional, not simply theoretical or ideological.
After his betrayal, Judas has disappeared from John’s narrative, never to return. After his denial, Peter is in hiding, cowering with the other apostles. But these women who are extravagant enough to worship without reservation, without counting the cost, are also brave enough to follow as disciples where that impulse to worship leads: to the foot of the cross, and then, on the third day, to the empty tomb.
Back in Bethany a week earlier, Jesus (who we are told knows full well what Judas will be doing in the next week) admonishes Judas by saying “You always have the poor with you.” Jesus is not dismissing the poor here, or the commitment of his followers to serve them and mitigate their misery. He’s not looking around and saying, “What, are they still here?”
He’s charging his followers, and charging us, with an everlasting responsibility for the poor. For one thing, he’s paraphrasing a verse in Deuteronomy that concludes, “Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”
But he is also reminding them, and us, that this responsibility is rooted in the extravagant personal devotion and connectedness of Mary’s act of worship, not in the scientific management and dutiful budget-balancing that Judas espouses—or claims to espouse.
And Mary’s extravagant act of worship is rooted in her and her sister’s personal realization, especially vivid to us at this season, that Jesus is “the messiah, the son of God coming into the world”; that his days among them are growing short; and that she must make the most of them—as must we all.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Lent I - Suzanne Colburn
Why Temptations?
Grace and Peace from our Lord Jesus Christ and from God our Father in the Power of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Good morning and thank you to everyone who helped and came and laughed and enjoyed our Mardi Gras Un-Talent Show on Tuesday. Thank you also to Lynn and Holly, altar guild, Pam and the Choir and everyone who was part of our three Ash Wednesday services.
And now, here we are, at the first Sunday of Lent.
I know you all noticed that our entrance was different this morning and I’ve written some worship notes in the bulletin, giving some background for the changes during this Lenten Season.
Our outward context has changed: the colors are different, the music is different, and the prayers are more penitent. But what about our inward context, has that changed also?
How aware are we? Do our hearts and souls know that we are being led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit just the way that Jesus was led?
An old clergy friend of mine used to wear a sweatshirt that simply said, “Lent Happens,” a play on words referring to that other slogan that is similar that I will not repeat here.
The point being: Lent is not something that we have any control over, any more than anyone has control over the leading of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Lent, like all movements of the Spirit, belongs to God.
“Lent Happens” and perhaps we could even say the first Lent happened to Jesus right after he was anointed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism. We just heard Holly proclaim:
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” (Luke 4:1)
Like Jesus, who gave us this same Holy Spirit, we find ourselves suddenly in a spiritual season where the Holy Spirit is the one who is in control. “Lent Happens,” and when “Lent Happens,” we, too are led by the Spirit into our own interior wilderness to face, for better or for worse, our own temptations.
Today’s Collect defines this interior landscape as we pray …”Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let us find you mighty to save…”
One might be tempted (no pun intended) to ask, “Why Temptations?” What purpose do they serve in this spiritual journey that we are on?
If you are like several friends of mine who absolutely do not like Lent at all, and, a matter of fact, give Lent up for Lent, this is a completely valid question.
Sometimes, when Lent rolls around, it feels like we haven’t “progressed” one bit in the last year. At other times it seems as though we’ve moved forward by leaps and bounds.
Regardless of our feelings, the Spirit alone reveals to us where we are, who we are and what God is calling each of us to do. That is part of being in the wilderness.
Often, in Lent (or otherwise) we are “led into temptation” even though we pray daily not to be.
Not only does Jesus teach us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” but also, he urges the disciples who are with him in the Garden of Gethsemane to pray that “they may not enter into temptation.”
Clearly, temptations are part of the human spiritual journey whether we like it or not. The answer to “Why temptations?” Lies with the fact that the same Spirit that lead Jesus into the wilderness, knew, as we need to know, that it is only through dealing with temptations that we find out who we really are.
Sometimes in the wilderness we learn that we have more faith than we thought we did. Sometimes we learn that we are much more human than we want to admit. Sometimes we find out that if it were not for Grace, we would utterly, utterly, fail.
Sometimes we find out that when we do fail, we fall with our Lord as he fell carrying the Cross in His Passion.
The other thing that we learn when we face our temptations is that no matter how horrible or offensive they may be to us, God in Christ is never sitting in judgment over us.
Are there consequences to our thoughts and feelings and actions? You bet there are. Can falling into our temptations lead us to sin; breaking down relationships, separating us from the very God we need? Absolutely.
But the paradox is that we are still not condemned by God.
Remember what Jesus said to the woman who committed adultery after everyone who was going to stone her left?
“Woman where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” (John 8:1-11)
One of the absolutely most important things we learn when the Spirit leads us into the wilderness is this paradox: we are weak and sinful, and are held accountable, on the one hand, and yet not condemned, on the other hand.
The second thing we learn when the Spirit leads us into the wilderness is that even when we do fall into temptation and sin, God is still right there with us.
We are held responsible, yes. The woman is told to “go and sin no more,” a phrase we hear Jesus use with several people. We have Confession to atone for our sins, and part of the Rite of Confession is to not only recognize our many temptations and weaknesses, but also, to choose to make an “amendment of life;” to go, “and sin no more.”
God does not condemn us, but God does hold us accountable to ourselves and one another through the gift of free will choice. We may be weak, but we all have the power to ask for the Grace to change. Being responsible for our actions means that we recognize the need to change and go about changing.
So what are temptations we face? They are the same ones Jesus encountered in his wilderness.
1. There’s the temptation to supply our own needs.
The devil tempts Jesus to turn a stone into a loaf of bread, and Jesus was probably pretty hungry when the devil did this. How many times are we tempted to take matters into our own hands?
2. Then there’s the temptation to worship anyone or anything other than God.
The devil shows Jesus symbols of glory and power captured in the phrase “the kingdoms of the world.” But even more than power and authority over others, it’s the temptation to worship the devil- meaning to worship anything or anyone other than God that is put before Jesus just as it is put before us.
The temptation to worship people, things, the past, health, jobs, being young, money, etc is so pervasive that most of the time we are not even aware that we are doing it. The Bible is most consistently concerned with one thing: that we worship God and God alone.
3. Finally, there’s the temptation to test God.
And of course, this is a slippery slope. The devil uses Scripture against Jesus, and how many times do we use Scripture against one another now in our time and unfortunately, since the beginning of the Christian era. Scripture has been used to justify some of the worse sins of humankind.
The forces that oppose God know how to use God’s Word against human beings and this is when Jesus draws the line with the devil saying, “It is said, Do not put God to the test.”
Like Jesus, we need to learn about ourselves in relation to temptation and our human nature. The best antidote to temptation is self-awareness and God-awareness, and if Jesus needed to go into the wilderness to learn about himself and temptation, so do we.
The Good news, however, is that we have this same Jesus with us every step of the way. The One who knows temptation but who does not sin is the same One who saves us from ourselves. On our own, we are powerless.
Paul makes it very clear in his Letter to the Romans, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” The Psalmist makes it very clear also: “You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God in whom I put my trust.”
The Psalmist, speaking for God, continues,
“Because he is bound to me in Love, therefore will I deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knows my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him;
I am with him in trouble, I will rescue him and bring him to honor.”
All this because we “know his name.”
These are the promises of God that Jesus stood on, and these are the promises of God that we need to stand on, too.
Sometimes, we resist temptation, and sometimes we do not. When we do not, we are accountable to God. When we are able to resist, we give thanks to God for his abiding Grace that holds us up. And when we fall, we discover that even there, in the falling, Christ is with us.
“There is no ‘is not’ with God.” God is everywhere, and even though The Son of God knew no sin, He is still able to be with us in ours. Another paradox of the Incarnation.
“Why Temptations” we asked? Because even in temptation, we discover that God is with us. It is not the devil who is in the details, it is God.
To quote Leo Buscalia:
“I will love you no matter what. I will love you if you are stupid, if you slip and fall on your face, if you do the wrong thing, if you make mistakes, if you behave like a human being- I will love you no matter what.” 1
And this is the Good News of the Gospel of God in the Person of Jesus Christ.
Amen
__________
1 TodaysGit@hazelden.info Thu. Feb. 14, 2013 at 2:15 am.
Grace and Peace from our Lord Jesus Christ and from God our Father in the Power of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Good morning and thank you to everyone who helped and came and laughed and enjoyed our Mardi Gras Un-Talent Show on Tuesday. Thank you also to Lynn and Holly, altar guild, Pam and the Choir and everyone who was part of our three Ash Wednesday services.
And now, here we are, at the first Sunday of Lent.
I know you all noticed that our entrance was different this morning and I’ve written some worship notes in the bulletin, giving some background for the changes during this Lenten Season.
Our outward context has changed: the colors are different, the music is different, and the prayers are more penitent. But what about our inward context, has that changed also?
How aware are we? Do our hearts and souls know that we are being led into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit just the way that Jesus was led?
An old clergy friend of mine used to wear a sweatshirt that simply said, “Lent Happens,” a play on words referring to that other slogan that is similar that I will not repeat here.
The point being: Lent is not something that we have any control over, any more than anyone has control over the leading of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Lent, like all movements of the Spirit, belongs to God.
“Lent Happens” and perhaps we could even say the first Lent happened to Jesus right after he was anointed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism. We just heard Holly proclaim:
“Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil.” (Luke 4:1)
Like Jesus, who gave us this same Holy Spirit, we find ourselves suddenly in a spiritual season where the Holy Spirit is the one who is in control. “Lent Happens,” and when “Lent Happens,” we, too are led by the Spirit into our own interior wilderness to face, for better or for worse, our own temptations.
Today’s Collect defines this interior landscape as we pray …”Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let us find you mighty to save…”
One might be tempted (no pun intended) to ask, “Why Temptations?” What purpose do they serve in this spiritual journey that we are on?
If you are like several friends of mine who absolutely do not like Lent at all, and, a matter of fact, give Lent up for Lent, this is a completely valid question.
Sometimes, when Lent rolls around, it feels like we haven’t “progressed” one bit in the last year. At other times it seems as though we’ve moved forward by leaps and bounds.
Regardless of our feelings, the Spirit alone reveals to us where we are, who we are and what God is calling each of us to do. That is part of being in the wilderness.
Often, in Lent (or otherwise) we are “led into temptation” even though we pray daily not to be.
Not only does Jesus teach us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” but also, he urges the disciples who are with him in the Garden of Gethsemane to pray that “they may not enter into temptation.”
Clearly, temptations are part of the human spiritual journey whether we like it or not. The answer to “Why temptations?” Lies with the fact that the same Spirit that lead Jesus into the wilderness, knew, as we need to know, that it is only through dealing with temptations that we find out who we really are.
Sometimes in the wilderness we learn that we have more faith than we thought we did. Sometimes we learn that we are much more human than we want to admit. Sometimes we find out that if it were not for Grace, we would utterly, utterly, fail.
Sometimes we find out that when we do fail, we fall with our Lord as he fell carrying the Cross in His Passion.
The other thing that we learn when we face our temptations is that no matter how horrible or offensive they may be to us, God in Christ is never sitting in judgment over us.
Are there consequences to our thoughts and feelings and actions? You bet there are. Can falling into our temptations lead us to sin; breaking down relationships, separating us from the very God we need? Absolutely.
But the paradox is that we are still not condemned by God.
Remember what Jesus said to the woman who committed adultery after everyone who was going to stone her left?
“Woman where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.” (John 8:1-11)
One of the absolutely most important things we learn when the Spirit leads us into the wilderness is this paradox: we are weak and sinful, and are held accountable, on the one hand, and yet not condemned, on the other hand.
The second thing we learn when the Spirit leads us into the wilderness is that even when we do fall into temptation and sin, God is still right there with us.
We are held responsible, yes. The woman is told to “go and sin no more,” a phrase we hear Jesus use with several people. We have Confession to atone for our sins, and part of the Rite of Confession is to not only recognize our many temptations and weaknesses, but also, to choose to make an “amendment of life;” to go, “and sin no more.”
God does not condemn us, but God does hold us accountable to ourselves and one another through the gift of free will choice. We may be weak, but we all have the power to ask for the Grace to change. Being responsible for our actions means that we recognize the need to change and go about changing.
So what are temptations we face? They are the same ones Jesus encountered in his wilderness.
1. There’s the temptation to supply our own needs.
The devil tempts Jesus to turn a stone into a loaf of bread, and Jesus was probably pretty hungry when the devil did this. How many times are we tempted to take matters into our own hands?
2. Then there’s the temptation to worship anyone or anything other than God.
The devil shows Jesus symbols of glory and power captured in the phrase “the kingdoms of the world.” But even more than power and authority over others, it’s the temptation to worship the devil- meaning to worship anything or anyone other than God that is put before Jesus just as it is put before us.
The temptation to worship people, things, the past, health, jobs, being young, money, etc is so pervasive that most of the time we are not even aware that we are doing it. The Bible is most consistently concerned with one thing: that we worship God and God alone.
3. Finally, there’s the temptation to test God.
And of course, this is a slippery slope. The devil uses Scripture against Jesus, and how many times do we use Scripture against one another now in our time and unfortunately, since the beginning of the Christian era. Scripture has been used to justify some of the worse sins of humankind.
The forces that oppose God know how to use God’s Word against human beings and this is when Jesus draws the line with the devil saying, “It is said, Do not put God to the test.”
Like Jesus, we need to learn about ourselves in relation to temptation and our human nature. The best antidote to temptation is self-awareness and God-awareness, and if Jesus needed to go into the wilderness to learn about himself and temptation, so do we.
The Good news, however, is that we have this same Jesus with us every step of the way. The One who knows temptation but who does not sin is the same One who saves us from ourselves. On our own, we are powerless.
Paul makes it very clear in his Letter to the Romans, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” The Psalmist makes it very clear also: “You are my refuge and my stronghold, my God in whom I put my trust.”
The Psalmist, speaking for God, continues,
“Because he is bound to me in Love, therefore will I deliver him;
I will protect him, because he knows my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him;
I am with him in trouble, I will rescue him and bring him to honor.”
All this because we “know his name.”
These are the promises of God that Jesus stood on, and these are the promises of God that we need to stand on, too.
Sometimes, we resist temptation, and sometimes we do not. When we do not, we are accountable to God. When we are able to resist, we give thanks to God for his abiding Grace that holds us up. And when we fall, we discover that even there, in the falling, Christ is with us.
“There is no ‘is not’ with God.” God is everywhere, and even though The Son of God knew no sin, He is still able to be with us in ours. Another paradox of the Incarnation.
“Why Temptations” we asked? Because even in temptation, we discover that God is with us. It is not the devil who is in the details, it is God.
To quote Leo Buscalia:
“I will love you no matter what. I will love you if you are stupid, if you slip and fall on your face, if you do the wrong thing, if you make mistakes, if you behave like a human being- I will love you no matter what.” 1
And this is the Good News of the Gospel of God in the Person of Jesus Christ.
Amen
__________
1 TodaysGit@hazelden.info Thu. Feb. 14, 2013 at 2:15 am.
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Epiphany II - Suzanne Colburn
God is Able
May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in Thy sight, O God our Strength and Redeemer. In the Name of the One, Holy and Living God, Amen.
Good morning, and welcome to any of you who may be new to Christ Church.
Welcome also to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. As we know, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a preacher as well as a larger than life figure in our Nation’s history. In one of his sermons, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote,
“At the center of the Christian faith is the conviction that there is a God of power who is able to do exceedingly abundant things in nature and in history. This conviction is stressed over and over again in the Old and New Testaments. The God whom we worship is not a weak and incompetent God…This ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.”1
God is able. Where we cannot, God can. Where big and little events in our lives prove us out of control, God is able. Where we are frustrated, tired, perplexed, stuck, God is able. Where we are heartbroken, angry and withdrawn, God is able. Where we are bored, uninspired, confused; God is able.
The Apostles and Prophets knew their message was to tell people just how able God was. Paul’s letters, the earliest descriptions we have of Jesus other than the Gospels, speaks of Jesus as being the human face of God’s Glory; of God’s able-ness.
If this is the case, as we continue to ponder the revelation of Jesus in his public ministry, what do we see of God in the narrative of the Wedding at Cana?
First, a little background.
Wine is a very ancient and complex metaphor in the Bible. From Old Testament times, the Israelites and YHWH portray an ambivalent relationship with wine.
On the one hand, positive and on the other hand, negative.
On the positive side, wine is an expression of God’s delight in God’s people. Like all signs in the Bible, wine points to a reality that is larger than itself, and in this case, wine points to the Coming of the Reign of God in a Joyous, abundant new age.
Wine also, from the earliest times, reflected God’s wrath. When YHWH was displeased with how the Israelites were behaving, their behavior was characterized as excess, drunkardness and impurity.
This ambivalence, or really, dual symbolism, makes its way right into the New Testament. New wine is God’s in-breaking into our world in a way that transforms old, painful realities. But new wine also demands “new wineskins…” as Jesus tells us.
We must change our thinking to be able to receive the abundance of God. We cannot fit the new reality of the Kingdom of Abundance into an old reality constructed with concepts of fear, lack, competition and greed.
In the Bible wine is sometimes just called, “the Cup.” The Psalmist speaks of God as his or her portion, “my Cup.” Wine as “the cup” appears in the Last supper, and the texts that we base our Eucharistic prayers on.
“The Cup” figures large in The Garden of Gethsemane, and symbolizes Jesus’ anguish as he struggles to follow the Father’s will even to the grave.
One can see how many different levels and interpretations there are to this one word, “wine.” Perhaps the most transcendent meaning of wine is that it represents the fact that God’s love “extends beyond the known boundaries of heaven and earth.”2
Theologian NT Wright would put it this way: “It is about transformation: the different dimension of reality that comes into being when Jesus is present.”3
Now we know a lot more about the context that informs John’s Gospel of The Wedding at Cana. If we were hearing John’s Gospel as contemporaries of Jesus, we would know how loaded this text is.
We’d know that the first hint is that the narrative begins with “On the third day…” We’d know that something surprising was about to happen. We’d remember that Jesus rose on the third day. We’d know that on a very human level, God was about to do a new thing, and we’d know that there would be both moments of delight and moments of challenge.
What a setting for a great story! God is a God of surprise, and there are several surprises at this wedding (like there often are a most weddings, one might add).
So we have a wedding. We are told that Jesus’ mother is there first, and then Jesus and his disciples arrive. Something surprising does happen. Jesus’ mother notices that the wine ran out. Jesus doesn’t notice, his mother does.
Then there ensues one of those all too human tugs of war between a mother and her eldest son. (We remember that before at Jesus’ Baptism, in the version in Matthew, John and Jesus have a “moment,” where they struggle, too, about who is going to baptize whom.)
In this early stage of Jesus’ “coming out” into public ministry, we glimpse these unformed moments of entirely human interaction. Whether it’s Jesus and his mother or Jesus and John at the Jordan, there is a minor struggle about whose authority is going to win out.
Why Jesus’ mother thinks it’s her son’s responsibility to help the host family “save face,” socially, we’ll never know. Why Jesus is a little bit ornery, claiming that “his hour has not come,” we can only speculate.
Perhaps Jesus doesn’t want to be at work spiritually; maybe he just wants to enjoy the wedding. Perhaps Jesus doesn’t think he’s ready. Perhaps Jesus isn’t even sure what he’s supposed to be doing. Perhaps he thinks to himself, “ What can I do to help these people?”
Perhaps Jesus is still getting used to his own dual nature as the Son of God and the Son of Man. Being fully human Jesus would not have just appeared as a completely formed, perfect, human being. Despite his divinity, he would have had to develop just like the rest of us.
Like the Baptism of Jesus at the Jordan, we have a miracle, the divine intersecting of heaven and earth where the needs of other’s are met by the compassion of God. We also have another surprise: the revelation of just how human this God, who is able, really is.
In this moment between Jesus and his mother we glimpse a very familiar dynamic.
A mother is still being a mother to a son who is growing up; who is trying to claim his own identity apart from his family. Jesus needs to discern for himself the need at hand and the action to follow. This may be why he says, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not come.”
To us in our time, Jesus sounds a little cruel, calling Mary simply “Woman.” In Jesus’ time, though, and in his language, calling his mother “woman” is a way to de-personalize the relationship; a way for Jesus to gain the detachment, the separation he is seeking.
Like John at the Jordan, Mary acquiesces. She steps back from a potential argument and turns to the servants acknowledging her son’s authority by saying, “Do whatever he tells you.”
We have another amazingly human moment in John’s Gospel that we can all relate to. It is these rare glimpses of Jesus the son that make us love him so much. Now we know how familiar Jesus really is with the dynamics of human life. We can trust that when we come to him in prayer with our own very human problems and needs, Jesus really is able to help us.
Jesus knew (and probably his mother did too) that he would have to develop a stronger relationship with God his Father, than with his human mother if he was going to be as able as God his Father, is able. Jesus knew that he would have to have a strength within that would lead him unerringly to do his Father’s will.
Even so, it is Jesus’ fully human mother who teaches him to become aware of the needs of others, even if those needs are simply saving face for a young couple at a wedding.
Psychologist Carl Gustave Jung talked about the role of Mary in the church. He applauded the Catholic Church for elevating Mary to the level of the Trinity through the human construct of the Assumption.
In Roman Catholicism, Mary is still the one who is most sensitive to the needs of others. She is the one closest to us; she is the great intercessor. Jung saw this feminine principle of awareness as a healthy addition to an otherwise male Godhead.
Like many of us, Jesus had parents who taught him well. Like us, Jesus had to become his own person, understand his own spiritual nature, and discern his own call.
Once again, this morning, the true miracle at Cana is the miracle of the Incarnation. It’s the miracle of how intimately our God, our Lord and our Savior understands us, loves us, and offers us new life in a new context. Our task is to dare to let Jesus be near to us, even if just for a split second.
“When Jesus is present, a different dimension of reality comes into being,” and surprising things happen.
And today, right now, Jesus is present.
Whether millions of molecules of H2O, a mother and a son at a wedding, or all of us in our own particularly human lives, nothing in Creation can resist the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Nothing can really resist the best wine; the best that God always offers.
Amen
__________
1 “God is Able.” A Sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by Charles Henderson. Online God Web. Charles Henderson. 2013
2Brown and Bartlett, Editors. Feasting on The Word. Year C, Vol. 1.Westminster John Knox Press. Louisville, Kentucky. 2009. p260-265
3NT Wright. John for Everyone. Vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, 2009.
May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in Thy sight, O God our Strength and Redeemer. In the Name of the One, Holy and Living God, Amen.
Good morning, and welcome to any of you who may be new to Christ Church.
Welcome also to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. As we know, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a preacher as well as a larger than life figure in our Nation’s history. In one of his sermons, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote,
“At the center of the Christian faith is the conviction that there is a God of power who is able to do exceedingly abundant things in nature and in history. This conviction is stressed over and over again in the Old and New Testaments. The God whom we worship is not a weak and incompetent God…This ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.”1
God is able. Where we cannot, God can. Where big and little events in our lives prove us out of control, God is able. Where we are frustrated, tired, perplexed, stuck, God is able. Where we are heartbroken, angry and withdrawn, God is able. Where we are bored, uninspired, confused; God is able.
The Apostles and Prophets knew their message was to tell people just how able God was. Paul’s letters, the earliest descriptions we have of Jesus other than the Gospels, speaks of Jesus as being the human face of God’s Glory; of God’s able-ness.
If this is the case, as we continue to ponder the revelation of Jesus in his public ministry, what do we see of God in the narrative of the Wedding at Cana?
First, a little background.
Wine is a very ancient and complex metaphor in the Bible. From Old Testament times, the Israelites and YHWH portray an ambivalent relationship with wine.
On the one hand, positive and on the other hand, negative.
On the positive side, wine is an expression of God’s delight in God’s people. Like all signs in the Bible, wine points to a reality that is larger than itself, and in this case, wine points to the Coming of the Reign of God in a Joyous, abundant new age.
Wine also, from the earliest times, reflected God’s wrath. When YHWH was displeased with how the Israelites were behaving, their behavior was characterized as excess, drunkardness and impurity.
This ambivalence, or really, dual symbolism, makes its way right into the New Testament. New wine is God’s in-breaking into our world in a way that transforms old, painful realities. But new wine also demands “new wineskins…” as Jesus tells us.
We must change our thinking to be able to receive the abundance of God. We cannot fit the new reality of the Kingdom of Abundance into an old reality constructed with concepts of fear, lack, competition and greed.
In the Bible wine is sometimes just called, “the Cup.” The Psalmist speaks of God as his or her portion, “my Cup.” Wine as “the cup” appears in the Last supper, and the texts that we base our Eucharistic prayers on.
“The Cup” figures large in The Garden of Gethsemane, and symbolizes Jesus’ anguish as he struggles to follow the Father’s will even to the grave.
One can see how many different levels and interpretations there are to this one word, “wine.” Perhaps the most transcendent meaning of wine is that it represents the fact that God’s love “extends beyond the known boundaries of heaven and earth.”2
Theologian NT Wright would put it this way: “It is about transformation: the different dimension of reality that comes into being when Jesus is present.”3
Now we know a lot more about the context that informs John’s Gospel of The Wedding at Cana. If we were hearing John’s Gospel as contemporaries of Jesus, we would know how loaded this text is.
We’d know that the first hint is that the narrative begins with “On the third day…” We’d know that something surprising was about to happen. We’d remember that Jesus rose on the third day. We’d know that on a very human level, God was about to do a new thing, and we’d know that there would be both moments of delight and moments of challenge.
What a setting for a great story! God is a God of surprise, and there are several surprises at this wedding (like there often are a most weddings, one might add).
So we have a wedding. We are told that Jesus’ mother is there first, and then Jesus and his disciples arrive. Something surprising does happen. Jesus’ mother notices that the wine ran out. Jesus doesn’t notice, his mother does.
Then there ensues one of those all too human tugs of war between a mother and her eldest son. (We remember that before at Jesus’ Baptism, in the version in Matthew, John and Jesus have a “moment,” where they struggle, too, about who is going to baptize whom.)
In this early stage of Jesus’ “coming out” into public ministry, we glimpse these unformed moments of entirely human interaction. Whether it’s Jesus and his mother or Jesus and John at the Jordan, there is a minor struggle about whose authority is going to win out.
Why Jesus’ mother thinks it’s her son’s responsibility to help the host family “save face,” socially, we’ll never know. Why Jesus is a little bit ornery, claiming that “his hour has not come,” we can only speculate.
Perhaps Jesus doesn’t want to be at work spiritually; maybe he just wants to enjoy the wedding. Perhaps Jesus doesn’t think he’s ready. Perhaps Jesus isn’t even sure what he’s supposed to be doing. Perhaps he thinks to himself, “ What can I do to help these people?”
Perhaps Jesus is still getting used to his own dual nature as the Son of God and the Son of Man. Being fully human Jesus would not have just appeared as a completely formed, perfect, human being. Despite his divinity, he would have had to develop just like the rest of us.
Like the Baptism of Jesus at the Jordan, we have a miracle, the divine intersecting of heaven and earth where the needs of other’s are met by the compassion of God. We also have another surprise: the revelation of just how human this God, who is able, really is.
In this moment between Jesus and his mother we glimpse a very familiar dynamic.
A mother is still being a mother to a son who is growing up; who is trying to claim his own identity apart from his family. Jesus needs to discern for himself the need at hand and the action to follow. This may be why he says, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not come.”
To us in our time, Jesus sounds a little cruel, calling Mary simply “Woman.” In Jesus’ time, though, and in his language, calling his mother “woman” is a way to de-personalize the relationship; a way for Jesus to gain the detachment, the separation he is seeking.
Like John at the Jordan, Mary acquiesces. She steps back from a potential argument and turns to the servants acknowledging her son’s authority by saying, “Do whatever he tells you.”
We have another amazingly human moment in John’s Gospel that we can all relate to. It is these rare glimpses of Jesus the son that make us love him so much. Now we know how familiar Jesus really is with the dynamics of human life. We can trust that when we come to him in prayer with our own very human problems and needs, Jesus really is able to help us.
Jesus knew (and probably his mother did too) that he would have to develop a stronger relationship with God his Father, than with his human mother if he was going to be as able as God his Father, is able. Jesus knew that he would have to have a strength within that would lead him unerringly to do his Father’s will.
Even so, it is Jesus’ fully human mother who teaches him to become aware of the needs of others, even if those needs are simply saving face for a young couple at a wedding.
Psychologist Carl Gustave Jung talked about the role of Mary in the church. He applauded the Catholic Church for elevating Mary to the level of the Trinity through the human construct of the Assumption.
In Roman Catholicism, Mary is still the one who is most sensitive to the needs of others. She is the one closest to us; she is the great intercessor. Jung saw this feminine principle of awareness as a healthy addition to an otherwise male Godhead.
Like many of us, Jesus had parents who taught him well. Like us, Jesus had to become his own person, understand his own spiritual nature, and discern his own call.
Once again, this morning, the true miracle at Cana is the miracle of the Incarnation. It’s the miracle of how intimately our God, our Lord and our Savior understands us, loves us, and offers us new life in a new context. Our task is to dare to let Jesus be near to us, even if just for a split second.
“When Jesus is present, a different dimension of reality comes into being,” and surprising things happen.
And today, right now, Jesus is present.
Whether millions of molecules of H2O, a mother and a son at a wedding, or all of us in our own particularly human lives, nothing in Creation can resist the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Nothing can really resist the best wine; the best that God always offers.
Amen
__________
1 “God is Able.” A Sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by Charles Henderson. Online God Web. Charles Henderson. 2013
2Brown and Bartlett, Editors. Feasting on The Word. Year C, Vol. 1.Westminster John Knox Press. Louisville, Kentucky. 2009. p260-265
3NT Wright. John for Everyone. Vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, 2009.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Epiphany I - Suzanne Colburn
“You Are Mine,” says The Lord (Isaiah 43)
In the Name of the One, Holy and Living God. Amen
Good morning and welcome to all of you who may be visiting Christ Church today, or, who like me, are newcomers.
I am The Rev. Suzanne Colburn, your new Interim priest and you can read all about me in the bio in your bulletin. I look forward to getting to know all of you and I bring you greetings from St. James Episcopal Church in Amesbury, Ma. where, just like Skip, I did my final service last Sunday.
Since we are at the beginning of a new relationship, let me say thank you to the Wardens and Vestry for calling me to be your Interim Priest. Having been the person in charge of several parishes, I know how bittersweet it is to say good bye to a parish and how bittersweet it is to welcome that new clergy person. I am very glad to be among you and look forward to getting to know you all.
Today we begin a new journey filled with new relationships, new beginnings, new thoughts and fears, needs and excitements.
Today (at the 10 o’clock service) we will celebrate Christopher Jonathan Day’s new beginning as Christ Church’s newest member. In a few minutes Lynn will baptize Christopher into the household of God, using that wonderful three-fold formula, “In the Name of the Father, and of The Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Like the Trinity Itself, Baptism is a love story- it’s about the love between God and us and God and the world. The birth of child is a love story and how fitting it is on this day of new beginnings that we remember Jesus’ own baptism that is filled with words of love.
Knowing that I would begin with you on The Feast of The Baptism of Our Lord, and that we would have a baptism today, I began thinking about Jesus and his baptism, and how easily it might be mis-interpreted as only a sign of his divinity.
When we think of the story of Jesus’ baptism, I’m sure some of us have thought, “This is kind of far fetched; I highly doubt any dove from heaven came and descended above Jesus’ head, or that a voice from heaven came and declared him God’s favored son.”
We tend to be a little skeptical because in our day, these things simply don’t happen, or if they do, we’d think the person was crazy, to say the least.
We do not live in an age where invisible spirits are part of our reality. We don’t have angels wandering among us at least that we are aware of.
Whether we believe that a voice declared Jesus a Beloved Son or not, we need Jesus’ baptism because Jesus’ baptism is his “coming out” story.
Baptism is a Rite of passage for Jesus just like it is for us, too. Jesus is “coming out,” into his public ministry and is revealing himself as a fully human being, not as some supernatural deity.
By coming to John to be baptized, whether he needs it or not, Jesus is coming out as “One of Us.” Jesus is being just like any other human being hearing John the Baptist’s announcement that the kingdom was at hand.
Relevant for us is how much Jesus wanted his ministry to be down to earth- to be the Son of Man, as the Bible would say.
There’s that famous hymn from Paul, the one that describes Jesus’ humility as one who was equal to God, but chose to descend and live like one of us so that God’s Divine Love could actually be seen and felt and heard and touched.
This is the importance of Jesus’ Baptism at the Jordan. The importance is not the divine flashy lights, it is the fact that this man, who could have been so special and removed form the people, insisted, on being one of us.
It’s a love story and it begins with the prophet Isaiah’s pronouncement that we heard in the first lesson:
“Thus says the Lord…who created you…who formed you…who redeemed you…who called you…”You are mine”…and I, The Lord …your Savior… say, I love you.” (Is. 43:1-7)
From the beginning, God’s Voice is a voice of undying love for humankind.
If the Father is well pleased with Jesus, or any of us, it is because we choose, despite all odds, to live fully as the human beings that we are.
The birth of Christ into human history signals an elevation of being human to the status of Beloved. This is why we are baptized into Christ. We are baptized into the One who helps us to become more fully human than we could ever be without Him.
It’s a Mystery of Love- that only through the Son of God and Son of Man can we become the most fully human beings we can be.
In our becoming more human each day by living our lives in Christ, we draw the Father’s affirmation to us just as Jesus, choosing to be fully human, drew the Father’s love to himself.
One would think it would be easy to be fully human. We are human beings after all aren’t we? Doesn’t being human come naturally? Isn’t it odd that we need the Christ of God to show us the way?
And of course, that’s what we love about Jesus. In all ways he shows us what it’s like to be fully human, even to the point of going through the experience of dying when he didn’t have to die any more than he had to be baptized.
But Jesus’ love for us is such that he and the Father and the Spirit want to be part of every single one of our human experiences.
God has an agenda!
It warms my heart to remember the baptisms I‘ve witnessed or done.
The quiet, sleeping babies, the terrified ones, the nervous parents, the curious toddlers, the matter-of-fact older children, the godparents and sponsors, family members and friends, and yes, the congregations too.
All these people would have been standing around John the Baptist and Jesus at the River Jordan, too.
It warms my heart to know that we have help in becoming human, that when we get stuck at any particular point in our life’s journey we can say to Christ, “how did you do this?” “How am I to live this particular human being that is me?”
Relevant for us is the fact that living out one’s destiny as a human being was no easier for the Son of God than it is for any of us.
We all have had near misses in our own lives; moments of fate, or decision, or simply coincidence when things could have gone just as easily one way as another. Yet, something appears to intervene. Later in life we are able to look back and see how the events of our lives really all do fit together in one, meaningful, human journey.
In the story of Jesus’ baptism Jesus receives special acknowledgement from God, but Jesus does not ask for special treatment from his fellow human beings.
Jesus did not need to be baptized. Jesus did not need to repent of his sins, he was the arrival of the Kingdom of God in the flesh, and John the baptizer knew this. Yet for Jesus, it was crucial that all who were standing by see him, as he knew himself to be, as the Son of Humankind.
This is what is so Beloved about Jesus, that the Son of God knows himself to be fully the Son of Man as well.
The Father’s response to Jesus is one of pure love; love for this incredible human being, who, though he could pull rank over any other human being, chose, as he always did, to understand himself more as a son of the flesh than as a son of special privileged.
John may have single Jesus out publicly as someone special. Perhaps someone to be revered or even worship or stood in awe of. Yet Jesus, prevailed over John, because being singled out as someone special was exactly what Jesus of Nazareth did not require.
For Jesus, it was all about brining us and God back together; it was never about Himself. The Father’s response purely was one of love for his son who had spoken and acted so beautifully, so humbly, so perfectly in terms of knowing how to wear his humanity and not exalt his divinity.
Like many of our Baptisms, Jesus’ was a very intimate moment between two cousins, a father and a son.
We recognize how much Jesus chose to be in solidarity with the rest of us. We recognize how much it meant to him to join his kin and not to be over against them or above them even when he could have been.
When we remember the baptisms we’ve been to, the Godparents we may be, the parents or the siblings or cousins, we realize that what we are baptized into is this remarkable opportunity to be as fully human as Jesus was himself.
John the Baptizer was a good guy he just didn’t quite get who his cousin really was. Jesus is God and God is one of us. The Baptism of our Lord is about how much God loves us just like God loves his Son. God clearly has a thing for human beings.
In our Baptism, in Christopher’s baptism, we receive the same acknowledgement from Our Father in heaven as Jesus did. We are sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever. And like Jesus, and Christopher, I think it’s a beautiful way to begin a ministry together, don’t you?
Amen.
In the Name of the One, Holy and Living God. Amen
Good morning and welcome to all of you who may be visiting Christ Church today, or, who like me, are newcomers.
I am The Rev. Suzanne Colburn, your new Interim priest and you can read all about me in the bio in your bulletin. I look forward to getting to know all of you and I bring you greetings from St. James Episcopal Church in Amesbury, Ma. where, just like Skip, I did my final service last Sunday.
Since we are at the beginning of a new relationship, let me say thank you to the Wardens and Vestry for calling me to be your Interim Priest. Having been the person in charge of several parishes, I know how bittersweet it is to say good bye to a parish and how bittersweet it is to welcome that new clergy person. I am very glad to be among you and look forward to getting to know you all.
Today we begin a new journey filled with new relationships, new beginnings, new thoughts and fears, needs and excitements.
Today (at the 10 o’clock service) we will celebrate Christopher Jonathan Day’s new beginning as Christ Church’s newest member. In a few minutes Lynn will baptize Christopher into the household of God, using that wonderful three-fold formula, “In the Name of the Father, and of The Son and of the Holy Spirit.”
Like the Trinity Itself, Baptism is a love story- it’s about the love between God and us and God and the world. The birth of child is a love story and how fitting it is on this day of new beginnings that we remember Jesus’ own baptism that is filled with words of love.
Knowing that I would begin with you on The Feast of The Baptism of Our Lord, and that we would have a baptism today, I began thinking about Jesus and his baptism, and how easily it might be mis-interpreted as only a sign of his divinity.
When we think of the story of Jesus’ baptism, I’m sure some of us have thought, “This is kind of far fetched; I highly doubt any dove from heaven came and descended above Jesus’ head, or that a voice from heaven came and declared him God’s favored son.”
We tend to be a little skeptical because in our day, these things simply don’t happen, or if they do, we’d think the person was crazy, to say the least.
We do not live in an age where invisible spirits are part of our reality. We don’t have angels wandering among us at least that we are aware of.
Whether we believe that a voice declared Jesus a Beloved Son or not, we need Jesus’ baptism because Jesus’ baptism is his “coming out” story.
Baptism is a Rite of passage for Jesus just like it is for us, too. Jesus is “coming out,” into his public ministry and is revealing himself as a fully human being, not as some supernatural deity.
By coming to John to be baptized, whether he needs it or not, Jesus is coming out as “One of Us.” Jesus is being just like any other human being hearing John the Baptist’s announcement that the kingdom was at hand.
Relevant for us is how much Jesus wanted his ministry to be down to earth- to be the Son of Man, as the Bible would say.
There’s that famous hymn from Paul, the one that describes Jesus’ humility as one who was equal to God, but chose to descend and live like one of us so that God’s Divine Love could actually be seen and felt and heard and touched.
This is the importance of Jesus’ Baptism at the Jordan. The importance is not the divine flashy lights, it is the fact that this man, who could have been so special and removed form the people, insisted, on being one of us.
It’s a love story and it begins with the prophet Isaiah’s pronouncement that we heard in the first lesson:
“Thus says the Lord…who created you…who formed you…who redeemed you…who called you…”You are mine”…and I, The Lord …your Savior… say, I love you.” (Is. 43:1-7)
From the beginning, God’s Voice is a voice of undying love for humankind.
If the Father is well pleased with Jesus, or any of us, it is because we choose, despite all odds, to live fully as the human beings that we are.
The birth of Christ into human history signals an elevation of being human to the status of Beloved. This is why we are baptized into Christ. We are baptized into the One who helps us to become more fully human than we could ever be without Him.
It’s a Mystery of Love- that only through the Son of God and Son of Man can we become the most fully human beings we can be.
In our becoming more human each day by living our lives in Christ, we draw the Father’s affirmation to us just as Jesus, choosing to be fully human, drew the Father’s love to himself.
One would think it would be easy to be fully human. We are human beings after all aren’t we? Doesn’t being human come naturally? Isn’t it odd that we need the Christ of God to show us the way?
And of course, that’s what we love about Jesus. In all ways he shows us what it’s like to be fully human, even to the point of going through the experience of dying when he didn’t have to die any more than he had to be baptized.
But Jesus’ love for us is such that he and the Father and the Spirit want to be part of every single one of our human experiences.
God has an agenda!
It warms my heart to remember the baptisms I‘ve witnessed or done.
The quiet, sleeping babies, the terrified ones, the nervous parents, the curious toddlers, the matter-of-fact older children, the godparents and sponsors, family members and friends, and yes, the congregations too.
All these people would have been standing around John the Baptist and Jesus at the River Jordan, too.
It warms my heart to know that we have help in becoming human, that when we get stuck at any particular point in our life’s journey we can say to Christ, “how did you do this?” “How am I to live this particular human being that is me?”
Relevant for us is the fact that living out one’s destiny as a human being was no easier for the Son of God than it is for any of us.
We all have had near misses in our own lives; moments of fate, or decision, or simply coincidence when things could have gone just as easily one way as another. Yet, something appears to intervene. Later in life we are able to look back and see how the events of our lives really all do fit together in one, meaningful, human journey.
In the story of Jesus’ baptism Jesus receives special acknowledgement from God, but Jesus does not ask for special treatment from his fellow human beings.
Jesus did not need to be baptized. Jesus did not need to repent of his sins, he was the arrival of the Kingdom of God in the flesh, and John the baptizer knew this. Yet for Jesus, it was crucial that all who were standing by see him, as he knew himself to be, as the Son of Humankind.
This is what is so Beloved about Jesus, that the Son of God knows himself to be fully the Son of Man as well.
The Father’s response to Jesus is one of pure love; love for this incredible human being, who, though he could pull rank over any other human being, chose, as he always did, to understand himself more as a son of the flesh than as a son of special privileged.
John may have single Jesus out publicly as someone special. Perhaps someone to be revered or even worship or stood in awe of. Yet Jesus, prevailed over John, because being singled out as someone special was exactly what Jesus of Nazareth did not require.
For Jesus, it was all about brining us and God back together; it was never about Himself. The Father’s response purely was one of love for his son who had spoken and acted so beautifully, so humbly, so perfectly in terms of knowing how to wear his humanity and not exalt his divinity.
Like many of our Baptisms, Jesus’ was a very intimate moment between two cousins, a father and a son.
We recognize how much Jesus chose to be in solidarity with the rest of us. We recognize how much it meant to him to join his kin and not to be over against them or above them even when he could have been.
When we remember the baptisms we’ve been to, the Godparents we may be, the parents or the siblings or cousins, we realize that what we are baptized into is this remarkable opportunity to be as fully human as Jesus was himself.
John the Baptizer was a good guy he just didn’t quite get who his cousin really was. Jesus is God and God is one of us. The Baptism of our Lord is about how much God loves us just like God loves his Son. God clearly has a thing for human beings.
In our Baptism, in Christopher’s baptism, we receive the same acknowledgement from Our Father in heaven as Jesus did. We are sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever. And like Jesus, and Christopher, I think it’s a beautiful way to begin a ministry together, don’t you?
Amen.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Pentecost XXI - Lynn Campbell
“Whoever wishes to be 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.” (Mark 10:43-45)
In the name of the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I want to tell you about a friend of mine. His name is Dennis. I first met Dennis about 5 years ago. We were both members of the Crossing, an Episcopal worshipping community in Boston. I have to admit that when I first met Dennis, I tried to stay as far away from his as possible. You see, Dennis is homeless, living on the streets of Boston. He didn’t have access to a shower to use regularly or to clean clothes and you could tell as soon as he walked into a room. At the time I worked a few blocks away at a day shelter for people who are homeless. I felt like I “deserved” a break when I came to church. At least that it what I told myself. I constructed walls around my heart as I carefully avoided Dennis. But God has a way of breaking down those walls.
After a few weeks I noticed that during the prayers of the people, a time at the Crossing in which all people are invited to share their prayers aloud, Dennis prayed the most inspired and heart felt prayers. And they weren’t for what I had expected. They were not for himself. They were not that he would find a job or housing. His prayers were always for others. He prayed for his brothers and sisters on the streets. He prayed for the people who walked past him and looked the other way. He prayed for places of violence and hurt in our world. He prayed that people would come to know the healing power and abundant love of God.
I slowly moved past some of my selfishness and got to know Dennis. He doesn’t know how to write so he would ask me and others in the community to write down his words. They were beautifully crafted poems. Poems he shared with people who were struggling. I got to know about the people he helped who couldn’t afford food. I heard about the people he helped who were being held down by drug and alcohol addictions.
“Whoever wishes to be 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.”
In this mornings Gospel reading we encounter the disciples at not one of their finer moments. In the verse just prior to what we heard read this morning, Jesus has predicted his passion, death, and resurrection for the third time. And for the third time the disciples just don’t know what to do with this information. Perhaps out fear or their inability to grasp what Jesus was telling them, James and John ask Jesus for the honor of sitting at his right and left hand in glory. The disciples were seeking their own glory and honor. They just didn’t get it. They didn’t get what Jesus had been trying to teach them all along. Being a follower of Christ is not about our own glory, it is about serving God by serving our sisters and brothers. It is about lifting up others, not ourselves.
This is something my friend Dennis understands. And it is something so many in this congregation understand. I was reminded of this yet again on Friday night as our vestry gathered for a time of conversation and prayer.
We spoke about the many reasons we love Christ Church, and what makes us a unique community.
We spoke of the people of Christ Church who serve one another with such open and loving hearts. Those who visit parishioners in the hospital, who provide a listening ear to someone who is hurting, cook a meal for someone who is sick, knit a prayer shawl for a person grieving, and who offer their intercessory prayers for so many in need.
We spoke of the people of Christ Church who serve beyond our congregation by donating food or preparing and serving a meal at the Monday Lunch Program, by volunteering with the B-Safe program during the summer, sorting clothes for Circle of Hope and driving the donations to homeless shelters, supporting and participating in the Youth Mission Trip, and traveling to Haiti.
And, as the vestry was gathered I was so aware of how the women and men serving in this leadership capacity give so generously of their time and their gifts. We have investment experts, communication gurus, people who remind us to look beyond our own walls and others who are experts on keeping our walls standing and our basements free of water.
We have so many, who like Dennis, understand what it means to seek God’s glory rather than our own, to serve the needs of others rather simply our own needs.
Let me tell you one more story about Dennis, another way in which he seems to understand so much of today’s Gospel reading. Another way he taught me about being a follower of Christ, a servant of all.
At the Crossing, the community puts a basket on the Altar for people to place their financial offerings. People are invited to bring their gifts to the altar during what the community calls “Open Space,” a five minute portion of the service in which people can enter into one of a variety of spiritual practices (meditatively walking through the Church, silent prayer, healing prayer, lighting a candle). One of the spiritual practices is pledging. One Thursday evening, during open space, I was praying near the altar. I noticed Dennis walk towards the Altar and reach into his jacket pocket. From his pocket he pulled a plastic baggie filled with change. He placed the entire bag into the basket, stood in silent prayer, crossed himself (make cross), and walked away.
He placed all the money he had on the altar of God and walked away trusting that all would be well. I’ve seen him make this offering several times. It is how he fulfills his pledge to God and to the church in which he is a vital member. Dennis is so grateful for all God has given him, that he is moved to give of the little he has, the baggie full of change, recognizing that what he does have does not belong to him, he is simply the steward of it.
This is when I finally started to understand financial giving as an essential piece of what it means to be a servant of all. In his simple action, Dennis invited me to think of my own habits of giving and how giving affects me and the communities I’m a part of. I didn’t grow up with the idea of pledging, it wasn’t a part of my churches tradition. As a child and young adult, I don’t remember learning to think of the resources I had as truly belonging to God and not to me. These are lessons I’ve only begun to learn since joining the Episcopal Church. I’ve had a taste of the freedom that comes as I hold onto my financial resources less tightly; as I give more freely to the communities I’m invested in. There is a sense of joy in knowing that we are returning to God what is God and that it is being used faithfully to further God’s mission. The choice to pledge, to prayerfully discern what we will offer back to God in this coming year, has the potential to bring us closer to God. It increases our trust and faith in the goodness of God.
I’m not saying the pledging is easy. It is still something I struggle with. The bills pile up and the anxiety increases. I worry about paying off my seminary loan, about the cost of living in Needham. I think about whether or not I’ll ever be able to afford my own home and whether or not I’m saving enough for retirement. I imagine many people in this congregation have similar anxieties about money.
But over the last two weeks, Skip and Myra in their sermons, have invited us to pledge from a place of grace and hope, not from a place of fear. Skip spoke about pledging as planting seeds of hope. We have so many reasons to be hopeful at Christ Church. Our ministries are flourishing. People are coming to know God more deeply. Our sisters and brothers are being cared for in meaningful ways. New families are coming and experiencing this community as a place of welcome, a place that feels like home.
I want to be a part of this season of planting and invite you to as well. Skip has invited us this year to increasing our pledging by 10%. This increase will allow us to further the ministries of Christ Church as we seek to serve God. When my pledge card comes in the mail, I will respond to Skip’s invitation and will increase my pledge by 10%. I hope you will prayerfully discern whether this is something God is inviting you to do as well.
And if you haven’t before made a pledge at Christ Church, try it on. Pledging for the first time, increasing our pledge to a place that is more of a stretch, is the only way to discover for ourselves the joy and grace available to us through the spiritual practice of giving. And it is a way we live out Jesus’ call to us to be servant of all.
Know that I’m walking this path with you and I look forward to seeing where it leads us as individuals and as a community. I’m confident it will deepen our relationship with God and will increase our capacity to live in service of God and God’s mission for us at this time and in this wonderful place.
Amen.
In the name of the One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I want to tell you about a friend of mine. His name is Dennis. I first met Dennis about 5 years ago. We were both members of the Crossing, an Episcopal worshipping community in Boston. I have to admit that when I first met Dennis, I tried to stay as far away from his as possible. You see, Dennis is homeless, living on the streets of Boston. He didn’t have access to a shower to use regularly or to clean clothes and you could tell as soon as he walked into a room. At the time I worked a few blocks away at a day shelter for people who are homeless. I felt like I “deserved” a break when I came to church. At least that it what I told myself. I constructed walls around my heart as I carefully avoided Dennis. But God has a way of breaking down those walls.
After a few weeks I noticed that during the prayers of the people, a time at the Crossing in which all people are invited to share their prayers aloud, Dennis prayed the most inspired and heart felt prayers. And they weren’t for what I had expected. They were not for himself. They were not that he would find a job or housing. His prayers were always for others. He prayed for his brothers and sisters on the streets. He prayed for the people who walked past him and looked the other way. He prayed for places of violence and hurt in our world. He prayed that people would come to know the healing power and abundant love of God.
I slowly moved past some of my selfishness and got to know Dennis. He doesn’t know how to write so he would ask me and others in the community to write down his words. They were beautifully crafted poems. Poems he shared with people who were struggling. I got to know about the people he helped who couldn’t afford food. I heard about the people he helped who were being held down by drug and alcohol addictions.
“Whoever wishes to be 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.”
In this mornings Gospel reading we encounter the disciples at not one of their finer moments. In the verse just prior to what we heard read this morning, Jesus has predicted his passion, death, and resurrection for the third time. And for the third time the disciples just don’t know what to do with this information. Perhaps out fear or their inability to grasp what Jesus was telling them, James and John ask Jesus for the honor of sitting at his right and left hand in glory. The disciples were seeking their own glory and honor. They just didn’t get it. They didn’t get what Jesus had been trying to teach them all along. Being a follower of Christ is not about our own glory, it is about serving God by serving our sisters and brothers. It is about lifting up others, not ourselves.
This is something my friend Dennis understands. And it is something so many in this congregation understand. I was reminded of this yet again on Friday night as our vestry gathered for a time of conversation and prayer.
We spoke about the many reasons we love Christ Church, and what makes us a unique community.
We spoke of the people of Christ Church who serve one another with such open and loving hearts. Those who visit parishioners in the hospital, who provide a listening ear to someone who is hurting, cook a meal for someone who is sick, knit a prayer shawl for a person grieving, and who offer their intercessory prayers for so many in need.
We spoke of the people of Christ Church who serve beyond our congregation by donating food or preparing and serving a meal at the Monday Lunch Program, by volunteering with the B-Safe program during the summer, sorting clothes for Circle of Hope and driving the donations to homeless shelters, supporting and participating in the Youth Mission Trip, and traveling to Haiti.
And, as the vestry was gathered I was so aware of how the women and men serving in this leadership capacity give so generously of their time and their gifts. We have investment experts, communication gurus, people who remind us to look beyond our own walls and others who are experts on keeping our walls standing and our basements free of water.
We have so many, who like Dennis, understand what it means to seek God’s glory rather than our own, to serve the needs of others rather simply our own needs.
Let me tell you one more story about Dennis, another way in which he seems to understand so much of today’s Gospel reading. Another way he taught me about being a follower of Christ, a servant of all.
At the Crossing, the community puts a basket on the Altar for people to place their financial offerings. People are invited to bring their gifts to the altar during what the community calls “Open Space,” a five minute portion of the service in which people can enter into one of a variety of spiritual practices (meditatively walking through the Church, silent prayer, healing prayer, lighting a candle). One of the spiritual practices is pledging. One Thursday evening, during open space, I was praying near the altar. I noticed Dennis walk towards the Altar and reach into his jacket pocket. From his pocket he pulled a plastic baggie filled with change. He placed the entire bag into the basket, stood in silent prayer, crossed himself (make cross), and walked away.
He placed all the money he had on the altar of God and walked away trusting that all would be well. I’ve seen him make this offering several times. It is how he fulfills his pledge to God and to the church in which he is a vital member. Dennis is so grateful for all God has given him, that he is moved to give of the little he has, the baggie full of change, recognizing that what he does have does not belong to him, he is simply the steward of it.
This is when I finally started to understand financial giving as an essential piece of what it means to be a servant of all. In his simple action, Dennis invited me to think of my own habits of giving and how giving affects me and the communities I’m a part of. I didn’t grow up with the idea of pledging, it wasn’t a part of my churches tradition. As a child and young adult, I don’t remember learning to think of the resources I had as truly belonging to God and not to me. These are lessons I’ve only begun to learn since joining the Episcopal Church. I’ve had a taste of the freedom that comes as I hold onto my financial resources less tightly; as I give more freely to the communities I’m invested in. There is a sense of joy in knowing that we are returning to God what is God and that it is being used faithfully to further God’s mission. The choice to pledge, to prayerfully discern what we will offer back to God in this coming year, has the potential to bring us closer to God. It increases our trust and faith in the goodness of God.
I’m not saying the pledging is easy. It is still something I struggle with. The bills pile up and the anxiety increases. I worry about paying off my seminary loan, about the cost of living in Needham. I think about whether or not I’ll ever be able to afford my own home and whether or not I’m saving enough for retirement. I imagine many people in this congregation have similar anxieties about money.
But over the last two weeks, Skip and Myra in their sermons, have invited us to pledge from a place of grace and hope, not from a place of fear. Skip spoke about pledging as planting seeds of hope. We have so many reasons to be hopeful at Christ Church. Our ministries are flourishing. People are coming to know God more deeply. Our sisters and brothers are being cared for in meaningful ways. New families are coming and experiencing this community as a place of welcome, a place that feels like home.
I want to be a part of this season of planting and invite you to as well. Skip has invited us this year to increasing our pledging by 10%. This increase will allow us to further the ministries of Christ Church as we seek to serve God. When my pledge card comes in the mail, I will respond to Skip’s invitation and will increase my pledge by 10%. I hope you will prayerfully discern whether this is something God is inviting you to do as well.
And if you haven’t before made a pledge at Christ Church, try it on. Pledging for the first time, increasing our pledge to a place that is more of a stretch, is the only way to discover for ourselves the joy and grace available to us through the spiritual practice of giving. And it is a way we live out Jesus’ call to us to be servant of all.
Know that I’m walking this path with you and I look forward to seeing where it leads us as individuals and as a community. I’m confident it will deepen our relationship with God and will increase our capacity to live in service of God and God’s mission for us at this time and in this wonderful place.
Amen.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Pentecost XX - Myra Anderson
Take my lips and speak through them. Take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen.
My big brother, Trey, is a lanky 6 foot 6 agronomy professor at Michigan State University. Trey often tells his students, many of whom grew up on farms, that life boils down to one simple question:
Are you a chicken, or a pig?
Because when it comes to breakfast, the most important meal of the day, the chicken is a critical contributor, but the pig is committed. He’s all in.
If Jesus had been from Arkansas, he might have used this analogy with the rich man in our gospel story. Instead, he was a bit more blunt.
When the wealthy man approaches Jesus on the road, the man seems desperate. He has wealth, he has security, he has followed all the rules – but now there’s this talk of “eternal life”. He has everything he thinks he needs in this life, so now he needs to know how to secure the next life.
The first thing we’re told Jesus does in response to the man’s question is love him. Love him.
But then, what Jesus tells him seems of no comfort. He tells a man who thinks he has it all and has done it all just right, “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.”
We’re told the man goes away “shocked…and grieving, for he had many possessions.” I find Jesus’ words troubling as well. I know I won’t be able to bring myself to give everything away. I like to think of myself as generous, who doesn’t, but am I willing to engage in the sacrificial giving that Jesus calls on the man to do? It’s a tall order.
I think the rich man’s problem in this Gospel, though, and therefore ours, is that he doesn’t listen to the second half of Jesus’ formula for receiving what he lacks: after giving it all to the poor, Jesus tells the man, “then come, follow me.” Later Jesus tells the disciples that no one can save themselves: “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” Jesus loved the man. What the man lacked was full acceptance of that love. What the man needed to do was shed himself of what kept him from accepting that love and following Jesus. Jesus asks the man, as he asks each of us, to give up our reliance on wealth, or status, or self, or whatever it is that keeps us from God, and instead to accept God’s divine love and live into the grace God pours freely upon us, and to live in its abundance.
Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews that we heard this morning, sums it up perfectly: “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
No matter where we come from, or what we have, we all can approach the throne of grace with boldness. In my brother’s words, be a pig. Be all in, with whatever it is you have been given in abundance – wealth, talent, time, compassion.
I had the privilege of attending the annual Project Hope Rise & Shine breakfast last spring. Project Hope is a Boston-based program that serves poor and homeless women, providing everything from emergency shelter to job training and placement. Christ Church’s own Circle of Hope is an important partner in Project Hope’s mission. We provide not only clothing for women and their children in shelter, but also business clothing to the women in the job training program. The Rise & Shine breakfast celebrates these women, the Ambassadors of Project Hope, women who overcome personal setbacks and struggles to persevere on the path to economic self-sufficiency.
The keynote speaker at the breakfast was television personality and evangelical preacher Liz Walker. She spoke about the abundance of grace that we receive when we recognize that life is a gift, a gift of God’s boundless love. It is not an “achievement”. It is a gift to be celebrated and shared. And when we awaken to this grace, we return grace. And she spoke of Project Hope, a place where people give so freely of their time and their resources to help the neediest among us, as being a place where grace abounds.
This is the time of year, the season of Christian stewardship, when we give thanks for the grace we have received and think about our gifts to the church for the following year. We will soon receive a letter with a pledge card, asking us to carefully consider our gift for the coming year and to please be as generous as we can – to be our most generous selves, as Skip says, in what we give of our treasure and of our time. But if you’re like me, you’ll put that card in your bill pile, the one pile you know you have to go through at some point in the coming weeks. And you’ll sit down to pay your bills, and get either a little or a lot anxious about the ever increasing expenses of taxes, utilities, tuition, food – all of those expenses of daily life. And you’ll worry that you can’t afford to be as generous as you would like. I’m maybe not my most generous self at that moment.
Or maybe instead of with your bills, you’ll put that card with other requests from various charities for monetary gifts. You’ll look at your overall budget for charitable giving, and give the church what you consider to be a generous share. But none of these other charities are asking what the Church asks: that you give of all that you have – treasure, time, talent. So you may not be your most generous self in this setting either.
You could approach your stewardship pledge one of these ways, but I think in today’s Gospel Jesus is showing us a better way. Jesus is telling us that grace comes from being all in. The United Methodist Foundation defines Christian Stewards as “those who awaken to God’s abundant, freely given grace permeating all creation…every dimension of their lives becomes a witness of the living Christ and a channel of God’s grace poured out to all.” Being all in means being open to receiving God’s grace through giving: of our wealth, of our time, of our hearts – of all that we have, and of all that we are.
I suggest this year that we live into that grace, that we try to be all in. So try this: Keep that card near you at all times, pray with it, and wait. Wait to fill it out when you encounter one of those little moments of grace that abound at Christ Church:
And then just imagine with me the grace that will flow when we follow Jesus’ call to be all in. All in. Our money, our time, our hearts.
May this be the year we approach the throne of grace with boldness – together. May this be the year we receive God’s grace, and pass it on.
And may Christ Church always be a place where grace, amazing grace, abounds.
Amen.
My big brother, Trey, is a lanky 6 foot 6 agronomy professor at Michigan State University. Trey often tells his students, many of whom grew up on farms, that life boils down to one simple question:
Are you a chicken, or a pig?
Because when it comes to breakfast, the most important meal of the day, the chicken is a critical contributor, but the pig is committed. He’s all in.
If Jesus had been from Arkansas, he might have used this analogy with the rich man in our gospel story. Instead, he was a bit more blunt.
When the wealthy man approaches Jesus on the road, the man seems desperate. He has wealth, he has security, he has followed all the rules – but now there’s this talk of “eternal life”. He has everything he thinks he needs in this life, so now he needs to know how to secure the next life.
The first thing we’re told Jesus does in response to the man’s question is love him. Love him.
But then, what Jesus tells him seems of no comfort. He tells a man who thinks he has it all and has done it all just right, “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.”
We’re told the man goes away “shocked…and grieving, for he had many possessions.” I find Jesus’ words troubling as well. I know I won’t be able to bring myself to give everything away. I like to think of myself as generous, who doesn’t, but am I willing to engage in the sacrificial giving that Jesus calls on the man to do? It’s a tall order.
I think the rich man’s problem in this Gospel, though, and therefore ours, is that he doesn’t listen to the second half of Jesus’ formula for receiving what he lacks: after giving it all to the poor, Jesus tells the man, “then come, follow me.” Later Jesus tells the disciples that no one can save themselves: “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” Jesus loved the man. What the man lacked was full acceptance of that love. What the man needed to do was shed himself of what kept him from accepting that love and following Jesus. Jesus asks the man, as he asks each of us, to give up our reliance on wealth, or status, or self, or whatever it is that keeps us from God, and instead to accept God’s divine love and live into the grace God pours freely upon us, and to live in its abundance.
Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews that we heard this morning, sums it up perfectly: “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
No matter where we come from, or what we have, we all can approach the throne of grace with boldness. In my brother’s words, be a pig. Be all in, with whatever it is you have been given in abundance – wealth, talent, time, compassion.
I had the privilege of attending the annual Project Hope Rise & Shine breakfast last spring. Project Hope is a Boston-based program that serves poor and homeless women, providing everything from emergency shelter to job training and placement. Christ Church’s own Circle of Hope is an important partner in Project Hope’s mission. We provide not only clothing for women and their children in shelter, but also business clothing to the women in the job training program. The Rise & Shine breakfast celebrates these women, the Ambassadors of Project Hope, women who overcome personal setbacks and struggles to persevere on the path to economic self-sufficiency.
The keynote speaker at the breakfast was television personality and evangelical preacher Liz Walker. She spoke about the abundance of grace that we receive when we recognize that life is a gift, a gift of God’s boundless love. It is not an “achievement”. It is a gift to be celebrated and shared. And when we awaken to this grace, we return grace. And she spoke of Project Hope, a place where people give so freely of their time and their resources to help the neediest among us, as being a place where grace abounds.
This is the time of year, the season of Christian stewardship, when we give thanks for the grace we have received and think about our gifts to the church for the following year. We will soon receive a letter with a pledge card, asking us to carefully consider our gift for the coming year and to please be as generous as we can – to be our most generous selves, as Skip says, in what we give of our treasure and of our time. But if you’re like me, you’ll put that card in your bill pile, the one pile you know you have to go through at some point in the coming weeks. And you’ll sit down to pay your bills, and get either a little or a lot anxious about the ever increasing expenses of taxes, utilities, tuition, food – all of those expenses of daily life. And you’ll worry that you can’t afford to be as generous as you would like. I’m maybe not my most generous self at that moment.
Or maybe instead of with your bills, you’ll put that card with other requests from various charities for monetary gifts. You’ll look at your overall budget for charitable giving, and give the church what you consider to be a generous share. But none of these other charities are asking what the Church asks: that you give of all that you have – treasure, time, talent. So you may not be your most generous self in this setting either.
You could approach your stewardship pledge one of these ways, but I think in today’s Gospel Jesus is showing us a better way. Jesus is telling us that grace comes from being all in. The United Methodist Foundation defines Christian Stewards as “those who awaken to God’s abundant, freely given grace permeating all creation…every dimension of their lives becomes a witness of the living Christ and a channel of God’s grace poured out to all.” Being all in means being open to receiving God’s grace through giving: of our wealth, of our time, of our hearts – of all that we have, and of all that we are.
I suggest this year that we live into that grace, that we try to be all in. So try this: Keep that card near you at all times, pray with it, and wait. Wait to fill it out when you encounter one of those little moments of grace that abound at Christ Church:
- maybe after you make a delivery for Circle of Hope to a family shelter in Boston, or drop off clothing donations to Barbara Waterhouse and experience her enthusiastic gratitude; I know that’s one of mine.
- maybe after you sit in on a presentation by Emilie Hitron and the medical team returning from Haiti, or you go to Haiti yourself
- maybe after you drop your food donations downstairs for Shelter Cooking, or accompany Nancy Langford on a Monday trip into the Cathedral
- maybe after you set the altar for the next day’s service with Liz or Bea or one of the other members of the Altar Guild
- maybe after you receive the gifts of the bread and wine on Sunday morning in communion with your brothers and sisters in Christ
- maybe after you witness the joy of seeing your children learning the stories of God’s people in Children’s Chapel
- maybe after you receive words of sympathy and reassurance from Julia when you put a loved one’s name on the Parish prayer list
- maybe after you receive laying on of hands and prayer for healing at the rail on Sunday morning
- maybe after Skip or Lynn or one of our lay Eucharistic ministers brings you communion in the hospital, or the Pastoral Response Committee brings you a meal if you are homebound after surgery, or from illness or loss
- maybe after you experience the community of the Women’s Spirituality retreat, or the Men’s Cuttyhunk retreat
- maybe after hearing the choir sing a particularly moving or glorious anthem, or the children sing “Let There Be Peace on Earth” as we all did in the service a couple of weeks ago.
- Or maybe after hearing a really good sermon.
And then just imagine with me the grace that will flow when we follow Jesus’ call to be all in. All in. Our money, our time, our hearts.
May this be the year we approach the throne of grace with boldness – together. May this be the year we receive God’s grace, and pass it on.
And may Christ Church always be a place where grace, amazing grace, abounds.
Amen.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Pentecost XIX - Skip Winsdor
Planting Seeds of Hope
“Why did you go into the ministry?” Over the past several decades of my ordained ministry this question has been posed to me many times. The short answer, that since I was previously a banker, I said, “I wanted to be a full service banker.” The longer answer is that my grandmother, Gertrude or “Gertie” believed in me. She planted seeds of hope in me that I could be ordained.
This morning I would like to speak with you about planting seeds of hope. Like the seeds scattered on fertile ground, our gestures of generosity, our actions on behalf of others, our willingness to listen to other people’s dreams, and our desire to help others grow in the Christian faith and life bear fruit far beyond the present into the future.
As members of Christ Church, we know that this place and this community has been fertile ground for people to be generous, for people to help enable and heal others, for people to listen to other people’s dreams and visions, for people to instruct and teach others by word and example what it means to be a follower of Christ, and for countless others to be touched by the power of the Holy Spirit by merely walking through our church doors to see the beauty of this chancel and of our beautiful stained glass cross.
At this time of year when we prayerfully consider what financial pledge to make to Christ Church for 2013, I invite us to consider pledging as planting – planting seeds of hope.
My grandmother, Gertie, held the hope for me that I could become a minister. When I had little money and held two jobs while starting seminary: one at the Harvard Coop Bookstore and the other in the kitchen of Episcopal Theological School, she paid for my seminary tuition. By her generosity, she held the hope for me that my call to ministry was a real one.
The same holds true in our church. When we make a financial commitment to Christ Church, we are holding the hope not only for ourselves but also for countless others. By believing in the Christ Church community we:
Our 2012 church budget is $536,000. Our pledges are $356,000 (66%). Our endowment income where we draw no more than 5% is $67,000 (12.5%). Rentals for the church, rectory, and the library parking lot are $88,000 (16.5%). And fundraising and gifts is $25,000 (5%).
Expenses for ministry and mission for a balanced 2012 budget is $536,000. Salaries for staff (two f/t clergy, parish administrator, p/t director of music, p/t facilities manager, organist, and p/t bookkeeper) are $317,000 (59%). Our mandated diocesan assessment to the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts is $65,000 (12%). Annual maintenance, repairs, and upkeep on all church owned property is $102,000 (19%). Operations such as office, technology, and altar guild & worship plus educational program materials for education add up to $32,000 (7%). And outreach through Community Concerns, Circle of Hope, and the Millennium Goals is $18,000 (3%).
The 2012 budget represents the support of the infrastructure of Christ Church that is comprised of the church buildings, the church staff, the diocesan assessment, and the operations, programs, and outreach of the church. The importance of maintaining and sustaining the infrastructure of Christ Church is that it allows it to be a place for ministry and mission to occur:
Many good things are happening because of this growth:
But more planting and more seeds are needed to sustain and enhance our church infrastructure. Here is my invitation to you as your rector:
To see the outgrowth of our vibrant and vital ministries in the future, we must consider how we plant now and how much we will plant. As a bishop of the Episcopal Church once said, “Money is a spiritual issue and how much we give is a faith statement.”
My grandmother, Gertie, loved the Gospel text for today. No. She did not like the first part. What she loved was the last part especially the last verse in Mark 10:16 about being a little child coming to Jesus.
She liked it because of the comfort it gave her. You see, in her lifetime, she lost two husbands and survived all three of her children.
For years she looked for meaning about why these tragedies happened. No words, no book, helped her until she turned to this passage in the Bible. Nothing rational could explain her losses only a simple childlike faith in God helped her.
My grandmother believed that somehow those she loved but saw no longer rested in the loving arms of the Creator. “Only as a little child will I enter the kingdom of God,” she said. This was her faith. This was her hope. She held the hope for me when I first went to seminary. It is a hope I carry now because of her.
Christianity is all about hope. In the prayer book’s Catechism, it says that, “Christian hope is to live with confidence in the newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory and the completion of God’s purpose in the world” (p. 861).
You and I are called to be planters of hope by supporting Christ Church both for us and for others. During this season of sowing, let us be generous, sowing seeds of hope so that all people will come to know the loving and redeeming power of God through Jesus Christ our Lord at witnessed here at Christ Church.
Let us pray:
Almighty and most gracious God, we give you thanks for our community of Christ Church. Strengthen and guide us in all things knowing that through the power of your Holy Spirit all things are possible. All this we ask in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
“Why did you go into the ministry?” Over the past several decades of my ordained ministry this question has been posed to me many times. The short answer, that since I was previously a banker, I said, “I wanted to be a full service banker.” The longer answer is that my grandmother, Gertrude or “Gertie” believed in me. She planted seeds of hope in me that I could be ordained.
This morning I would like to speak with you about planting seeds of hope. Like the seeds scattered on fertile ground, our gestures of generosity, our actions on behalf of others, our willingness to listen to other people’s dreams, and our desire to help others grow in the Christian faith and life bear fruit far beyond the present into the future.
As members of Christ Church, we know that this place and this community has been fertile ground for people to be generous, for people to help enable and heal others, for people to listen to other people’s dreams and visions, for people to instruct and teach others by word and example what it means to be a follower of Christ, and for countless others to be touched by the power of the Holy Spirit by merely walking through our church doors to see the beauty of this chancel and of our beautiful stained glass cross.
At this time of year when we prayerfully consider what financial pledge to make to Christ Church for 2013, I invite us to consider pledging as planting – planting seeds of hope.
My grandmother, Gertie, held the hope for me that I could become a minister. When I had little money and held two jobs while starting seminary: one at the Harvard Coop Bookstore and the other in the kitchen of Episcopal Theological School, she paid for my seminary tuition. By her generosity, she held the hope for me that my call to ministry was a real one.
The same holds true in our church. When we make a financial commitment to Christ Church, we are holding the hope not only for ourselves but also for countless others. By believing in the Christ Church community we:
- Listen to other people’s dreams. To dreams the good dreams of God for reconciliation, tolerance and peace.
- Help and assist others, both young and old, to be the people God calls us to be. As the prophet, Micah, proclaims, “What does God require of us: To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
- Create a place and a space where families find teachers and mentors, who by their word and example instruct our children and youth to grow into the full stature of Christ.
- Bring the Good News of Christ to the least, the last, the last and the lonely through clothing to the Long Island Shelter, through hearty and healthy lunches with the Monday Lunch Ministry, through our commitment to the Millennium Development goals at the school in Lazile, Haiti.
- Maintain a beautiful church building as a place of prayer and worship but also as a resource to the wider community whether it be a pre-school like First Bridge, an outreach program like AA, or a meeting space for the Needham High School or a diocesan event like Episcopal City Mission.
- Serve as a home to us where we can meet for fellowship, knitting, lunches, dinners, breakfasts, or to have fun for Halloween or Christmas.
- Stand as a visible symbol to the Needham community that there is a place with a history and a tradition that anchors all who come here in the Episcopal and Anglican ethos where liturgy and music is practiced with piety and professionalism.
Our 2012 church budget is $536,000. Our pledges are $356,000 (66%). Our endowment income where we draw no more than 5% is $67,000 (12.5%). Rentals for the church, rectory, and the library parking lot are $88,000 (16.5%). And fundraising and gifts is $25,000 (5%).
Expenses for ministry and mission for a balanced 2012 budget is $536,000. Salaries for staff (two f/t clergy, parish administrator, p/t director of music, p/t facilities manager, organist, and p/t bookkeeper) are $317,000 (59%). Our mandated diocesan assessment to the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts is $65,000 (12%). Annual maintenance, repairs, and upkeep on all church owned property is $102,000 (19%). Operations such as office, technology, and altar guild & worship plus educational program materials for education add up to $32,000 (7%). And outreach through Community Concerns, Circle of Hope, and the Millennium Goals is $18,000 (3%).
The 2012 budget represents the support of the infrastructure of Christ Church that is comprised of the church buildings, the church staff, the diocesan assessment, and the operations, programs, and outreach of the church. The importance of maintaining and sustaining the infrastructure of Christ Church is that it allows it to be a place for ministry and mission to occur:
- Education and formation: Children’s Chapel, Church School, Youth Group, Adult Forums and Adult Bible Study.
- Witnessing and testifying: A good example is Katie McCracken’s testimony of her recent visit to Haiti in this month’s Visitor.
- Faith and practice: Living in a safe Christian community where mutual pastoral and healing support happens every day while allowing members to worship together every Sunday enjoying our beautiful choir and hearing and receiving both God’s holy word and receiving the Spirit of Christ through the Eucharist.
Many good things are happening because of this growth:
- The addition of two talented choir section leaders in Mark and Chris
- Circle of Hope reached over $1 million in clothing given out – in 4 years
- The Cuttyhunk Men and Women’s Spirituality are most active in years
- Renewed partnership with St. Luc Haiti through the MDG’s
- Community Concerns making a difference to others thru grants
- Shelter Cooking (MANNA) involves over 70 volunteers
- PRM, LEM’s, Knitting Ministry, Intercessors, Healing Ministry active daily
- Wednesday Morning Bible Study the largest class ever
- Children’s Chapel, Church School and youth under Lynn and Kim
- Property Committee: Drainage, paint HND, refurbish chapel, etc.
But more planting and more seeds are needed to sustain and enhance our church infrastructure. Here is my invitation to you as your rector:
- Increasing operations revenues for office equipment, communications and technology
- Building repairs, deferred maintenance, rising fuel, and unexpected property needs require more funds over time
- Increase outreach of Christ Church from 3% to 5%
- Prepare for rising ancillary staff expenses: as mandated by the diocese for pension and health insurance
- Enhancing education and fellowship programs with current books, curriculum and entertainment
- Creating a reserve fund of 5% for emergencies in next year’s budget
To see the outgrowth of our vibrant and vital ministries in the future, we must consider how we plant now and how much we will plant. As a bishop of the Episcopal Church once said, “Money is a spiritual issue and how much we give is a faith statement.”
My grandmother, Gertie, loved the Gospel text for today. No. She did not like the first part. What she loved was the last part especially the last verse in Mark 10:16 about being a little child coming to Jesus.
She liked it because of the comfort it gave her. You see, in her lifetime, she lost two husbands and survived all three of her children.
For years she looked for meaning about why these tragedies happened. No words, no book, helped her until she turned to this passage in the Bible. Nothing rational could explain her losses only a simple childlike faith in God helped her.
My grandmother believed that somehow those she loved but saw no longer rested in the loving arms of the Creator. “Only as a little child will I enter the kingdom of God,” she said. This was her faith. This was her hope. She held the hope for me when I first went to seminary. It is a hope I carry now because of her.
Christianity is all about hope. In the prayer book’s Catechism, it says that, “Christian hope is to live with confidence in the newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory and the completion of God’s purpose in the world” (p. 861).
You and I are called to be planters of hope by supporting Christ Church both for us and for others. During this season of sowing, let us be generous, sowing seeds of hope so that all people will come to know the loving and redeeming power of God through Jesus Christ our Lord at witnessed here at Christ Church.
Let us pray:
Almighty and most gracious God, we give you thanks for our community of Christ Church. Strengthen and guide us in all things knowing that through the power of your Holy Spirit all things are possible. All this we ask in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
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